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Forking the Web

dillo-browser.org

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Re: Forking the Web

#11

Post by TFNA »

smugglerFlynn wrote: post #5
jfengel wrote: post #3

I feel like that's not solving any of the problems I think of the Web as having. You can certainly make something with it, but I can't imagine most people finding a use for it.

I think original web standards were solving a completely different problem: sharing information . Modern Internet is 45% appearances and 50% search traffic optimizations. For better or worse we lost all usable registries of websites, we lost appearance-less and traffic considerations-less websites. Information-focused Web is pretty much dead. Maybe these ideas did not scale and did not monetize that well, but we will…

I agree. Even where blogging and sharing information is still around, it is strongly linked with brand-building, monetization, and engagement-maxxing. Look at all the old Wordpress bloggers who switch to Substack in order to have some eyeballs on their posts, and then inevitably begin conforming to its ethos willingly or unwillingly.

For me, the information-sharing part of the internet now is the shadow libraries. I can get access to all (well, still not quite all) journals and university-press publications from the last century? Awesome. Vastly more informative than some blogger who nowadays is probably trying to monetize my attention.

Re: Forking the Web

#12

Post by fooqux »

internet2000 wrote: post #8

Developers would rather fork the Web than admit Chrome is the new IE6 and stop targeting it.

I think at least part of the reason for this is acknowledging that the web isn't much of a web any longer. You've got three or four vendors that serve the vast majority of all internet traffic. And it's not happenstance that those same vendors now control something which was originally meant to be democratic.

Most of this document reads to me like that's the problem they're trying to solve, not just chrome's huge marketshare, so simply not targeting it doesn't serve their purpose.

Re: Forking the Web

#13

Post by TFNA »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #9

> The specification must contain a non-ambiguous formal grammar that can be parsed easily. A page can then be tested against the standard and reject or accept as compliant. Pages that don't conform with the specification won't be rendered. It is explicitly forbidden for clients to accept any page that doesn't conform with the specification. This is what XHTML was, and it was a complete disaster. There's a reason almo…

XHTML failed in an era when writers (even normies) were writing some HTML of their own and they could't be trusted to close their tags properly. XHTML also assumed writers would be personally invested in semantic markup like distinguishing e.g. the italics of book titles from the italics of emphasis.

Today, when writers are using visual editors (or Markdown), few are writing their own HTML any more. A web standard requiring compliance would work differently today.

Re: Forking the Web

#15

Post by maxerickson »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #9

> The specification must contain a non-ambiguous formal grammar that can be parsed easily. A page can then be tested against the standard and reject or accept as compliant. Pages that don't conform with the specification won't be rendered. It is explicitly forbidden for clients to accept any page that doesn't conform with the specification. This is what XHTML was, and it was a complete disaster. There's a reason almo…

No scripting is a tell, it's about wanting other people to accommodate their concerns about running a complex browser, not about solving a real problem.

If it did somehow happen that a good deal of interesting content was published using the standard, the most popular client would probably be nonconforming, ignoring the rule to not render ambiguous content.

Re: Forking the Web

#17

Post by htmlenjoyye »

fooqux wrote: post #12
internet2000 wrote: post #8

Developers would rather fork the Web than admit Chrome is the new IE6 and stop targeting it.

I think at least part of the reason for this is acknowledging that the web isn't much of a web any longer. You've got three or four vendors that serve the vast majority of all internet traffic. And it's not happenstance that those same vendors now control something which was originally meant to be democratic. Most of this document reads to me like that's the problem they're trying to solve, not just chrome's huge mar…

how is the web not democratic?

in real democracies the populists (facebook, tiktok, chrome) always win. because that's what the masses want

Re: Forking the Web

#18

Post by PaulHoule »

Can't say I hate the HTML 5 spec. It resolves the ambiguities that made previous HTML specs insufficient to make a working web browser.

The standards that make my life miserable at times are the secondary standards like GDPR and WCAG as well as the de facto "standard" systems we are forced to participate in such as Cloudflare, the advertising economy, etc.

It's easy to say "WebUSB is bloat" and I'd certainly say PWA is something that could only come out of the mind that brought us Kubernetes, but lately I've been building biosignals applications and what should my choice be: write fragile GUI applications for the desktop that look like they came out of a lab and crash from memory leaks or spend 1/5 the time to make web applications that look like they belong in the cockpit of a Gundam and "just work"?

Re: Forking the Web

#19

Post by PaulHoule »

TFNA wrote: post #13
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #9

> The specification must contain a non-ambiguous formal grammar that can be parsed easily. A page can then be tested against the standard and reject or accept as compliant. Pages that don't conform with the specification won't be rendered. It is explicitly forbidden for clients to accept any page that doesn't conform with the specification. This is what XHTML was, and it was a complete disaster. There's a reason almo…

XHTML failed in an era when writers (even normies) were writing some HTML of their own and they could't be trusted to close their tags properly. XHTML also assumed writers would be personally invested in semantic markup like distinguishing e.g. the italics of book titles from the italics of emphasis. Today, when writers are using visual editors (or Markdown), few are writing their own HTML any more. A web standard re…

Markdown sux and so do visual editors. I think visual editors were just invented to make it so cut-and-paste never quite works right. There's been some conceptual problem with the whole idea ever since MS Word and the industry has never dealt with it.

Re: Forking the Web

#20

Post by fooqux »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #9

> The specification must contain a non-ambiguous formal grammar that can be parsed easily. A page can then be tested against the standard and reject or accept as compliant. Pages that don't conform with the specification won't be rendered. It is explicitly forbidden for clients to accept any page that doesn't conform with the specification. This is what XHTML was, and it was a complete disaster. There's a reason almo…

Agreed. There may be some situations where I may want to ensure 100% correctness. I'm thinking life or death scenarios, (which if so, maybe should use a different protocol). However, checking the sports score or looking at cat memes isn't that.
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