Woob: Web Outside of Browsers • Hacker News Board

Re: Woob: Web Outside of Browsers

#11

Post by thih9 » Fri, Jan 14, 2022, 5:56 PM UTC

I've been playing with it, but I keep running into errors. E.g.:

in woob-weather, with weather.com backend, I've been getting "Error(weather): 401 Client Error: Unauthorized";

in woob-gallery, with imgur backend, when I attempt to download an image the module crashes with "FileNotFoundError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: ''"

I like the idea though and I'll keep trying further.

---

Update: I resolved the image-gallery problem by specifying the foldername (so: using "download ID 1 foldername" instead of "download ID"). BUT: it looks like I'm unable to download text descriptions that sometimes accompany the images.

Re: Woob: Web Outside of Browsers

#12

Post by Ajedi32 » Fri, Jan 14, 2022, 5:58 PM UTC

Wow! I actually love the idea of being able to interact with websites via a standard API rather being forced to use web-based UI they provide. It opens up a whole lot of possibles for things like alternate clients, standard UIs for interacting across multiple sites, etc. Also eliminates the possibility of sites engaging in annoying or abusive behavior by putting users in full control of the client rather than the site operator. Obviously it can't work for every site, but it's quite the interesting concept.

Re: Woob: Web Outside of Browsers

#13

Post by matheusmoreira » Fri, Jan 14, 2022, 5:59 PM UTC

This is so cool. A custom client for websites. Essentially a web scraper with a GUI on top. You can define your own user experience instead of accepting what they designed for you.

Re: Woob: Web Outside of Browsers

#14

Post by jessaustin » Fri, Jan 14, 2022, 6:07 PM UTC

NavinF wrote: post #10

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #6

This is.... bizarre. And I like it? At first I thought this was like an API to integrate web content into your own apps. But now it looks more like Groupware, in the sense that Woob is actually your user interface and there are just modules to consume content from random websites. It goes back to the old idea where you would have one dedicated desktop application for each thing you wanted to do on the internet, like…

Re: that last part. We’re probably thinking of different generations, but I agree. Demographics from a random unreliable source: Age vs ad blocker usage (female, male) 16-24 43.2%, 49.2% 25-34 43.0%, 47.6% 35-44 38.4%, 44.8% 45-54 33.5%, 39.1% 55-65 32.1%, 37.3% Those poor boomers. They grew up watching ads on every cable television channel and now they watch ads on every YouTube video.

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Re: Woob: Web Outside of Browsers

#15

Post by zepto » Fri, Jan 14, 2022, 6:10 PM UTC

diogenesjunior wrote: post #4

Small discussion earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29935634

Smaller as in essentially zero, and with a link back to this one.

An amusing detour.

Re: Woob: Web Outside of Browsers

#16

Post by jokethrowaway » Fri, Jan 14, 2022, 6:23 PM UTC

This is great. In my ideal world all the web should be like this.

Re: Woob: Web Outside of Browsers

#17

Post by clone1018 » Fri, Jan 14, 2022, 6:24 PM UTC

Ajedi32 wrote: post #12

Wow! I actually love the idea of being able to interact with websites via a standard API rather being forced to use web-based UI they provide. It opens up a whole lot of possibles for things like alternate clients, standard UIs for interacting across multiple sites, etc. Also eliminates the possibility of sites engaging in annoying or abusive behavior by putting users in full control of the client rather than the sit…

I've had two ideas related to this in the past that I've always wanted to prototype:

- A social media website without a frontend. We just provide a fully exposed API and Oauth, and devs can create their own client to interact with the social network. This would give devs the freedom to create their own experiences without locking users into one specific way of using the social network.

- "Cloud" content hosting as a service. You'd be able to build your own frontend for interacting with a website / blog, and then include our JS code and your site's content will automatically be populated in. This would keep the frontend clean, simple, and cheap, while offloading posts, comments, and other advanced functionality to the service.

Of course both are purely experimental ideas, with no potential real world meaning :D

Re: Woob: Web Outside of Browsers

#18

Post by rpastuszak » Fri, Jan 14, 2022, 6:31 PM UTC

Ajedi32 wrote: post #12

Wow! I actually love the idea of being able to interact with websites via a standard API rather being forced to use web-based UI they provide. It opens up a whole lot of possibles for things like alternate clients, standard UIs for interacting across multiple sites, etc. Also eliminates the possibility of sites engaging in annoying or abusive behavior by putting users in full control of the client rather than the sit…

In a way you’re describing how browsers should work.

> Also eliminates the possibility of sites engaging in annoying or abusive behavior by putting users in full control of the client rather than the site operator. Obviously it can't work for every site, but it's quite the interesting concept.

That’s the job of the User Agent after all, acting on behalf of the user.

Re: Woob: Web Outside of Browsers

#19

Post by rglullis » Fri, Jan 14, 2022, 6:36 PM UTC

clone1018 wrote: post #17

Ajedi32 wrote: post #12

Wow! I actually love the idea of being able to interact with websites via a standard API rather being forced to use web-based UI they provide. It opens up a whole lot of possibles for things like alternate clients, standard UIs for interacting across multiple sites, etc. Also eliminates the possibility of sites engaging in annoying or abusive behavior by putting users in full control of the client rather than the sit…

I've had two ideas related to this in the past that I've always wanted to prototype: - A social media website without a frontend. We just provide a fully exposed API and Oauth, and devs can create their own client to interact with the social network. This would give devs the freedom to create their own experiences without locking users into one specific way of using the social network. - "Cloud" content hosting as a…

> A social media website without a frontend. We just provide a fully exposed API and Oauth,

Take CouchDB and store all activities as ActivityStreams documents.

> "Cloud" content hosting as a service.

"Headless CMS" is the term you are looking for, and it is already a big industry https://jamstack.org/headless-cms/

Re: Woob: Web Outside of Browsers

#20

Post by smt88 » Fri, Jan 14, 2022, 6:41 PM UTC

Ajedi32 wrote: post #12

Wow! I actually love the idea of being able to interact with websites via a standard API rather being forced to use web-based UI they provide. It opens up a whole lot of possibles for things like alternate clients, standard UIs for interacting across multiple sites, etc. Also eliminates the possibility of sites engaging in annoying or abusive behavior by putting users in full control of the client rather than the sit…

> I actually love the idea of being able to interact with websites via a standard API rather being forced to use web-based UI they provide.

For a while, people were pitching this as Web 2.0. It's also what RSS and podcasts still are.

Unfortunately, most of the websites we visit are revenue-generating and want to control their presentation.