[cap-talk] browsers as operating system

[John Carlson]

On Sep 11, 2008, at 2:13 AM, Jed Donnelley wrote:

> At 01:25 AM 9/11/2008, David-Sarah Hopwood wrote:
>>
>> Web browsers are complicated enough just supporting HTML, XML, CSS,
>> XSLT, XPath, JavaScript, Java, and various plug-ins.
>>
>> Why on earth would we want to make them more complicated by adding
>> E, C#, C++, and C, before fixing the existing problems? Especially
>> given that C++ and C are not even memory-safe?
>
> I think John is suggesting (John?) that the browser support arbitrary
> binary code so that any source language can be supported.  If Web
> applications run in separate processes (Chrome) then it seems to me
> this is certainly the direction the technology is heading in.

If the process is properly sandboxed, it should be possible to run  
arbitrary (perhaps VM) code.  Certainly something that generates MS  
CIL would work--this is probably what IE8 does.  We would have to  
figure out how to prevent it from making normal operating system  
calls, but that seems doable even though I don't know the details  
(there are unbreakable chroots
I think--like if you don't allow a second chroot by changing the User  
ID?)  If V8 can handle JavaScript, what else can it handle?

I can see a problem with the render engine doing 3D rendering and  
shading perhaps, if it can't reach the graphics card.

The big wow for me was making multiple processes look like a single  
"application."  I hadn't thought of doing that before.

The only difference between downloading Java and HTML is that HTML is  
more succinct.  See the Lobo browser.

John