> WebSQL would have been tied to one specific version of SQLite, and developers would have to work to the lowest supported version. There would have been no extension mechanism.
Why not? Web SQL would not be different from WebGL/GLSL or even JavaScript itself in that respect. Developers use feature detection and and work to the lowest supported version. APIs and languages can evolve, but in (mostly) backwards compatible ways. Extension and versioning mechanisms can be made. That's how the web works and Web SQL could have worked that way too.
More broadly, you could apply arguments like this against everything in the entire web platform. Maybe everything should be a WASM module that developers could choose themselves! Image loading, video decoding, font rendering, DOM, JS engine, why not? It's actually a beautiful vision and I'd be all for it if not for cache partitioning. Every site would have to re-download and re-JIT an entire browser engine before it could do anything.
The base platform needs to include a diverse set of commonly used features so that apps don't have to download the world, and on a list of ubiquitous libraries SQLite is right up there with other libraries backing the web platform, like zlib.
WebGL/GLSL is a low level API the equivalent of the OPFS api. Standardising WebSQL would be like browsers standardising on Three.JS rather than WebGL/GLSL.
WebGL/GLSL give the developer a low level api to the graphics hardware.
Video decoding apis talk to the hardware video decoding hardware.
OPFS gives developers a low level API to the persistent file system / HDD / SSD.
All of these APIs are going to be very reliable fingerprinting opportunities, especially in combination. Keep that in mind when you think it’s going to be great for your web browser to also be a full featured application runtime.
Don't hold back the one open platform there is (the web) with fingerprinting concerns when its competition (mobile platforms) require an identity to use them.
I’m supposing that the problem is that the web browser is the universal platform for all applications. There’s a benefit for information consumption (web pages) being separate from functionality rich and infinitely fingerprintable “native capabilities”
I've been using the web since 1994. It's always been an application platform and anyone who says otherwise is misremembering.
> I’m supposing that the problem is that the web browser is the universal platform for all applications
This is a feature not a problem.
> There’s a benefit for information consumption (web pages) being separate from functionality rich and infinitely fingerprintable “native capabilities”
What exactly is that benefit supposed to be? If you want a read-only publishing platform, put PDFs on a FTP site.
The web platform has tons of very high level stuff in it, much higher level than SQLite, and more is being added. Even specifically on the topic of 3D, they're trying to add a <model> tag and standard 3D model file format to HTML right now. It doesn't make sense to reject Web SQL, which is much more foundational, on the grounds of being too high level. Not now, but even less so back when the decision was made in 2010, when the web itself was all higher level and the lower level APIs you mentioned didn't even exist.
This is wrong. It moved to the immersive web CG but that doesn't mean it changed form to a JS API. It's just a venue change. The WebXR repo you linked is a different project entirely. The new location for <model> is here: https://immersive-web.github.io/model-element/
The issue with flash and applets was not that you had to download stuff.
It was that the security was non-existent (leading to the embedded runtime routinely crashing your browser), the interactivity was divergent from its surroundings, and the accessibility model was MIA.
Also downloading 500K over 56k and over fiber or 5G are rather different propositions.
Why not? Web SQL would not be different from WebGL/GLSL or even JavaScript itself in that respect. Developers use feature detection and and work to the lowest supported version. APIs and languages can evolve, but in (mostly) backwards compatible ways. Extension and versioning mechanisms can be made. That's how the web works and Web SQL could have worked that way too.
More broadly, you could apply arguments like this against everything in the entire web platform. Maybe everything should be a WASM module that developers could choose themselves! Image loading, video decoding, font rendering, DOM, JS engine, why not? It's actually a beautiful vision and I'd be all for it if not for cache partitioning. Every site would have to re-download and re-JIT an entire browser engine before it could do anything.
The base platform needs to include a diverse set of commonly used features so that apps don't have to download the world, and on a list of ubiquitous libraries SQLite is right up there with other libraries backing the web platform, like zlib.