181–190 of 306 posts
Had Google pulled this in the 90's they would have been attacked like Microsoft.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually, I'd be interested in an alternative web where ingenuity and risk-taking would be utterly forbidden. Just HTML, and a very basic subset at that. No Javascript at all, no CSS. So much of the web would be better and more universally usable without "modern" cruft.
Alternative Web? The big "selling" point of Mosaic and other early Web browsers was bringing diverse information sources together into one application! Gopher, WWW, WAIS, FTP, and probably others, all available in one program, and a GUI program at that, unless you were stuck using Lynx over SLIP or some other bizarre excrescence of the dial-up age. The fact Web browsers won rather disproves your whole notion.
Web browsers have become satanic mega-behemoths of inscrutable code. (I'm too lazy to look--are there more lines in Chrome, deps included, or the Linux kernel?) They are the utter antipode of the Unix philosophy, and arguably an engineering abomination.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually, I'd be interested in an alternative web where ingenuity and risk-taking would be utterly forbidden. Just HTML, and a very basic subset at that. No Javascript at all, no CSS. So much of the web would be better and more universally usable without "modern" cruft.
Who decides what is and isn't cruft? You? Is data journalism cruft? Are web applications? Is Google Office cruft? What about the web application my parents have been using to order groceries during the pandemic - that has loads of JS, and loads of CSS to make it readable to anyone over 40. Does that qualify as cruft? Are dyslexia friendly styelsheets cruft? Is Google Maps cruft? It's full of JavaScript. Are browser g…
Browser vendors do. Popups were cruft. Flash was cruft. Not all the time. Just almost all the time.
Ever used Reader View? There's the great de-cruftifier! It doesn't work with web apps, but it sure works great on content. Perhaps some day browsers will default to Reader View, and the web will become more pleasant.
> 22.82 Mbps will reliably download very complex web pages nearly instantaneously. The author may be unaware of how ridiculously huge web pages have gotten. I just loaded Wired.com, scrolled down and let it sit for a few seconds. It downloaded 96.2 MB, requiring over 33 seconds on one of those average connections. On a pay-as-you-go data plan, it would have cost about a dollar just to load that one page. The front pa…
As the browser author with the dominant market share, Google could start by not enabling these "wasteful developers". These ridiculously huge web pages can lock up a user's computer when the user's browser is a "modern" and "supported" one but not when the user agent is something simpler.
I can read wired.com really fast using various tcp clients to make the http requests and links to view the html. If user A reads the articles with Chrome and user B reads them using something simpler, how is user A advantaged over user B? All things being equal, if we quiz them on the readings, would user A score higher than user B?
The difference is the advertising, which almost always requires graphics - the more dazzling the better, and detailed tracking, which requires Javascript and the presence of other "modern" browser "features". There is a strong argument to be made that Google's browser caters more to the online ad industry (who wants to show ads and do tracking) than to users (who want to read wired.com quickly and efficiently).
Software developers have long been squandering user's resources beginning with Microsoft Windows. Hardware manufacturers were Microsoft's first customers and there was an incentive to get users to keep "upgrading" their hardware. - buying new computers.
Web developers are simply following the tradition.
A user can get those 500 words of content in an instant with zero ads, using the right user agent, even on an "obsolete" device. However there are zero incentives for online ad industry-supported companies/organisations maintaining "modern" browsers, web developers writing code to run on them nor hardware manufacturers to help the user do that.
The easiest way to change the "UX" for the web user is to change the user agent. Trying to get web developers to change what they design to only use a small fraction of what Chrome and the user's computer can do is far more difficult, if not outright impossible.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why should they have to "sustain themselves"? If an author wants to put their ideas out there, maybe they should pay for it themselves so they can have their own unmoderated space on the internet. Authors that rely on advertising have an inherent conflict of interest: they simply won't write anything that offends the advertisers because they're afraid of losing their revenue. Sites like Reddit will nuke entire commun…
Why should they have to not "sustain themselves?" If a reader wants to read what an author puts out, maybe they should be allowed to be subject to advertising so that the author doesn't have to pay for it.
Turns out, people willing to spout random ideas on a topic are not in especially short supply and 99% of them are willing to do it for free. The best part is, these free users usually get right to the point.
Long form and investigative journalism need to be funded but the kind of information I find junk articles on the homepage of CNN or Fox is usually better hashed out (and much less biased) in the comments section than reading an article.
In a sentence, most media doesn't have much value-add. Even less so if I have to click through 6 ads and be exposed to malware to see it.
There are lots of questionable ways in which Google owns the web (AMP, reCaptcha harassing users without Google cookies, Chrome's "Fire And Motion" web standards strategy), but this one isn't one of them. In the webdev community it's well known that good performance is very important for user satisfaction, and that's backed up by research. There are no ideal metrics, and unfortunately every single one of them has som…
I don’t follow the “Fire and Motion” bit on web standards. Mind an elaboration?
There are lots of questionable ways in which Google owns the web (AMP, reCaptcha harassing users without Google cookies, Chrome's "Fire And Motion" web standards strategy), but this one isn't one of them. In the webdev community it's well known that good performance is very important for user satisfaction, and that's backed up by research. There are no ideal metrics, and unfortunately every single one of them has som…
I don’t follow the “Fire and Motion” bit on web standards. Mind an elaboration?
ie constant standards churn to keep your competitors busy.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A more aggressive ad blocker would block Google's primary source of revenue. So no, they have no interest in shipping an ad blocker akin to others.
It really makes me wonder what the internet would be like if google had built microtransactions into a browser to support their sites instead, or as a complement to ads (e.g. an advertiser can pay for your time on the site in exchange for an ad, and google would only middleman the ad negotiation, not the transaction).
Likewise Google Contributor did not reduce tracking, which is why I never signed up.
> 22.82 Mbps will reliably download very complex web pages nearly instantaneously. The author may be unaware of how ridiculously huge web pages have gotten. I just loaded Wired.com, scrolled down and let it sit for a few seconds. It downloaded 96.2 MB, requiring over 33 seconds on one of those average connections. On a pay-as-you-go data plan, it would have cost about a dollar just to load that one page. The front pa…