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Why I Don't Use Netscape (1999)

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Re: Why I Don't Use Netscape (1999)

#171

Post by lupire »

mrtksn wrote: post #118
badsectoracula wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is also possible that stuff are getting worse though. After all i remember friends of mine who were in university raging on how bloated the web was around 2000 and i'm 99% certain they weren't middle-aged men disguised as teenagers :-P. If anything i don't remember knowing anyone above 25y back then who even cared about web stuff. After all having some people see and complain about things getting worse doesn't mea…

When you look back, you can notice patterns: Something new and amazing comes out and it promises to take the humanity to a new age. At first it is fuelled by enthusiasm where believers work for free on it just to make it great and pay their bills by working for money on the old-school stuff. Their prime motivation is not profit. Then this thing starts becoming profitable in the sense of bringing street cred and money…

"original ideals" is a bit of a fantasy. Technology has always been used for both good and bad (and which is which is is subjective). It's human nature.

Re: Why I Don't Use Netscape (1999)

#172

Post by layer8 »

Altho wrote: post #67
weberer wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any evidence of this? All the sites I've seen that use extra requests to load text always seem to take multiple seconds to load. Whereas most pages that use server side rendering generally load under 100ms.

It's a tradeoff, basically the question is "Will most users need and read all the content or not". Displaying everything at once without making extra querries is best, but not always possible . The frontend is fetching the backend. So it's going to say "Hey, send me all the comments from all the posts from november 2021". If there are 3 it's fine, but if there are like 23,000 of them you can't really load everything…

You can provide pagination without JavaScript (HN being an example), and it generally makes for a better user experience.

Re: Why I Don't Use Netscape (1999)

#173

Post by olalonde »

mellavora wrote: post #102
olalonde wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume you don't believe this is a good thing? How would you measure "what the average Joe wants"?

Well, if you look at i.e. Meta, which specifically optimised for getting people to 'click' more, it is clear that they did so by building a product with disastrous impacts on mental health. So there is at least one example where it isn't a good thing.

You can build something people want and which is bad for health, they're not mutually exclusive.

People commonly want things that are linked to negative health outcomes: alcohol, sugar, fast food, lack of physical activity, working a high stress job, living in a city, watching the news, etc.

Personally, I take the position that people best know what's good for them because I don't see good alternatives to that.

Re: Why I Don't Use Netscape (1999)

#174

Post by foobarian »

badsectoracula wrote: post #13

Considering all the discussions about JavaScript and sites with primarily text requiring it, this looks like the more things change, the more they remain the same :-P. Also see Wirth's Plea for Lean Software[0] from 1995 for another "timeless" issue. I did find this bit interesting too... > Apart from this practical reason, there's a principal one: The first time I invoked Netscape, it said that it is obsolete and re…

I blame black hats. If it weren't for viruses and exploits there would be a lot less pressure to keep things updated. Remember how much flak Microsoft got for vulnerabilities pretty much ever since Windows got a networking stack? Meanwhile academic networks got along fine for decades running on unencrypted NFS/NIS.

Re: Why I Don't Use Netscape (1999)

#175

Post by danjoredd »

lupire wrote: post #170
danjoredd wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly thinking on making a Mosaic clone. Without CSS or Javascript, I imagine it won't be terribly difficult to put together

Why not start by disabling JS and CSS in an existing browser?

Im just saying I think making a new Mosaic would be a fun project. Been watching Andreas Kling do his browser hacking lately and it looks like a lot of fun

Re: Why I Don't Use Netscape (1999)

#176

Post by c7b »

checkyoursudo wrote: post #128
tbran wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like the strategy of closing sites with newsletter sign-ups, dialog, etc. is just going to waste your time. If I'm searching for something, I just want the information. Not gonna close websites till I find one that has no popups/modals!! Popup Blocker [0] and uBlock Origin for Firefox will do a pretty good job of getting rid of the junk you don't want. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/popup-block…

> I just want the information Certainly a reasonable choice on your part. We all want what we want. I have a friend who, when he goes grocery shopping, grabs the first item he sees from each of the items on his list. As far as I can determine, this is without regard to price, quality, or any other factor.

Statistically speaking, your friend should be getting average products from each category in the long run. Practically speaking, however, the assumptions that go into that statement likely won't hold, as supermarkets go to some lengths to make sure that the first item that meets your eye from any category is one of the pricier options.

Re: Why I Don't Use Netscape (1999)

#177

Post by marcosdumay »

johnchristopher wrote: post #45
tannhaeuser wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox on Ubuntu (which I'm not using anymore for these and other reasons) and presumably on other OSs does exactly that: refuse to open new tabs/sites once every two weeks or so, telling me "one more thing we need to do" ie self-update. So you're loosing all your browsing context, though FF does a better job restoring it after restart than it used to, but still that's user-hostile and self-important as fuck. And th…

On Ubuntu/Debian, a work-around is to put Firefox on hold: sudo apt-mark hold Will not work with snap though.

I just download it from Mozilla and install on my home dir. This solves both the issues of Debian not updating Firefox fast enough and of them updating it too fast.

Re: Why I Don't Use Netscape (1999)

#178

Post by layer8 »

forgotmypw17 wrote: post #70

I still use this strategy, though these days, I primarily use Mosaic and Netscape for testing. I tend to browse without JavaScript enabled, except for places I already trust to not abuse it. And if there is anything blocking me from accessing the page, such as a modal dialog, a cookie notice, a survey, a prompt to sign up for the newsletter, I close the tab. Over time, I have found that type of rude lack of considera…

> I like the term "featurism", I'm going to try to remember it.

They actually could have translated it 1:1 as “featuritis”. It basically means the same as “feature creep”.

Re: Why I Don't Use Netscape (1999)

#179

Post by naasking »

Ensorceled wrote: post #135
naasking wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bizarre. It's like starting a parking lot business by trying to accommodate every vehicle you see driving by your site over 6 months. You could have Winnebagos, tractor trailers and more bizarre vehicles, none of which you should consider as viable customers.

Yeah, I've encountered this quite few times, especially as a consultant; "We won't turn away ANYONE!!!" Edit: Ok, now I'm laughing the idea of having a reserved parking spot for trucks hauling giant windmill blades.

Well, maybe that parking lot example will help you in the future to explain why this is a dumb approach. Expanding the customer base has its own costs, so you obviously want to target some point of optimal return (revenue from customer - cost to support customer), otherwise you're just shooting yourself in the foot.

Re: Why I Don't Use Netscape (1999)

#180

Post by Vrondi »

badsectoracula wrote: post #13

Considering all the discussions about JavaScript and sites with primarily text requiring it, this looks like the more things change, the more they remain the same :-P. Also see Wirth's Plea for Lean Software[0] from 1995 for another "timeless" issue. I did find this bit interesting too... > Apart from this practical reason, there's a principal one: The first time I invoked Netscape, it said that it is obsolete and re…

PSP7 was such a great app.
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