Charla

Beware the bloated browser!

Antonio Olmo Titos

Web browsers have become huge, swell by the day, and we keep on stuffing them with ever more “features” at a very fast pace. The ultimate goal seems to be for the web to behave “like native” (in terms of performance and capabilities) — or directly building “an OS on top of an OS”. This is detrimental to end users, makes security much more difficult, creates the need for an ever-growing stack of tools, libraries, tricks, polyfills, etc. and therefore shortens the lifespan of the average web developer 4.2 years. OK, this last part may not be true. Definitely for developers, there may be frustration in trying to keep up with so many recent developments (APIs, tools, paradigms, jargon), as opposed to more constrained development platforms.

We argue that instead of pursuing that path, browser vendors and web developers should focus on the strengths of the web: URLs, simplicity, immediacy, platform-independence — and be more critical of the current trend. Particularly, the web could benefit from the UNIX philosophy: to combine “small, sharp tools” to accomplish larger tasks.

In this talk we'll survey the status of the Open Web Platform (OWP), and also showcase, tongue-in-cheek, some applications that take the web way too far. We'll look at the web ecosystem, its weaknesses and strengths, the handful of languages it's built upon, and the myriad of APIs it now includes. We'll see how this could be simplified, and whether it makes sense to keep on replacing so much native software with “web applications”.

Más información y requisitos

Here is the presentation that will be used

Medio Inglés Cloud Computing Mobile / iOS / Android Desarrollo Web UX / UI Agile / Ingeniería del Software Open Source / Free Software Ciberseguridad / Privacidad Entretenimiento / Videojuegos

Jueves 14/03/2019

18:30 - 19:20

Track 5 (Biblioteca)

Sobre el ponente

Antonio Olmo Titos

7r Ventures

Nacido en Madrid en 1980. Ingeniero en informática por la Universidad de Granada.

Durante los últimos 15 años ha trabajado como programador, analista y jefe de proyectos; tanto en start-ups como en empresas multinacionales; en Sevilla, en Madrid, en Londres y en Tokio. Sus principales intereses son el software libre, GNU/Linux, los sistemas abiertos, la informática gráfica, interfaces y usabilidad, la tecnología de la web y JavaScript. Fue programador web dentro del equipo de sistemas del World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) durante cinco años, donde se dedicó a desarrollar herramientas y aplicaciones del W3C, públicas o internas; y a participar en eventos relacionados con los estándares web. Actualmente vive en Madrid, y trabaja para 7r Ventures como "CTO in residence".