reference-types VS standards-positions

> It could be an interesting use case for WASM if the problem of passing data into the WASM VM cheaply (perhaps by reference) can be solved.

WASM Reference Types should hopefully solve this. The WASM working group seems to have some good momentum - so I'm hopeful this (or a similar replacement spec) will land sooner rather than later.

https://github.com/WebAssembly/reference-types/blob/master/p...

AFAIK GC is irrelevant for "direct DOM access", you would rather want to hop into the following rabbit hole:

- reference types: https://github.com/WebAssembly/reference-types/blob/master/p...

- interface types (inactive): https://github.com/WebAssembly/interface-types/blob/main/pro...

- component model: https://github.com/WebAssembly/component-model

If this looks like a mess, that's because it is. Compared to that, the current solution to go through a Javascript shim doesn't look too bad IMHO.

[1]: https://github.com/WebAssembly/proposals

A glance of the overview and spec seems to indicate that WASM will provide some primitive data types, and any GC language can build their implementation on top of it. As I understand it, it's heavily based on Reference Types[3], which allows acting on host-provided types, and is already considered part of the spec [4]. It doesn't remove the need for the 5 different runtimes to have their own GC, but it lowers the bulk that the runtimes need to carry around, and offloads some of that onto the WASM runtime instead.

[3]: https://github.com/WebAssembly/reference-types/blob/master/p...

They've talked about interface types, and added reference types, which is a stepping stone toward the GC extension proposal, which would be a stepping stone toward manipulating the DOM from the WebAssembly side, but their official roadmap page is more short-term.

Nope, WASM reference types, it has nothing to do with .NET type system.

> And there's been talk of exposing the JS GC to wasm for a few years. Hopefully when that stuff lands, it'll get easier to marshal objects across the gap.

You don't need a Wasm GC to do this. If you only need js objects to pass on to, say, the host's function or check is null or not, then reference types that are opaque external references: https://github.com/WebAssembly/reference-types/blob/master/p...

You can even do many more things if you export `Reflect` to WebAssembly: https://github.com/AssemblyScript/assemblyscript/blob/main/t...

Reference Types are available almost everywhere already (In Safari will be available after 15.0): https://webassembly.org/roadmap

Re: GC -- yes, indeed, the whole business with safepoints arose from the need to support Wasm reference types as a backend for Wasmtime or Firefox. No safepoints are needed for Rust (or other C-like) code.

Reference Types,

You can check why Mozilla and Apple have opted to not support this.

https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/154

https://github.com/WebKit/standards-positions/issues/28

Neither Mozilla or Webkit are satisfied that the proposal is safe by default, and contains footguns for the user that can be pretty destructive.

FWIW Mozilla updated their position on Web Serial API to "neutral" and clarified that they might be okay with enabling the API with an add-on.

https://mozilla.github.io/standards-positions/#webserial

Allowing serial but not HID would be really strange. With HID you get standard identifiers that let you filter out devices that are too dangerous for the web. With serial you get nothing. Even if you know a device is dangerous, there's no way to protect users from it.

Hasn't FireFox been dragging their asses on @scope? https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/472

It took years to just convince them of the need for it. And I'm not sure anyone got convinced vs Chrome had already shipped it and Safari has it planned so they caved in.

Hard to believe FireFox used to be a leader of the modern web.

As mentioned by others, OK idea, but not a fan that this isn't standardized. After a quick search+peruse, these seem to indicate that it's not around the corner either. Happy (/hope) to be corrected.

https://github.com/whatwg/html/issues/4180

https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/990

Mozilla's position on these specs is nicely outlined publicly and transparently as part of their standards-positions project: https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/100

I'm kinda glad it's not implemented in my browser, to be honest, because the whole thing seems like a security nightmare.

It's a shame it impacts some hobby usecases, but I don't think this outweighs the reasoning set out on the GitHub issue.

This should have big warnings on it. Some of these are not web standards; they are features implemented unilaterally by Google in Blink that have been explicitly rejected by both Mozilla and Apple on privacy and security grounds.

Take Web Bluetooth, for example:

Mozilla:

> This model is unsustainable and presents a significant risk to users and their devices.

— https://mozilla.github.io/standards-positions/#web-bluetooth

Apple:

> Here are some examples of features we have decided to not yet implement due to fingerprinting, security, and other concerns, and where we do not yet see a path to resolving those concerns

— https://webkit.org/tracking-prevention/

This is Microsoft’s Embrace, Extend, and Extinguish bullshit applied to the web platform by Google. Google keeps implementing these things despite all other major rendering engines rejecting them, convinces people that they are part of the web, resulting in sites like this, then people start asking why Firefox and Safari are “missing functionality”. These are not part of the web platform, they are Google APIs that have been explicitly rejected.

Is BLE a PWA requirement? I think they explained their position pretty well here, regardless of whether I agree:

https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/95#iss...

I took a glance at Can I Use what the difference between the last public release of Firefox and Chrome is [1] and they don't really have that big of a difference in the eyes of normal use-cases? Some of these aren't implemented purely because of privacy reasons, the proposals aren't finished yet or complexity [2].

Why would Firefox need to change to Chromium engine? The only websites I notice that don't work with Firefox is because of user-agent targetting or just putting 5-second time-outs in Youtube code on non-chrome webbrowsers [3].

Can you give some examples of websites not working on Firefox?

[1] https://caniuse.com/?compare=chrome+120%2Cfirefox+121&compar...

[2] https://mozilla.github.io/standards-positions/

[3] https://www.neowin.net/news/youtube-seemingly-intentionally-...

Mozilla are dragging their heels on @scope:

https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/472

https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/implement-css-scope-rul...

Someone who clearly didn't get it was wasting three years time "well actually"ing everything. The latest news is "it's worth prototyping". Meanwhile Chrome has released it(steam rolled?) and Safari has it in tech preview.

I question if FireFox has the resources to keep up with the pace of the modern web.