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Google is killing the open web, part 2

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Re: Google is killing the open web, part 2

#241

Post by cpill »

Fileformat wrote: post #131
Aurornis wrote: post #16

I have yet to read an article complaining about XSLT deprecation from someone who can explain why they actually used it and why it’s important to them. > I will keep using XSLT, and in fact will look for new opportunities to rely on it. This is the closest I’ve seen, but it’s not an explanation of why it was important before the deprecation. It’s a declaration that they’re using it as an act of rebellion.

Making RSS/Atom feeds friendly to new users is key for its adoption, and for the open web. XSLT is the best way to do that. I made a website to promote doing using XSLT for RSS/Atom feeds. Look at the before/after screenshots: which one will scare off a non-techie user? https://www.rss.style/

yes, but why??? Your on the website and you have a link to the syndicated feed, for the website your on, and you want to make they feed look good in the browser... so they can click the link to the website _you are already on_??? The argument you should be looking at the feed XML in the browser instead of the website is bonkers. They are not meant to replace the website coz if they were why have the website?!

Re: Google is killing the open web, part 2

#242

Post by basscomm »

et1337 wrote: post #76

I’m no Google fan, but deprecating XSLT is a rare opportunity to shrink the surface area of the web’s “API” without upsetting too many people. It would be one less thing for independent browsers like Ladybird to worry about. Thus actually weakening Google’s chokehold on the browser market.

> but deprecating XSLT is a rare opportunity to shrink the surface area of the web’s “API” without upsetting too many people

There's a lot of back and forth on every discussion about XSLT removal. I don't know if I would categorize that as 'without upsetting too many people'

Re: Google is killing the open web, part 2

#243

Post by cxr »

akerl_ wrote: post #205
echelon wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mozilla's board are basically Google yes-people. I'm convinced Mozilla is purposefully engineered to be rudderless: C-suite draw down huge salaries, approve dumb, mission-orthgonal objectives, in order to keep Mozilla itself impotent in ever threatening Google. Mozilla is Google's antitrust litigation sponge. But it's also kept dumb and obedient. Google would never want Mozilla to actually be a threat. If Mozilla had…

So the idea is that some group has been perpetuating a decade or so's worth of ongoing conspiracy to ensure that Mozilla continues to exist but makes decisions that "keep Mozilla itself impotent"? That seems to fail occam's razor pretty hard, given the competing hypotheses for each of their decisions include "Mozilla staff think they're doing a smart thing but they're wrong" and "Mozilla staff are doing a smart thing…

You're not wrong.

And where philosophical razors are concerned, the most apt characterization of the source of Mozilla's decay is the one that Hanlon gave us.

Re: Google is killing the open web, part 2

#244

Post by cpill »

James_K wrote: post #83
Aurornis wrote: post #16

I have yet to read an article complaining about XSLT deprecation from someone who can explain why they actually used it and why it’s important to them. > I will keep using XSLT, and in fact will look for new opportunities to rely on it. This is the closest I’ve seen, but it’s not an explanation of why it was important before the deprecation. It’s a declaration that they’re using it as an act of rebellion.

I use XSLT because I want my website to work for users with JavaScript disabled and I want to present my Atom feed link as an HTML document on a statically hosted site without breaking standards compliance. Hope this helps.

Yeah, but WHY? If they are on the website, why would they want to look at the feed for the website, on the website, in the browser instead of just looking at the website? If the feed is so amazing, why have the website in the first place? Oh yeah, you need something to make the feed off :D

Re: Google is killing the open web, part 2

#245

Post by zzo38computer »

shadowgovt wrote: post #236
zzo38computer wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> put binary blobs in your browser outside the security sandbox There are reasons to do this sometimes, but usually it would be better to put them inside of the security sandbox (if the security sandbox can be designed in a good way). The user (or system administrator) could manually install and configure any native code extensions (without needing to recompile the entire browser), but sandboxed VM codes would also b…

We already have two infrastructures to do that: the JavaScript engine and wasm. And, indeed, part of the deprecation of XSLT proposal involves, in essence, moving XSLT processing from the browser-native layer to wasm as a polyfill that a site author can opt into.

Yes, what I meant (one way to handle what the author proposed; possibly not exactly what they meant) is that many of these "building blocks" can be made from wasm (although I have some criticism of that too, nevertheless, it will do), and many will be included by default, and others would be set up by the user if desired. Native code extensions (e.g. .so files) would also be possible but is not needed for most things, and if you set up from the app store or from stuff specified by the document or server then only sandboxed VM codes would be possible and native codes would not be allowed in those circumstances.

Re: Google is killing the open web, part 2

#246

Post by shadowgovt »

basscomm wrote: post #231
shadowgovt wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RSS and Atom feeds are at this point a solution looking for a problem. I use RSS all the time... To keep up-to-date on podcasts. But for keeping up to date on news, people use social media. RSS isn't the missing piece of the puzzle for changing that, an app on top of RSS is. And in the absence of Reader, nothing has shown up to fill that role that can compete with just trading gossip on Facebook.

> But for keeping up to date on news, people use social media. RSS isn't the missing piece of the puzzle for changing that, an app on top of RSS is. And in the absence of Reader, nothing has shown up to fill that role that can compete with just trading gossip on Facebook. I guess if you don't use social media or facebook you're out of luck?

I don't see why. You can always subscribe to a newspaper. Or just use RSS and a subscription tool since it didn't just go away.

What I'm saying, though, is if you don't use social media at this point you're already an outlier (I am, it should be noted, using the term broadly: you are using social media. Right now. Hacker News is in the same category as Facebook, Twitter, Mastodon, et. al. in this context: it's a place you go to get information instead of using a collection of RSS feeds, and I think the reason people do this instead of that may be instructive as to the ultimate fate of RSS for that use-case).

Re: Google is killing the open web, part 2

#247

Post by akerl_ »

glenstein wrote: post #237
akerl_ wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it often multi-stakeholder? Debian has bureaucracy and a set group of people with commit permissions. VLC likewise has the VideoLAN organization. LibreOffice has The Document Foundation. It seems like most open source projects either have: 1. A singular developer, who controls what contributions are accepted and sets the direction of the project 2. An in-group / foundation / organization / etc that does the same.…

A lot of the governance structures with "foundation" in their name, e.g. Apache Foundation, Linux Foundation, Rust Foundation, involve some combination of corporate parties, maintainers, independent contributors without any singularly corporate heavy hand responsible for their momentum. I don't know that road maps are any more or less "community driven" than anything else given the nature of their structures, but one…

My argument is that "open source principles" do not suggest anything about how the maintainers have to handle input from users.

Open source principles have to do with the source being available and users being able to access/use/modify the source. Chrome is an open source project.

To try to expand "open source principles" to suggest that if the guiding entity is a corporation and they have a heavy hand in how they steer their own project, they're not meeting those principles, is just incorrect.

The average open source project is run by a person or group with a set of goals/intentions for the project, and they make decisions about the project based on those goals. That includes sometimes taking input from users and sometimes ignoring it.

Re: Google is killing the open web, part 2

#248

Post by cxr »

amarant wrote: post #118
Aurornis wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t get the comparison. The XSLT deprecation has support beyond Google.

It's just ill-informed ideological thinking. People see Google doing anything and automatically assume it's a bad thing and that it's only happening because Google are evil. HN has historically been relatively free of such dogma, but it seems times are changing, even here

> It's just ill-informed ideological thinking.

> People see Google doing anything and automatically assume it's a bad thing and that it's only happening because Google are evil.

Sure, but a person also needs to be conscious of the role that this perception plays in securing premature dismissal of anyone who ventures to criticize.

(In quoting your comment above, I've deliberately separated the first sentence from the second. Notice how easily the observation of the phenomenon described in the second sentence can be used to undergird the first claim, even though the first claim doesn't actually follow as a necessary consequence from the second.)

Re: Google is killing the open web, part 2

#249

Post by basscomm »

ndriscoll wrote: post #233
basscomm wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Have you ever met a single non-programmer who successfully picked up XSLT of their own volition and used it productively? Hi! I'm a non-programmer who picked up XSLT of my own volition and spent the last five-ish years using it to write a website. I even put up all the code on github: https://github.com/zmodemorg/wyrm.org I spent a few weeks converting the site to use a static site generator, and there were a lot o…

For what it's worth, you can still run an XSL processor as a static generator. You of course lose some power like using document() to include information for a logged in user, but if it's a static site then that's fine.

Users don't log in to my site.

I eventually started using server-side XSL processing (https://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_xslt_module.html) because I wanted my site to be viewable in text-based browsers, too, but it uses the same XSLT library that the browsers use and I don't know how long it's going to be around.

Re: Google is killing the open web, part 2

#250

Post by throw_m239339 »

dfabulich wrote: post #31

In part 1 of this article, the author wrote, "XSLT is an essential companion to RSS, as it allows the feed itself to be perused in the browser" Actually, you can make an RSS feed user-browsable by using JavaScript instead. You can even run XSLT in JavaScript, which is what Google's polyfill does. I've written thousands of lines of XSLT. JavaScript is better than XSLT in every way, which is why JavaScript has thrived…

> by using JavaScript instead

I think you're entirely missing the point of RSS by saying that. RSS doesn't and should require NOT Javascript.

Now feeds could somehow be written in some bastard HTML5 directly, but please don't bring Javascript in that debate.

XSLT allows to transform a XML document into an HTML presentation, without the need for javascript, that's its purpose.

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