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Freeing the Web from the Browser

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Re: Freeing the Web from the Browser

#21

Post by amelius »

oblio wrote: post #10

While this is somewhat cool, I have a few comments: > The Web is, without a doubt, the most powerful research tool currently available to man. No longer must researchers comb through endless indices and catalogues to find what they are looking for. True, but most people aren't researchers. Heck, I think most people don't even know what indices are :) > The vast majority of those interested in a piece of work are mere…

Yet, it's amazing how much information is freely available right now, given all the barriers that exist to host content.

At least it will be interesting to know by how much the amount of available information will increase when those barriers are taken down.

Re: Freeing the Web from the Browser

#22

Post by jlebrech »

One way would be to create a browser/portal(combo) that only indexes webgl/wasm apps for example. and you could still visit the info page about that app via a normal browser but would have to install the specific browser.

the irony is that walled garden might have a valid use case (not to wall from a vendor, but to wall us from old tech)

Re: Freeing the Web from the Browser

#23

Post by TeMPOraL »

joesavage wrote: post #19
jerjerjer wrote: post #8

The problem I think is that most sites and businesses would be up in arms over this idea. FB wants to have links pointing to other FB pages. Many websites do a lot to prevent user from leaving. How do you plan to overcome this?

That's a good point, and not one that I've considered particularly deeply to be honest. (I'd love to hear other people's point of view on the topic!) I guess in many ways the situation is similar to that around adblock. Ultimately, the links that are overlaid on a particular page should be solely and completely under the control of the user. If the technology that everyone is using permits this kind of behaviour, I'm…

> If the technology that everyone is using permits this kind of behaviour, I'm not sure companies have much choice in the matter.

The technology used to permit this; the current trends go against this direction. I'm of course referring to JS-rendered content and SPAs. I imagine, were your idea deployed, most of the time would be spent on fixing broken links and link anchor points.

I support the goal you're trying to achieve. But between greedy publishers and their ToS and JavaScript infecting everything like a pathogen, I fear that we'll have to spin up an alternative Internet for knowledge work. That Internet would be reader-friendly (both human and machine kind) and much more static.

Re: Freeing the Web from the Browser

#24

Post by michaelscott »

joesavage wrote: post #15
oblio wrote: post #10

While this is somewhat cool, I have a few comments: > The Web is, without a doubt, the most powerful research tool currently available to man. No longer must researchers comb through endless indices and catalogues to find what they are looking for. True, but most people aren't researchers. Heck, I think most people don't even know what indices are :) > The vast majority of those interested in a piece of work are mere…

I largely agree. I'm very much coming at this from the angle of 'knowledge work', and think a system of this kind is most useful to (though definitely not only useful to!) scientists, engineers, designers, lawyers, journalists, etc. While the population of knowledge workers is admittedly much smaller than the population on the whole, though, it's still sizable. Knowledge workers play an incredibly important role in o…

If the target audience is knowledge workers then this is a nice step in a better direction. Bear in mind, though, that the goal of a knowledge worker is to understand content so the focus of any such project probably shouldn't be on enhancing the manifestation of graph theory on the web and rather on the methods of education available.

Focus on how the content is presented to the user rather than the connections between content, because at the end of the day it's the content I care about and not the connections.

Re: Freeing the Web from the Browser

#25

Post by ChrisSD »

Didn't Google used to have a project that allowed readers to annotate the web?

If I understand it correctly, it sounds like the author wants something similar only categorised by field of expertise instead of being a free for all (and not owned by one company). This would require some kind of moderation, in one form or anther.

EDIT: Wikipedia says I was most likely thing of Sidewiki, which wasn't actually a wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Sidewiki

Re: Freeing the Web from the Browser

#26

Post by oblio »

amelius wrote: post #21
oblio wrote: post #10

While this is somewhat cool, I have a few comments: > The Web is, without a doubt, the most powerful research tool currently available to man. No longer must researchers comb through endless indices and catalogues to find what they are looking for. True, but most people aren't researchers. Heck, I think most people don't even know what indices are :) > The vast majority of those interested in a piece of work are mere…

Yet, it's amazing how much information is freely available right now, given all the barriers that exist to host content. At least it will be interesting to know by how much the amount of available information will increase when those barriers are taken down.

> Yet, it's amazing how much information is freely available right now, given all the barriers that exist to host content.

While there are barriers, are you sure that's true? There's a million options to host content these days. It's much easier than 10 years and much, much easier than 20 years ago.

You can get a Wordpress blog or a Medium one with 2 clicks. You can make a Facebook account very easily. They might not be perfect, but the options are there.

Re: Freeing the Web from the Browser

#27

Post by [deleted] »

joesavage wrote: post #15
oblio wrote: post #10

While this is somewhat cool, I have a few comments: > The Web is, without a doubt, the most powerful research tool currently available to man. No longer must researchers comb through endless indices and catalogues to find what they are looking for. True, but most people aren't researchers. Heck, I think most people don't even know what indices are :) > The vast majority of those interested in a piece of work are mere…

I largely agree. I'm very much coming at this from the angle of 'knowledge work', and think a system of this kind is most useful to (though definitely not only useful to!) scientists, engineers, designers, lawyers, journalists, etc. While the population of knowledge workers is admittedly much smaller than the population on the whole, though, it's still sizable. Knowledge workers play an incredibly important role in o…

[deleted]

Re: Freeing the Web from the Browser

#28

Post by theclaw »

superflyguy wrote: post #13
TuringTest wrote: post #5

Most saddening, perhaps, is the way in which the Web constrains the use of links. For example: although the link is the primary form of reference on the Web, underpinning the tangle of connections that make the system so useful, the ability to create new links is a privilege granted only to content producers. The vast majority of those interested in a piece of work are merely readers, unable to contribute, only to co…

" it's the Comments section of any blog-shaped site." Something I never read on any site. It's just pure racism/muppets talking shit. If there were a plugin to block them I'd use it; I feel dirty even knowing they're down there. L

You can use Ghostery or uBlock Origin to block comments sections on many sites. I found Ghostery quite easy to set up for this.

Re: Freeing the Web from the Browser

#29

Post by ChrisSD »

ChrisSD wrote: post #25

Didn't Google used to have a project that allowed readers to annotate the web? If I understand it correctly, it sounds like the author wants something similar only categorised by field of expertise instead of being a free for all (and not owned by one company). This would require some kind of moderation, in one form or anther. EDIT : Wikipedia says I was most likely thing of Sidewiki, which wasn't actually a wiki: ht…

Another thing my search brought up was Hypothesis[0] which sounds almost but perhaps not quite what the author describes.

[0] https://web.hypothes.is/

Re: Freeing the Web from the Browser

#30

Post by machiaweliczny »

I would love a web where you can comment with your forum circle on any URI available on internet.

Eg. I open some research paper and I click "comments" in web browsers. And I see comments from /r/machinelearning, hackernews etc. Also real time chat would be awesome to have for each of websites.

Nowadays it work for me like this - found something interesting X - type "X site:myforum" in google to learn more about it

Found a bug, typo, wanna contribute related resource - need to go to github, email author etc. - can't just open "comment" on page without comments and contribute :(

I think such structure of internet as we have right now relies on google/search engines too much when it could be much better organised.

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