HTML-in-Canvas Demos
58 points
18 hours ago
| 6 comments
| github.com
| HN
Barbing
13 hours ago
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Tried this demo in Safari: https://arrival.space/htmlcanvas

Looks very cool, and showed a pretty message indicating there's even more:

  HTML IN CANVAS NOT SUPPORTED  
  Use Chrome and enable chrome://flags/#canvas-draw-element
Use Chrome... idontthinkiwill.jpg and aren't we supposed to reject these technologies that allow Google to Embrace, Extend, Extinguish[1]?

Kudos to the artist in spite of this unfortunately esoteric (wish it weren't) concern

[1](hope I'm wrong about it being a triple E https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis... )

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rafram
3 hours ago
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The standardization process requires implementations before standardization. And the most recent comments on the WHATWG issue are from Jake Archibald (Mozilla) and Anne van Kesteren (Apple). This isn't a unilateral Google project.
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afavour
3 hours ago
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> aren't we supposed to reject these technologies that allow Google to Embrace, Extend, Extinguish

In what way is this technology a means to embrace, extend and extinguish?

This seems like a logical extension of existing web APIs. If we reject everything out of hand then the platform won't improve. It's going through the standards process:

https://github.com/whatwg/html/issues/10650

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socalgal2
11 hours ago
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Seems like you have some pretty strong ranty bias there.

AFAICT, this is a web standard and expected to get buy in from Safari and Firefox before shipping to users. For now it's an experiment you have to specifically enable with flags. No different than any other browser that runs experiments

Here's one from from Apple from 2017

https://webkit.org/blog/7504/webgpu-prototype-and-demos/

Here's another from last year

https://webkit.org/blog/17118/a-step-into-the-spatial-web-th...

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JimDabell
9 hours ago
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> AFAICT, this is a web standard and expected to get buy in from Safari and Firefox before shipping to users.

If it hasn’t already got buy in then it isn’t a web standard, it’s just a Google proposal. Something isn’t automatically a web standard just because Google thinks it’s a good idea.

Here are Mozilla and WebKit positions on this:

> This proposal attempts to solve multiple problems with a single solution. We (Mozilla) recognize the motivation for solving some of the problems, but believe that this is not the right solution to each problem, or in some case a step in the wrong direction.

https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/1076

https://github.com/WebKit/standards-positions/issues/630

As far as I can see, nobody outside of Google has committed to implementing this.

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Barbing
3 hours ago
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What a thread (Mozilla). Thank you much.

> If this ships, this is what we think we'll be facing, but in reverse. Your rendering would become the defacto default. Does this help see where we're coming from?

One side cares about a private, free, open web; the other devs made something COOL and potentially USEFUL (ship it!). Both highly intelligent of course, shockingly different priorities.

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troupo
9 hours ago
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From the discussion linked in the Webkit repo:

--- start quote ---

Philip: First, google slides is written in svg, so that won't change with this. But google docs is using canvas, so they might be a candidate. … they might want to integrate this peicemeal, this API allows them to start to adopt the feature slowly,

--- end quote ---

This reads to me like "Google Docs decided to go with canvas sometime ago [1], found it to be too hard, so pushed Chrome to have a way to support HTML in Canvas. The rest is just post-hoc justifications"

[1] https://workspaceupdates.googleblog.com/2021/05/Google-Docs-...

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Barbing
3 hours ago
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Strongly ranty!

Happy to praise anything good Google does (speedy, reliable YouTube delivery). When they don’t get buy in first, I’m suspicious. They know, but should also care about how bad it is for the web for sites to dictate the browsers we use.

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troupo
9 hours ago
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> his is a web standard and expected to get buy in from Safari and Firefox before shipping to users.

1. It's not a standard. It's a scribble on a napkin in a working group's repo: https://github.com/WICG/html-in-canvas Created and edited by people from Google.

2. Chrome continuously ships "standards" like this that they create with no buy in and against any and all opposition.

3. Neither of your links have any relation to HTML in Canvas.

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designerarvid
13 hours ago
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HTML-in-Canvas-in-HTML. Yo dawg.
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BobbyTables2
13 hours ago
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Nah, you forgot the canvas.

I heard you like html-in-canvas demos, but what about canvas-in-html-in-canvas-in-html?

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ivolimmen
12 hours ago
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You broke the internet!
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BobbyTables2
13 hours ago
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Title should have been “html-in-canvas demos in gif on X”

I naively thought the “demo” was a demo, not a X posting by a twit.

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Barbing
13 hours ago
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cush
13 hours ago
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Wes isn’t a twit!
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phyzix5761
8 hours ago
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I remember this repo a few weeks ago: https://github.com/remotion-dev/html-in-canvas

I wonder if it works in more than just Chrome Canary now.

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Rygian
8 hours ago
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How long until a canvas is used to render the full chrome of a web browser (e.g. including the TLS padlock), showing a fake benign URL in the (fake) address bar while having the user interact with a malicious page?
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l23k4
6 hours ago
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Already done, it's called a "browser-in-browser" attack.
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stanac
8 hours ago
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That's why we have "youtube.com is now full screen" message.
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lukan
7 hours ago
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Yes, but this "emergency" UI of the OS could be improved I think. (Also that functionality could have been build easily with normal DOM and JS, cancel and override all events, etc)
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beezlewax
13 hours ago
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Flash is back baby!
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troupo
9 hours ago
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In a significantly reduced, dumbed down and non-functional way
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