Isn’t the web forked enough already
Forking the Web
31–40 of 157 posts
Re: Forking the Web
#32Why not try to define a strict subset of the current specs, that would target ease of implementation & graceful degradation? I'd rather have many different clients compatible with a "web-lite" spec that is enough to navigate on 95% of websites, which would have an incentive to officially support that subset if it becomes popular enough.
Re: Forking the Web
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
> XHTML failed in an era when writers (even normies) were writing some HTML of their own I'd say it was a minority of writers that were handcrafting XHTML. And it was the case that everyone or their handcrafting or using tools could validate their compliance using a browser which made it very easy to adjust your tools or your handcrafted code. We are now in a situation where there is no schema for HTML. I, for one, a…
Note that when I say "writing their own HTML", I don't mean handcrafting a whole webpage. I mean that people were writing i or b tags in their Wordpress editors or in online comment boxes, because back then such text fields did not have visual editors and would accept raw tags. Under XHTML, if the writer did not close tags properly, such input would have broken the whole page, so obviously back then such a standard w…
Those cases were easy to fix by using eg htmltidy on the UGC.
Honestly I don't think it was killed by one thing, or by anything. Just no platform really cared and it wasn't a win for anyone and occasionally a loss.
Re: Forking the Web
#34This sentence highlights the reason why these efforts fail despite any original good intentions:
"as soon as a monopolistic entity can build a mechanism to extract revenue from it, there will be an incentive to capture the standard and change it to for their own benefit"
Personally I'd love a simple semantic versioned subset of the web. The required traction and buy-in from existing key players (browser vendors, web hosting platforms etc) makes it largely a non-starter though. I'd love to be wrong though.
Instead of "forking", it may be more prudent to extend or revive something more like Gopher, so you don't constantly get baraged by incompatible sites (like you would in a forked web)
Re: Forking the Web
#35Isn't there already smolweb?
Re: Forking the Web
#36Web browsers turned into application engines because it was a path to get useable software on PCs without having to deal with Microsoft. IE6 stayed broken forever for a reason.
Now, they enable applications to exist without going through app store gateways.
A new document-only protocol aligned the Web's original intention would be very useful simply for security reasons. I liked Gemini because, by design, a Gemini document is not executable in any way; there's no popups, plugins, or even cookies; all this is out of the box without having to manage settings, and Gemini documents are very readable without an app at all.
But replacing the modern browser rather than being another option will actually lock in people further than they already are-open protocols require apps which are all behind a gateway now on the primary computing device of users: phones.
It probably won't matter in a few years as the Web will likely be equally locked down soon, though.
Re: Forking the Web
#37The purpose should also be defined. It should answer the question why. Also, what's broken with scripting and what alternatives are proposed? What's the end state (with an example usage of the new web).
Re: Forking the Web
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
> in real democracies the populists (facebook, tiktok, chrome) always win. because that's what the masses want
Is Friedrich Merz a populist? Was Angela Merkel a populist? This theory seems to have considerable limits.
Re: Forking the Web
#39[deleted]
Re: Forking the Web
#40"Dillo Browser" was not what the first thing I read and wondered if me clicking the link was even a good idea... xD