[PaulDavisThe1st]

> Building a web browser is just too damn hard, and never again would free software stand a chance.

That's what people said when I started to write an open-source DAW 22 years ago. "DAWs are just too damn hard, there'll never be an open source DAW".

Except that now there are several open source DAWs, and several proprietary ones, all created since that time.

I am very, very skeptical of claims like this. There is a reason why creating a new browser that lots of people will use is a challenge, but it's not because it's "too hard".

[yoavm]

Thanks for Ardour! I've used it many times. I'm not a DAW expert, but unfortunately I don't think that's really similar though... DAWs are complicated, and hats off for building one, but they're nothing like browsers in how much they're tracking a moving target, and how little tolerance users have for something that is incomplete. I have a musician friend that still uses Cubase 6 and it works just fine. Ever tried using a browser from 2011? Do you even dare to?

Browsers need to follow ever changing standards, do all that in a super performant way (remember the days people said they're leaving Firefox because Chrome "feels snappier"? Good luck beating that), keep it secure even though it's running remote code, and until they get it ALL 100% working, no one is really going to make it their daily driver. I already hear people saying that they're not using Firefox because some websites don't render well.

If it isn't "too hard", why do you think that over the last decade essentially no one managed to do it, while we do have several open source DAWs?

[grumbel]

> Browsers need to follow ever changing standards, do all that in a super performant way

You don't have to beat Chrome at it's own game. I think the best course of action would be a drastic course change and building a browser that focuses heavily on the creation and publish of content, not just on the consumption. Focus on the Web as document storage instead of as App runtime. That's an area that is still in serious need of work and isn't really covered with Chrome. Also somebody really needs to reinvent bookmarks, they haven't fundamentally changed in 25 years and are in dire need of an upgrade.

Brave (IPFS and Crypto integration) and Project Gemini (focus on text content) are going a little into that direction, but there is still a lot more that could be done.

> Firefox because Chrome "feels snappier"?

It was less because "feels snappier" and more because "complete browser freezes when using multiple tabs". It has gotten better since then, but when Chrome started Firefox was in dire need of some rework.

[yoavm]

Sounds like you're not even aiming to create a web browser... All good wishes, but count me out and I sure hope Firefox doesn't take that route.

Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the hacker mentality (go Gemini!), but I thought we were discussing the need for an open web. Sure we can even add NNTP support to Firefox, but that ain't gonna get my grandma switching over.

[grumbel]

> I thought we were discussing the need for an open web.

What exactly is "open" about just being a Chrome-clone? If you want to keep the Web open, you really have to work on the "how-to-get-content-on-the-web" side of things, just another browser for pure consumption really doesn't add all that much. Stuff like containerizing Facebook isn't really doing anything worthwhile, giving people something to get away from Facebook would. And forcing HTTPS on everybody really didn't help either, that just killed what remained of the old Web.

It's not like Firefox didn't try, at one point they added Firefox Hello and that looked promising and than it got removed again. And at one point they had RSS support, but instead of improving and building up on that, that got removed again. And instead of improving the Firefox bookmarks, Tab Groups or the Save button they gave us Pocket, which is no different than any other cloud service.

> but that ain't gonna get my grandma switching over.

You don't improve the Web by giving grandma a Chrome-clone, she'll just be Facebook'ing around all the same as she did in Chrome. And when grandma is paying your bills by visiting Google Search, why even bother, cut out the middleman and just use Chrome. It makes no difference.

Now I don't necessarily want NNTP support in Firefox, as at that point we'll just be full circle and back at where Mozilla started 20 years ago, but I want something that allows communication and publishing of content without having to rely on Facebook and friends.

[yoavm]

It's those Web 3 enthusiasts that tried to convince us that we need new ways to put things on the internet. There's no problem with doing it today. You can `python3 -m http.server` and you're on the internet. There's no technical challenge waiting to be solved there.

Most people are consumers of data. That's why browsers are called Browsers and not Authors. Grandma isn't building a website for herself not because it's hard, but because she doesn't care. The risk with with Google being the only browser is that they define how we browse. They can decide that next year HTML is gone and Flutter is in. They can decide FLOC is mandatory to view a website. They can decide to only show AMP content. Then, my friend, then it's gets harder to put your own content on the internet. And this is why Firefox is important.

[grumbel]

> There's no technical challenge waiting to be solved there.

NAT is still a major issue when you try to self host anything. And most of the stuff you can hobble together in a shell one liner just ends up being broken or limited in one way or another, e.g. that `python3 -m http.server` fails with seeking in video files, just gives "Broke pipe" error. Also provides no way to encrypt or authenticate. And without any way to easily mirror the content it will be unreliable and slow anyway.

Trying to do almost any common task is a nightmare when you want to do it cloud-free. An open web run by users themselves is still an unsolved problem. There some projects working on it (libp2p, IPFS, etc.), but none of that is to the point where it works properly and often missing important features.

> They can decide that next year HTML is gone and Flutter is out.

That already happened years ago. Tons of popular Internet apps only exist as mobile apps with little or no Web interface. Worse yet, most of those apps are driven by user created content. Which is exactly why making publishing a first class citizen on the Web is so important, without that people are just leaving the Web and going to places that allow them to publish and those places will be controlled by your favorite mega-corp.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

These are fair points, but they are missing the things that have changed in the DAWscape.

In 1999, and maybe even 2011, a DAW that couldn't do elastic time was still considered to be a major player. In 2011, a DAW that couldn't do clip launching was still OK. In 2011, the idea of cross-routable modulation (like Bitwig now does) was a wild and crazy idea (mostly). In 2011, the idea of a modular environment within the DAW was floating around (Logic had done it for a while) but was hardly mainstream. These things are now either already or becoming more or less mandatory to be considered a major DAW.

Then there is the matter of control surfaces, which keep evolving. In 2011, the idea of a controller that was essentially a programmable grid of illuminated pads was mostly the domain of experimental performance (Monome). And every month or two, a new controller appears that claims to support Mackie Control Protocol, but has in fact bastardized it in some small but significant way. There's also the touch-based controllers, frequently using OSC, and their constantly changing suggestion of what should be possible.

And then there's plugin APIs, which also keep evolving, and we are under enormous expectation to ensure that every single one of many thousands of little code blobs written using one of a half-dozen plugin APIs and by developers with a range of experience that goes from nothing to world expert should all just work.

Over the years, we've also seen constant changes on Windows in terms of the OS-level audio APIs, each change bringing with it new possibilities and new problems. There's no POSIX for this. And, of course, a slow but steady evolution in audio interface hardware, which doesn't often impinge on the DAW itself, but sometimes does.

As for performant, browsers don't even have RT-style constraints, and there's plenty of observations about "snappiness" in this domain too. It's just a much smaller niche, and developer culture (as testified to by posts here on HN) is now very dominated by web-centric thinking and experience. As a result those sorts of things aren't really part of the culture in the way that "wow, Chrome is so fast" etc. has become. Look at the praise Reaper receives because of its (apparent) ability to handle more plugins with less CPU cycles.

As to why new browsers are rare ... I think it's because (1) browsers are not really fun at most levels, and (2) adoption is hard when there's a default on just about every platform. The fun part is important though. Many developers enjoy "messing around with audio" and it provides a kind of gratification that is rare (video stuff would be similar). It's not that cooking up a standards compliant and crazy fast and beautiful CSS implementation isn't without its joys, but there's so little point doing that as a standalone project. Contrast that with the steady drip, drip, drip of developers who want to try their hand at a synth, or an audio file editor, or FX processor and eventually think "oooh, how about a DAW". There's not really any evolutionary pathway for browser development: you're either writing a whole browser, or you're not. Audio gives you a way in, and then the sky's the limit.