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Posted by u/brrrrrm 4 years ago
Ask HN: Can you share websites that are pushing the utility of browsers forward?
I'm aware of the relatively recent addition of things like WebXR, WebGL, WebAssembly, WebRTC, but I feel I am woefully out of touch with the most compelling and useful examples of these novel standards.

Do you have any eye-opening websites that really demonstrate some of the true power of the modern web?

modeless · 4 years ago
My site https://james.darpinian.com/satellites/ uses WebGL, Web Workers, WASM, Service Workers, Notifications API, Geolocation API, probably some other web platform features I'm forgetting.

The use of workers and WASM is not obvious, but on page load it takes the current orbit parameters for every orbiting satellite that is potentially visible anywhere on Earth and calculates the future position of each satellite every few minutes for the next 5 days, and then checks each future position for visibility from your location (accounting for sun angle, earth occlusion, sky brightness etc), all client side before page load finishes. WASM allows me to use the canonical satellite propagation tools (SGP4, written in ancient C translated from Fortran) and workers let me use multiple cores and not block the UI too much.

parabyl · 4 years ago
I had a mild jaw-drop moment when it showed my house on a starry night with the satellite passing overhead! Very cool website
singularity2001 · 4 years ago
Too bad it doesnt work with Facebook blocked
your_challenger · 4 years ago
It works for me (with FB blocked). I use privacy badger[1] and tried reloading the website after blocking facebook and twitter (by default it blocked cookies)

[1]: https://privacybadger.org/

a_square_peg · 4 years ago
Holy cow, this is amazing. Absolutely fantastic!
mywacaday · 4 years ago
Amazing, minor nitpick it shows the ISS as visible over Ireland at approx 9pm tonight, pretty bright in Ireland at that time at this time of year, will check and report back if it was visible. Great work, you have amazing talent!
modeless · 4 years ago
Thanks! ISS is very bright; bright enough that it is sometimes even visible before sunset if you know exactly where to look! It's fun to try to spot it in a bright sky although it can be difficult. Let me know if you find it!
amelius · 4 years ago
It seems there is a bug. I see ISS passing by, then I rotate the view a bit, and suddenly ISS passes again, all within a few seconds.
MisterSandman · 4 years ago
That isn't a bug, the ISS isn't passing by at that moment, the time it will pass over you is at the top. The looped video is showing you how the ISS will pass over you. It isn't a live feed.
sanketpatrikar · 4 years ago
Not sure why it's happening, but ISS passes overhead for me multiple times every few seconds. I'm in India. Firefox 100.
modeless · 4 years ago
I'm not quite clear on what the issue is. By design the site shows the next satellite to pass over, and it loops every 20 seconds like a looping video as suggested by the seek bar and play/pause button at the bottom. Are you saying that it is looping faster than once every 20 seconds?
frading · 4 years ago
This is spendid. I've used other tools to spot the ISS previously, but this one makes it so intuitive. Great job.
alucardo · 4 years ago
Fantastic, 3 minutes after clicking on your website, i was watching the ISS passing by at my window.
djlewald · 4 years ago
when I grow up, I want to be a dev like you lol
anyfactor · 4 years ago
Wow this is incredible. Can you add geostationary satellites too?
JshWright · 4 years ago
That seems out of scope for a site dedicated to visible satellite passes. Geostationary satellites are way too far away to be visible, and don't move relative to the observer.
AndyJado · 4 years ago
how about google earth

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Terry_Roll · 4 years ago
Sorry Your browser does not support Web Assembly. Please upgrade your web browser. I recommend downloading Chrome.

Its the latest MS Edge, but a handy trick you might be interested in is to use detectable bugs to fingerprint a webbrowser. So Internet Explorer 6 might have a browser detectable javascript bug that 8 didnt have, or a bug might exist in IE but not firefox and if someone changed their browser agent ie firefox pretending to be IE, it was still possible to workout what the browser was and deliver code accordingly. :)

Of course some web browsers could be like looking at A Scanner Darkly character!

brailsafe · 4 years ago
Do you have WASM enabled? A cursory search indicates it's not on by default
akamoonknight · 4 years ago
I feel like this isn't exactly what you're asking for, but the storytelling in: https://www.sbnation.com/a/17776-football feels like it opened up new my thoughts on how something could be communicated via the medium of the Internet and just made me think to some extent how woefully underutilized the browser/internet has been used as a story telling medium (at least to my limited experiences of these things)
bondant · 4 years ago
Many thanks for the link, I think that's the most interesting and original thing I've read (or experienced?) this year ! :D
what_is_orcas · 4 years ago
Holy cow. That was awesome. Thank you for sharing.

Makes one think what the internet could be like in an alternate reality or something.

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nvegater · 4 years ago
That was fun :) thanks for sharing!
chris_nielsen · 4 years ago
This falling sand game runs a particle simulation in rust compiled to web assembly and WebGL for fluid simulation calculated on the GPU (hope I remembered those technical details right I read it ages ago) https://sandspiel.club/

Plus it’s strangely addictive.

The creator even wrote a blog post describing how he made it. Press info on the top right to get an awesome breakdown of his approach.

MauranKilom · 4 years ago
Immediately thought of Powder Game, and it turns out that it's one of the main inspirations indeed (according to the info box)!

https://dan-ball.jp/en/javagame/dust/

I spent so many hours in that game. It also had ways to publish your creations, and people created anything from multiplayer coop games to entire ALUs in it. Good times, and thanks for linking the remake!

whatatita · 4 years ago
https://webwormhole.io and https://file.pizza both use WebRTC for p2p file transfer. They differ quite a lot in UX but both are really useful: it's 2022 and sending files to one another still seems to be a pain without tools like these.
Gigachad · 4 years ago
For the average user, file sharing is already solved. If it’s a small file, you just send it via an IM app. If it’s a large file, you upload it to cloud storage and share a link
mguerville · 4 years ago
When the file is very large and time if of the essence there’s value in the p2p share as I imagine the combined time of sender and recipient is less than the purely sequential steps of party A uploads THEN party B downloads. But for most use case I agree it’s a solved problem
ZoomZoomZoom · 4 years ago
Solved problem? Most free-tier cloud storages won't even hold a half-hour long 4k video.

Uploading Gigabytes of media via p2p takes minutes nowadays, but you have to either pay or use p2p software to actually send it to another person.

5560675260 · 4 years ago
These common ways could see a lot of improvement. Everything but tiniest files would require a paid subscription from IM app provider. And sharing via cloud is awkward and slow.
have_faith · 4 years ago
> average user > you upload it to cloud storage and share a link

I'd wager a miniscule amount of people know how to do this.

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notsrg · 4 years ago
Figma is written in C++ and compiled to web assembly. All the UX designers I know are using it because it's pretty powerful for a webapp.
lordofgibbons · 4 years ago
Figma is cool, but every time I open a Figma link, my beefy laptop turns into a jet engine on takoff thrust.
have_faith · 4 years ago
I have figma open all day, never noticed it have any effect (M1 MBP)
speedgoose · 4 years ago
Is it an “Intel Inside” laptop?

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mtoddsmith · 4 years ago
Are you saying its an electron app running web assembly?
dgb23 · 4 years ago
I think Figma being a browser web app is one of the core reasons why it’s outpacing alternatives both in terms of features and UX. It’s a remarkable feat.
lewisjoe · 4 years ago
Yes. I found it weird too. They put so much effort into making their app performant and then for the desktop app, wrapped it into an electron shell which is weird :)

I guess except the designing canvas, all the UI controls are built over DOM/Javascript and they needed a quick way to take them all into desktop. But I did expect more from Figma :)

amacneil · 4 years ago
We are building https://studio.foxglove.dev/ which is a visualization tool for robotics. Click “Explore sample data” to see a demo.

Uses WebGL and some WebAssembly.

alephnan · 4 years ago
The left nav and menu is reminiscent of VSCode. I'm not accusing the project of plagiarism. I think more standardization, especially with menus, instead of reinventing the UX wheel for every project is a good thing. Is the code for the left nav widget open source? I want to use it, too.
Macha · 4 years ago
VS Code is derived from the open source codebase (but note the official binaries and some other extensions are closed! Notably the remote extensions and some of the debugger stuff needed for the C# and python extensions), but I don't believe individual components of it are published in a consumable format anywhere
uxcolumbo · 4 years ago
Wow - this looks great.

What's the tech-stack for this?

Other than WebGL - what do you use for the UI?

amacneil · 4 years ago
React + Typescript. Forgot to mention it’s open source so you can see for yourself:

https://github.com/foxglove/studio

brrrrrm · 4 years ago
It’s particularly cool that this works on mobile
greggman3 · 4 years ago
WebGL: Google Maps is arguably the #1 application. It's used to draw the line drawing based maps and to re-draw them with different things emphasized depending on your needs (as well as rotate, scale, zoom, smoothly)

But also, of course the fact that it goes 3D. It feels like they've de-emphasized this feature because I suspect few people use or or even know it exists but demo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbxYG5Sb5RQ

You can also go to https://earth.google.com

AFAIK it's the same tech (not sure) but a UI for various kinds of exploration instead of directions

WebRTC, Google Meet uses WebGL/WebAssembly to provide the filter effects where your background is blurred out or replaced. AFAIK that doesn't happen on the server. It happens locally and then the video with the effects applied are sent over the net via WebRTC.

SpaghettiX · 4 years ago
3D Buildings in Google Map like that was announced a few days ago at Google IO, it's called immersive view. https://blog.google/products/maps/three-maps-updates-io-2022...

I don't think we can actually use it yet though.

Edit: that video might be of a different 3D feature I have no idea of

greggman3 · 4 years ago
The 3D view has been available since at least 2016

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHe3ag3i8v8

AFAICT the announcement is saying they made it even more detailed than it already was

zbuf · 4 years ago
We built https://cleanfeed.net/ which is an online studio for pro audio.

Chances are if you enjoy radio, podcasts or movies, especially during the pandemic, that you've listened to something produced using Cleanfeed. In many cases you wouldn't even realise that co-host or guest is remote.

bozhark · 4 years ago
Just dropped zencastr, looks like you’re comparable.

Kind of

skoocda · 4 years ago
What made you drop zencastr?