Why does it bother you that browsers have many features? At this point browsers are essentially a cross-platform VM and it really seems like this trend will only accentuate in the future.
Those are the main reasons. And seeing how browsers are essentially designed to run other peoples code with minimal to no vetting processes, I consider this a serious issue.
So how is this any different if we don’t have a browser? People still want to visit “websites” which in your world is even worse. Because now every website is a distinct application (yikes!). The problem is that people are willing to run arbitrary code in the first place.
How many times have _you_ as a developer, run arbitrary scripts from the internet? Blindly accepts packages that you have not vetted?
I would be very different if browsers were tools to view documents though. I am not saying that browsers don't have a purpose. I just question that browsers should answer the question about what their scope is with a loud "yes!"
Thanks for sharing, that's interesting angle that I did not consider. So essentially the argument goes that more "surface area" == more vulnerabilities? While that makes perfect sense, don't you feel like the pressure for more feature comes from somewhere? By analogy, dynamic languages like JS/Python make the job of people writing the compiler much, much harder. But, on the whole and despite all their flaws, it is true that they increased productivity by a lot.
because I want limited scope tools. if I want something on the GPU, I can just write a native tool. I dont need the browser to do anything beyond web browsing.
Whatever features browsers have, it does not prevent you from writing native tools.
But browsers don't limit themselves to serving your needs only, and they are not in the business of promoting your approach to computing among their users. Why would they?
Yes, the browsers evolved very much beyond this original purpose.
Again, it did not happen without any reason, it happened for a reason.
The purposes the modern browsers serve apparently are more important to their users than that original purpose!
Indeed, I believe there are obscure browsers that don't support any of this new stuff, and are only good for rendering plain old HTML. They remain obscure for the obvious reason: they cannot be used for what most people use the browsers most of the time.
