#dev 2023-06-05

2023-06-05 UTC
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[snarfed] this is plumbing error debugging, not UX
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[snarfed] and across two independent systems, ie whether a single protocol-level HTTP request does its processing synchronously, so that the client even gets an error at all, or not
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[tantek] even developers need UX. GitHub's existence is a good demonstration of that (over git CLI pain)
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[snarfed] definitely! this isn't even developer tooling though, it's code running in production
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[tantek] so devops UX then?
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vladimyr Used to be, with their recent move to new frontend that broke even the CTRL-F workflow it is really though sell
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[snarfed] there's no human user involved
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[tantek] like dashboards / cPanel etc.?
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[snarfed] this is during eg AP inbox delivery
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[snarfed] anyway. not a big deal, just wanted to surface a tradeoff of the common "do all nontrivial processing async" advice that we give (eg in the webmention spec) along with everyone else
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[tantek] if only there was an AP fed test suite
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[snarfed] would be nice! wouldn't really help here though, everything happening here is fully spec compliant
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[tantek] that could test both sync/async handling
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[tantek] a test suite can have error tests as well
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[tantek] good test suites do
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[snarfed] right, but again, all of those tests would pass here
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[snarfed] did you read the post?
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[tantek] looked like it was part of Bridgy docs? if I saw the link correctly
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[snarfed] right
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[tantek] we need a webmention.rocks test for a "per-request status URL in the Location response header"
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[tantek] to encourage it to be more "widely implemented"
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[tantek] perhaps generalizing the "status URL in the Location response header" mechanism and making it a building block could help more protocols beyond Webmention
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[snarfed] definitely! sadly implementing it generally take a substantial amount of work, and primarily benefits senders, not the receiver who's implementing it. still really worthwhile overall though!
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[tantek] would be an interesting test if ActivityPub folks would be ok with depending on an external spec like that for extending the protocol
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[tantek] the benefit to the receiver *should* be that more senders are incentivized to implement sending to that receiver, because presumably that's the whole (higher level) purpose of putting up a receiver in the first place
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[snarfed] indirectly yes
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[tantek] giving senders the opportunity to provide better UX to their users provides incentive for those senders to work with your receiver
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[tantek] async successful task completion might need to be added to the "hard problems in CS" list
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[tantek] this goes way beyond web protocols
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[snarfed] lol yes, or at least status propagation
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[snarfed] arguably already there, async is just a temporal layer of indirection
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[KevinMarks] This is the structural complexity. The Promise model captures it, but the downstream paths can be hard to express in linear code. The async keyword model gives a clear path when things go right but masks the complexity of the failure cases
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[snarfed] right! and this adds another layer of difficulty in that errors are incorrectly reported as successes to clients, in order to benefit downstream server architecture
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vladimyr another /victim/ of async/await model is concurrency
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vladimyr I ment parallelism, sorry
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vladimyr allows you to express only serial but not parallel workflows
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vladimyr for that one you need to go back to Promises land
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[tantek] In case anyone has a C64 laying around and wants to self-host from home: https://hackaday.com/2023/06/01/commodore-64-web-server-brings-8-bit-into-the-future/
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Gorro_Rojo[theyi gmorninn, does anyone know if there are some web standards for ecommerce sites? im thinking of something not unlike microformats, specially for small coop businesses
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[tantek] what is the small coop business use-case you are trying to solve?
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[tantek] it looks like IFTTT is still able to auto-crosspost to Twitter — is anyone using IFTTT to do their POSSEing? E.g.: https://twitter.com/w3c/status/1665671132681306113
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[snarfed] the new twitter API free tier allows posting, just not reading
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Gorro_Rojo[theyi <[tantek]> "what is the small coop business..." <- aaa darn I *just* found `h-product`, it's what I was looking for, sorry for bothering, my memory troubles betray me 😅 thank you!
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Gorro_Rojo[theyi <[snarfed]> "the new twitter API free tier..." <- that doesn't sound too bad
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Gorro_Rojo[theyi it limits making third-party clients, but at least we can still posse to twitter, then
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[snarfed] that's a low bar, considering everything that _used_ to be free (or reasonably priced) and accessible in the Twitter API. https://snarfed.org/2023-04-03_so-long-twitter-api-and-thanks-for-all-the-fish
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[snarfed] interesting, Apple just announced some kind of standalone web app support for arbitrary sites, including dedicated windows, dock icon, notifs. wonder if it uses any PWA standards under the hood or if it's entirely proprietary to Safari
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shreyanjain[m] I hope it's pwa
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[jgarber] Seems likely: https://front-end.social/@jensimmons/110492930597751738
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Loqi [preview] [Jen Simmons] Yes, you heard that right. Web apps on Mac, from Safari. *Any* website can be added to your Dock, and opened as a web app. Web app developers can customize their web app with a web manifest file and more — just like for web apps on iOS and iPadOS. ...
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shreyanjain[m] Ahh that's nice, I don't use Safari but that's definitely nice to see better web app support right from Apple
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[snarfed] I dunno, it's Apple, their track record isn't exactly standards-first. we'll see
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c​apjamesg Yeah.
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c​apjamesg They said developers don't need to do anything.
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c​apjamesg Which makes me wonder.
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shreyanjain[m] That does not bode well 🤔
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[KevinMarks] Is this Web Clips again? Or whatever the widgets thing they had before?
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[snarfed] more like Electron evidently
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[KevinMarks] https://twitter.com/film_girl/status/1665778036841541638 https://twitter.com/film_girl/status/1665778908636254209
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[jgarber] That sound you heard was my bones turning to dust.
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[tantek] The trajectory of their track record has been quite standards-strong for a few years now. I'm optimistic.
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[tantek] ^ that was re: [snarfed] "track record" comment
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[snarfed] maybe web standards in Safari specifically? less so in other areas. still, that's good to know, and promising!
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[tantek] or in WebKit specifically, and this seems like an interesting expansion of the use of WebKit in the OS
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vladimyr Oh there we go, Apple as we all know it: https://twitter.com/jensimmons/status/1665782319796346881
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vladimyr > Yes. “PWA” is a very specific term that requires both a manifest file and a service worker. Neither is required for web apps on Mac.
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vladimyr web standard = very specific term ✅
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[tantek] Jen is correct. Neither manifests nor service workers are necessary plumbing for what a user perceives as a "web app".
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vladimyr Definitely true from end user perspective but arguing with established standards doesn't really do users a favor cause now they need to go back to devs and ask them to support both pwa and webkit webapp
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vladimyr And then there is this also:
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vladimyr https://twitter.com/jensimmons/status/1665809509850267648
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[tantek] PWA is not an "established standard". There is no W3C spec for "PWA". PWA is dev-targeted marketing. 😛
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vladimyr Um, sure bout that? https://www.w3.org/TR/appmanifest/
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[tantek] yes I am sure. that link has zero results for "PWA".
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vladimyr Which is ofc marketing and umbrella term for manifest plus worker
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vladimyr My point wasn't in arguing with nonexistent pwa standard but manifest part that's supposedly redundant
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[tantek] webapp manifest is a standards-track working draft yes. there are also standard alternatives to many (most?) of the features contained therein.
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[tantek] in other words, not requiring manifest does not mean you are not standards compliant or non-standard.
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Soni idea: there should be a lightweight fedi scraper you can run without having to setup a whole postgresql and whatnot