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Ask HN: What feature would you want the web to “force” next, after HTTPS?

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81–90 of 279 posts

Re: Ask HN: What feature would you want the web to “force” next, after HTTPS?

#81

Strict HTML, CSS and JavaScript parsing. One single error => Site won't be displayed. These lazy web devs need some more discipline!

I agree with this, but feel like there might be issues I'm not thinking of. Can anyone shed some light on why browsers are so tolerant today and why that might be a good thing?

Re: Ask HN: What feature would you want the web to “force” next, after HTTPS?

#82
I want a way to force sites to become static after they are rendered. Just frozen, as though they were on paper. I am tired of scrolling making menu bars move around or triggering popovers. Just give me a way to turn off javascript and any dynamic CSS junk after X amount of time. I looked into writing this as a firefox browser extension, but extensions now use javascript so we're all screwed.

Re: Ask HN: What feature would you want the web to “force” next, after HTTPS?

#83

- Make client-side certificate authentication mainstream. Fix the UI, UX - Standardize on some sort of biometric identification that actually works. I HATE two-factor :(

1. Client-side certificates usage has privacy implications - https://github.com/tumi8/cca-privacy

2. Is biometric really necessary? U2F tokens already exist and are standardized (maybe not officially, I'm not sure). Chrome and Opera already support it, Mozilla's support must be coming soon (meanwhile you can use an add-on).

Re: Ask HN: What feature would you want the web to “force” next, after HTTPS?

#84
Getting rid of passwords. Passwords are the easiest way for others to get access to your accounts.

A move to federated identity, with a standardized API, and integration with the browsers, would fix all these issues. You could easily use a federated identity provider with support for 2FA, and ALL your accounts would immediately work with 2FA.

And, with federated identity, you can also run your own, if you don’t trust Google or Facebook login.

Re: Ask HN: What feature would you want the web to “force” next, after HTTPS?

#86

Strict HTML, CSS and JavaScript parsing. One single error => Site won't be displayed. These lazy web devs need some more discipline!

I agree with this, but feel like there might be issues I'm not thinking of. Can anyone shed some light on why browsers are so tolerant today and why that might be a good thing?

Probably legacy reasons and the type of errors you can get.

Since JS used to be "sugar on top", it wouldn't make sense to completely eliminate the page when that piece of code which makes a logo flash doesn't work right.

Also, you can have JS errors coming from loads of places. What if an extension you use has a bug in it that triggers only on certain sites because of some stupid unicode issue? What if some ad has an issue like that?

And basically, it really boils down to: we all ship buggy fucking software. Everything has some kind of a threshold for errors (or errors that blow up only under certain conditions). It's good to have some built-in fault-tolerance that prevents an all-out disaster.

Re: Ask HN: What feature would you want the web to “force” next, after HTTPS?

#87

Strict HTML, CSS and JavaScript parsing. One single error => Site won't be displayed. These lazy web devs need some more discipline!

I agree with this, but feel like there might be issues I'm not thinking of. Can anyone shed some light on why browsers are so tolerant today and why that might be a good thing?

If two browsers both implement strictness, but have different standards or implementation bugs then you truly have made the dev's job hell.

Re: Ask HN: What feature would you want the web to “force” next, after HTTPS?

#88

- A protocol for sites to get my public PGP key for server side use - The discontinuation of using SSL certificates for verification of website identities and a move to true fingerprinting ala SSH. - Deprecation of email or rather its insecurity. - Logins on websites with a public / private keypair ala SSH. - A resurgence in sites that let me pick my own anonymous username instead of Facebook, Google or Twitter login…

SSH-style login is still something I'd really fucking love. Much more secure way of logging in, easy protocol for storing multiple passwords, and easy authorization/deauthirzation of passwords/keys.

Re: Ask HN: What feature would you want the web to “force” next, after HTTPS?

#89
Registration forms should be standardized. I want to have my "real" details, and my "fake" details ready to be entered into websites that want yet another registration. Why does every single website implement their own registration form with exactly the same details?! Why does every single web site re-implement the registration page slightly differently?! Ideally, I'd enter the registration page, the browser would list the things they want to know, I'd pick either my details or another set of fake details (for spammy websites or others u don't really care about), one click and registration complete.
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