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The "Cheap" Web

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Re: The "Cheap" Web

#121

Post by WorldMaker »

eitland wrote: post #119
WorldMaker wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need JS for basic autocomplete in 2023, you can use "datalist" in HTML: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/da... A lot of basic high value interactions are more directly encoded in HTML today than a lot of developers expect to need JS for. Some other tags to pay attention to: summary/details, progress, meter, input type="color|date|time|datetime|range". It's an interesting relearning…

> You don't need JS for basic autocomplete in 2023, you can use "datalist" in HTML: This does not seem to load data dynamically, it seems to be a way to show data from a predefined list?

Most "basic" autocomplete isn't all that dynamic and you can prepopulate on the server side reasonably well.

Sure, you still need JS to fetch a dynamic changing list, but you can also just update datalist options elements with JS rather than implement a full separate UX for autocomplete today. You are limited in the ability to CSS style datalist options so a lot of developers are still going to feel pressure in 2023 from "pixel perfect" UX designers to continue to reimplement that wheel, but the version of the JS that just updates a datalist after a fetch is likely much simpler than building a full "autocomplete control".

Re: The "Cheap" Web

#122

Post by FerretFred »

sam0x17 wrote: post #120

I do wish we could go back to how things were in the early 00s where view source on any page was extremely telling and would show you cleanly formatted code. Another huge reason for the status quo is a lot of companies actively try to obfuscate their frontend code for a variety of reasons, and a lot unwittingly do it as part of minification to squeeze out a little bit of extra efficiency both in terms of payload size…

> view source on any page was extremely telling

Yeah! This was basically how I taught myself to write effective HTML. Great fun!

Re: The "Cheap" Web

#123

Post by joemi »

sam0x17 wrote: post #120

I do wish we could go back to how things were in the early 00s where view source on any page was extremely telling and would show you cleanly formatted code. Another huge reason for the status quo is a lot of companies actively try to obfuscate their frontend code for a variety of reasons, and a lot unwittingly do it as part of minification to squeeze out a little bit of extra efficiency both in terms of payload size…

> to the point where minification is essentially a lossless operation other than the actual names of things.

Is that not the case now? I don't do a lot with javascript myself, but I always assumed the minification process wasn't changing the code itself.

Re: The "Cheap" Web

#124

Post by radiator »

jerf wrote: post #37
TeaDude wrote: post #24

I agree that we need a new - less crufty - standard to replace HTML/CSS/JS but there's another point which I feel has been sorely missed in previous efforts. I want a FUN standard. I want to make cool looking sites that are relatively scalable based on user hardware. Alternatives like Gopher and Gemini never really scratched that itch due to how sterile they are.

The problem you have is that by defining a "FUN" standard, you've probably created a basin of attraction [1] for what is basically the web today. It doesn't take much before you've basically let the ocean in. There are clearly many points between Gopher/Gemini and the modern web... but I'm not sure any of them are stable . Between the difficulty of keeping out features in a principled manner in what will inevitably b…

This is very deep. I like this mathematical explanation of why we get either Gemini, which nobody uses, or the modern web.

Re: The "Cheap" Web

#125

Post by bee_rider »

soerxpso wrote: post #70
d-lisp wrote: post #18

In a sense OP wants E-ink screens and org/vimwiki/markdown. Styling is where the problem it claims to criticize begins; if you want a truly accessible hypertext book, then you don't need styling, the user should be in charge of this, and the default theme would be whatever easily readable font, black on white, headings 36pt bold, paragraphs 14pt regular, every elements as blocks. Epub, in usage, is actually a cool fo…

> I notice a lot of hate toward JS, but honestly when I first stumbled upon it I felt like a dream came true; it gives you the power to create experiences and share them almost effortlessly The complaints about JS are almost never about the concept of a programming language that runs in your browser, and the upside you describe seems to apply to any language that runs in your browser.

The only languages browsers should understand are markup languages, scripting and programming: no, none of that. Documents, not programs.

Re: The "Cheap" Web

#126

Post by ryukoposting »

Has anyone proposed CommonMark over HTTP? Like, just shove markdown in a GET response with

  Content-Type: text/markdown
And let the client decide how to render it. It'd be like Gopher, but modern.

Re: The "Cheap" Web

#127

Post by getpokedagain »

takluyver wrote: post #116
getpokedagain wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope we can have a more reasoned debate than this. This topic is really important and frankly there's so much to it I hope that hearing others I can learn more. When I read some of the thread above what I am hearing is: "I don't want people to be able to run programs on my computer without asking explicitly". Which is exactly what the modern web and modern web browsers enable. If you learned computing in the 90's y…

Ironically, that decision to run Javascript without a prompt was probably a huge step forward for the security of most users. The 'do you trust this' model of security doesn't work well in practice once you can download programs from the internet - there's too much stuff you need to or want to trust to get on with things, and even if it's not actively malicious, it may be vulnerable. Because Javascript can run in the…

This argument makes sense for the security angle. At least as it pertains to getting malware on your local machine.

But what about all of the "not security" but bad things that happen because we allow people to run code we have no choice over on our computer. The attention tracking features marked as tools to understand user intents are exfiltrating information from you perhaps when you don't expect.

Are you happy for example for someone to be logging where on a screen you are sitting and reading within a book or video. Do you not find it problematic for example that you could purchase a subscription to medium, but medium finds out you pause your computer to read descriptions of guns? Would you mind if they then sold this knowledge to Glock who then showed these ads on your work computer?

I get what you are saying for security. But "knowing" if and when something is happening is important. I may be worse or better at evaluating applications to run on my machine than the chrome team. But at least I know when I am entering into a risky situation.

Re: The "Cheap" Web

#128

Post by getpokedagain »

TrololoTroll wrote: post #115
getpokedagain wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope we can have a more reasoned debate than this. This topic is really important and frankly there's so much to it I hope that hearing others I can learn more. When I read some of the thread above what I am hearing is: "I don't want people to be able to run programs on my computer without asking explicitly". Which is exactly what the modern web and modern web browsers enable. If you learned computing in the 90's y…

>Are you saying you think that someone > should be left uneducated or lack medicine if they don't like running an unsecured browser? ... As opposed to not liking to run an installer for an unsecured program? App stores have the same issue. You just juggle the trust from some third party to another third party If you want to do anything more complex than transfering text and images you'll need to trust a lot of things

Do I need to do anything more complex than exchange text and pictures to access my medical bills or records?

Re: The "Cheap" Web

#129

Post by joemi »

zozbot234 wrote: post #41
flpm wrote: post #38

Very interesting, thanks for posting! I am not sure if the way to go is a cheap web, small web, slow web, indie web, or maybe some combination of these attributes, but something about the current web feels off, mass produced and superficial. The old sites created by people who did cool stuff just for the sake of doing it are so hard to find now. I miss them.

They're hard to find because they're not really linked anywhere. We used to have Web directories arranged by subject headings that tried to be mostly comprehensive and put some serious curation effort into that goal, such as DMOZ.org - but there's no modern equivalent to that. People like to complain about how the whole SEO issue has made search results useless as of late, but that if anything is downstream of the ov…

They're also hard to find now because the web has become so much more than what it was back then. So many more people and companies are on the web now, so _good_ smaller personal pages make up a much smaller percentage of what's out there. I think this might be a larger cause of this issue than less curation.

Re: The "Cheap" Web

#130

Post by marssaxman »

TrololoTroll wrote: post #115
getpokedagain wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope we can have a more reasoned debate than this. This topic is really important and frankly there's so much to it I hope that hearing others I can learn more. When I read some of the thread above what I am hearing is: "I don't want people to be able to run programs on my computer without asking explicitly". Which is exactly what the modern web and modern web browsers enable. If you learned computing in the 90's y…

>Are you saying you think that someone > should be left uneducated or lack medicine if they don't like running an unsecured browser? ... As opposed to not liking to run an installer for an unsecured program? App stores have the same issue. You just juggle the trust from some third party to another third party If you want to do anything more complex than transfering text and images you'll need to trust a lot of things

> If you want to do anything more complex than transfering text and images you'll need to trust a lot of things

Yes, exactly; that's why I wish the web were still based on the transfer of text and images.

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