[HN Gopher] Cobalt - lightweight HTML5 application container fro...
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Cobalt - lightweight HTML5 application container from YouTube
Author : thefilmore
Score : 82 points
Date : 2024-05-27 13:42 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (developers.google.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (developers.google.com)
| philjackson wrote:
| Anyone know how this compares to Electron? Is that even the
| market this tool is in?
| ihalip wrote:
| In a few words, Cobalt is a de-bloated Chromium designed to run
| YouTube TV. It's smaller and faster than launching it in the
| platform's browser.
|
| If you have a smart TV/set-top box/streaming stick/etc bought
| in the past few years, the YouTube app is most likely running
| inside Cobalt. You can develop HTML5 applications that can run
| in Cobalt, but it supports only a subset of html/css/js stuff
| you'd expect from a browser.
| z8 wrote:
| A click on "Cobalt on partner site", the second link on the page,
| leads to a 404. Great job guys.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| Thisp.looks like a redbean clone
| pointlessone wrote:
| It seems like it's very specific to YouTube needs. It supports
| very few HTML elements and CSS properties [1]. If you think HTML5
| subset implies something like HTML4 than you're going to be
| disappointed. It's very much specialised for div-soup-style apps.
|
| [1]:
| https://developers.google.com/youtube/cobalt/docs/developmen...
| pennomi wrote:
| Yeah, looks like there's no input or img tags. Very limited!
| jsnell wrote:
| You'd obviously need images for implementing a YouTube app
| (e.g. for thumbnails, icons, avatars), and the HTML subset
| reference[0] lists jpeg, png and webp as supported formats.
| Is it possible that images are to be shown using the video
| tag?
|
| [0] https://developers.google.com/youtube/cobalt/docs/develop
| men...
| ramesh31 wrote:
| It could just be CSS backgrounds
| spdustin wrote:
| I suspect that list isn't exhaustive. Searching the Cobalt repo
| shows support for more tags, including <img>. It also supports
| an on-screen keyboard (likely the platform-specific
| implementation) as well as game controllers and tilt sensors,
| so there is support for collecting user input.
|
| It is certainly meant to be a constrained platform for apps.
| Think of it as a subset of electron, intended for "six foot
| views" (i.e. television).
| dinosor wrote:
| A previous thread on Cobalt (22 Nov 2022, 51 comments) -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33706197
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| This looks like a good way to create your own custom combo of
| software + hardware for a nostalgic TV, like http://my90stv.com
|
| Put it into a 4:3 CRT tv for maximum authenticity.
| canadiantim wrote:
| Seems pretty awesome actually.
| kennydude wrote:
| I saw this when looking at how the terrible Virgin Media TV
| dongle has a YouTube app! Nice to see it being open source!
| sirjaz wrote:
| With this Google should release Windows and MacOS app versions of
| all their iOS and Android apps
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(page generated 2024-05-27 23:02 UTC)