I've been adopting the mindset that, if you care about the web, you've got to take active measures to promote alternatives to Chrome. That means developing sites using Firefox as your primary browser, rejecting Chrome only features (even when they support progressive enhancement), promoting ad blockers and alternate search engines. Mozilla hasn't been the champion we want them to be, but we can all pitch in.
This reminds me of a certain US political situation. More on the topic, I see how it can go both ways. Use Chrome until something better comes up or use Firefox in spite of all of its problems. I’m currently in the second camp and I’m happy but I’m not sure for how long.
So just like any other system, starting with the UNIX system interface, the various shells, the autotools and everything else. Stuff is built on top of other stuff and it is impossible to fully predict the future and start out with a clean design that anticipates all future needs.
PS. What the article means by "mess" (in context) is the article's entire gist, that is: "Things have evolved, but they have done so in a way that is ..."
... wrong, counteranimical to the web's "original purpose", opposed to user-interests, etc., etc., ...
... however one would want to define all those things.-
Personally, I think the description the author makes of then vs now, has merit.-
> In its early days, the web was markup. The browser was to meant to display text with some basic formatting and hyperlinks. At some point in the later evolution, JavaScript was created, allowing websites to dynamically change their content on the device. What happened in the meantime? A mess.
This is as good a summary as ever I have seen.-
> And I do wish all the best to Servo and Ladybird. But this is just the engines.
> Web app technologies became incoherent, prioritizing developer experience over user, and not making the former great either.
The main background problem is (industry) consolidation, because the interest for Web techs is not that hot anymore, the fewer people who still left to improve it might also used their positions to advance their own gains. Sad, but not unheard of.
To bring Web back to it's previous glory, it must create enough opportunities in itself to get people are re-interested. But if you observe how today's people uses tech product (i.e. on a phones), you'll know it's really hard if possible at all.
The phone platforms (Android and iOS etc) has optimized their services so well, the entire flow, from discovering an tool (app, service etc) to signup/purchase can all be done within just seconds. Unlike back in the day, where you have to search (with a search engine) and compare (by reading online reviews) in order to find the tool you need.
Similar thing is also happening on desktop software/OS too. Maybe in this era, web and desktop computing is no longer considered modern?
With the help of many devs, and those that keep shipping applications wrapped in Chrome shells, Google has managed to turn the Web into ChromeOS for all pratical purposes.
How quickly a new generation has forgotten the IE learnings, in exchange for shinny toys.
It frustrates me that some websites rely on JavaScript unnecessarily — for example, Twitter actively locks you out with JS disabled. Even worse are the old Apple docs (I don't know if this is still the case) that were literally just the most basic HTML text documents, but were a blank page without JS.
On the other hand, JavaScript can do things that would otherwise be impossible. For example, I have a serverless site that uses JS for search. It's progressive, so you don't really know if you're missing out, but without JS nobody would be able to use that feature.
> or that being shown (relevant) ads is the user's interest when browsing the web.
the author brushes this off as unlikely. certainly it's not in my interest, but especially from non-tech friends, i hear this a lot. they actually enjoy the high-quality, targeted ads
> unreadable, pre-processed JavaScript
this is where i'm starting to switch off. yes, let's forbid any improvement in DX, so that a user can inspect the source and understand it. seems like the perfect tradeoff
I suspect that I have ADHD and I get distracted really easily on the web. It can be pretty frustrating when I'm trying to get something done, like submitting an application form, and I end up elsewhere. Ads compete for your attention and distract you. Well targeted ads compete for your attention most effectively. So to me, targeted ads are even worse than irrelevant ads. Well targeted ads also require the ad agencies to surveil me...
This gets to one problem area the article doesn't dig into - the expectation that everyone has access to, and chooses to, use the internet.
If you find the internet distracting and frustrating to use, you should be able to get those same basic tasks like an application form done in other ways.
The internet is definitely convenient, and there are tasks that are going to be unique to the internet, but we shouldn't be locked in. We're ruining financial transactions in the same way, the idea that places refuse to accept cash assumes that everyone is interested in using a bank account and credit card company.
Word. I can also attest, strangely. It does exist.-
PS. Even if in a "quaint" "would you believe what happened to me the other day? Facebook started showing me x-gizmos just as I was talking about them with so and so the other day ..."
(Out loud, of course. Within earshot of an open mic ...)
How does tailwind existing imply that "web app technologies became incoherent, prioritizing developer experience over user"? Does tailwind reduce user experience?
The topics thing would be a lot less of a problem for me if I could choose and edit them myself. Also, if the ads served up in response weren't almost seizure-inducing flashy things and autoplaying videos and the like.
On facebook - which I still have because some societies and other groups I'm involved in use that as their only communication/organization channel - there's a list of topics they infer I'm interested in, both from my own clicks and from my friends'. There's no way, perhaps short of serving a GDPR notice, to edit these and tell them "no you got this one wrong". Just because lots of my friend group likes X doesn't mean I do, and if Facebook got this right they'd even get me to interact _more_ with the sponsored posts as they're showing me topics I care about.
As far as I can tell, what's going to happen with topics API is I once help a friend buy some boots online, this gets registered as an interest in /Shopping/Apparel/Footwear/Boots (to take Google's example), and I get ads for more boots for a while even if I couldn't care less (it's already bad enough when you keep seeing ads for a product you've just bought). Also, if I want boots for myself, I'll go to a proper store so I can try them on and make sure they fit just right.
I guess I'll still be able to point SQLITE at my topics file just like I can currently use it on my history or cookies file, but it feels like a kludge.
I've been trying to promote prefers-reduced-motion [1]. I get that some people like "seizure-inducing flashy things" and that companies like to build them. But from a basic design perspective, people should be able to look at your site and read the content. Many sites are not accessible and fail that low bar. If you build flashy things, please allow the user to opt-out.
I use it when I can. There are some work-related things where I can't, and sometimes I help other people with their PCs who haven't been converted to the one true way yet (or uninstalled it because youtube and they don't know about whitelists).
Oh there's a way, it's just under various dropdowns and you have to switch between like 3 different subdomains to end up here: https://accountscenter.facebook.com/ads/
You can achieve something close to that with websites as well though.
You can use service workers and caching strategies so that the user only „downloads“ the boilerplate - i.e. page logic, JavaScript, html structure - and (current) content of your website once and only downloads new or changed content.
This is the whole idea of the offline-first model that’s originally made to enable users on mobile devices with spotty internet connections to use your (web-)app without too many hiccups.
Granted, this takes some knowledge and development effort, but if your goal is to save bandwidth, it’s absolutely possible. And something more development teams should think about.
> bandwidth costs are high for both producers and consumers.
But producers are not really paying for bandwidth - they are paying for control. At any point in time they can turn off the tap on users, who have no recourse. Unlike with local executables, there is nothing to hack.
That enables SaaS, which is the ultimate rent-seeking business model: you only "own" something only as long as you remain indentured to the company. From that perspective, the company will be more than happy to spend $5 p/m on a user who pays $20 p/m.
I've been surprised by how many use cases I've come across lately that point back to XSLT.
This is one example. A website could very easily be written such that all of the XSLT, CSS, and JS are cached. The only data that would be refetched on each visit is the XML itself, and proper cache headers could even make sure that's only fetched when the content changed.
Another example, there was a Shoptalk Show recently talking about web components. It came up that one feature to make them really useful would be HTML syntax for logical flow (for loops, if/else, etc). That's exactly what XSLT did.
Writing XSLT is a real pain until you really learn it, the mindset is very different from many common languages. And it hasn't been touched in probably 20 years, with at least a few features that were just never implemented in Firefox. It sure is an interesting tech though, and made a lot of sense when the web wasn't about web apps and advertising.
Apps, whether carefully crafted, or not, are more often than not just a means to exercise more control over users. At least all those newspaper or <whatever> browsers. That is, they are the almost perfect tracking device.
If it's a genuine app which needs a dedicated interface (e.g. gaming, hiking, navigation, even Android Auto in a HUD in my car) that's more or less unavoidable. But all these "readers" should stay in classic web browsers.
(Or, aspirational friend, or girl outta your league, or whatever we want to call it :)
But, seriously, by bringing it up you have very aptly, I think, put your finger right on one of the main underlying issues here. Craft. Excellence. Standards.-
> when we open them, they don't just display a page with an article. We get greeted with banners asking to consent to ad profiling
My default browser is Firefox with the excellent NoScript extension. For the majority of websites I visit - including 99.x% of those where I'm just visiting to read content - this works amazingly well.
Pages load blazingly fast, no opt-ins, no GDPR banners, no pop-ups. It's glorious.
> In its early days, the web was markup. The browser was to meant to display text with some basic formatting and hyperlinks. At some point in the later evolution, JavaScript was created, allowing websites to dynamically change their content on the device. What happened in the meantime? A mess.
No. Evolution happened. Look I was with the author when they started with the Topics API Google shoved into Chrome and I also share the concern about the web turning into chromium but then they go to pretend this isn’t want users wanted. It’s exactly what users wanted, maybe not tech nerds but general users do want these changes by and large.
I mean you aren’t going to find anyone who likes that news sites have a million trackers and download MB of data to track and advertise to you but if we set that aside and focus on WebApps (which news sites aren’t) then yes, that’s what people want.
I get frustrated with people who appear to pine for the days of the web being just “documents”, before the “evil JavaScript”. Just because something grows and changes doesn’t make it bad and if all you could is browse documents on the web then it wouldn’t be nearly as popular as it is today. People don’t want these changes? Bullshit, they prove over and over again they absolutely do. People want WebApps.
Yes, people will complain about subscriptions but they complained about software upgrades as well so I don’t see a difference. People complain about any kind of change if we stopped progress anytime people complained we’d get nowhere. This is going to sound controversial but the best skill you can hone is knowing which complaints to ignore. Not all complaints are valid and sometimes your loudest complainers are the ones you need to ignore most.
Getting back to things in the article, Office 365 (which I personally don’t use) and friends are way better than “our IT dept hasn’t upgraded Office in 6 years” and that’s IF you have an IT dept that isn’t the boss’ kid helping out a bit. SMB don’t have IT departments normally or they outsource it, Office 365 really isn’t that expensive given what you get from it (same with Google Workspace). Yes, you pay a subscription or “rent” but it means you don’t have to maintain or manage the process. To many people, especially here on HN, write that off and frankly it’s embarrassing. Just because you can do something yourself doesn’t mean you should. It’s an arbitrary line they draw in the sand and with all arbitrary lines, it’s gets absurd when you move it (should you write your software for everything because you can? Should you haul your own water instead of paying “rent” to the water company?).
I have sympathy with the authors' position, and the "the web should just be documents" crowd. There is nothing wrong with SSR. There is nothing wrong with you having mobile or desktop apps that provide rich interactivity and feedback. But we have turned a document based medium into an ugly monster because we're squeezing stuff in for privacy-invading rent-seekers.
I don't mind people being paid for their work, and I don't mind paying them, but why does progress/evolution need to involve terrible, horrible technologies that break accessibility, privacy and the integrity of the medium? Why can't Google just go build a new technology and leave the web alone? Why are we all marching to the drum of adtech, like there is no alternative?
I think you have very succinctly stated a reasonable "compromise", as it were, and clarified the (many) issues here ...
> Why can't Google just go build a new technology and leave the web alone?
... or develop within the medium, as is or as "it should be", this later desiderata being guided by open, agreed-upon "standards", with input by all stakeholders.-
> Why are we all marching to the drum of adtech, like there is no alternative?
In a way - and I am sure this is an "overdetermined" issue - not only because of "monetization": The web, has never developed a sufficiently workable "micropayments" solution (for example) as a compensatory mechanism for stakeholders adding value ...
... so advertising became a sort of default. Downhill from there ...
> The web, has never developed a sufficiently workable "micropayments" solution
Is this just because payment processors make it non-viable? I used to think crypto would come and rescue us in this regard, but it hasn't yet. I also liked the old readability model (pay a fixed monthly amount which gets distributed among sites you visit) but that didn't make it either.
It's a curious thing, on all of the three counts you (aptly) mention ...
I think it has to do with "legacy" financial costs "granfathered" into electronic payments by existing processors (VISA, etc), preventing costs from being low enough to warrant micropayments even existing ...
... and, no, web 3.0 and crypto has not made it (balcanization, lack of critical mass) ...
... as to the loss of the third model (fixed, monthly), the loss of that is puzzling. Might have to do with "freemium" being the (initial) web's "default" model, and friction being enough to chock it (stop it) at or before birth ...
... and pricing: Subscriptions (at least at first) were too highly priced. That appears to be changing.-
> friction being enough to chock it ... Subscriptions (at least at first) were too highly priced
I totally agree. Subscribing to one site for, say, $5/month doesn't seem that onerous, and if it's a really, really good source of information, may be worth it. But subscribing to every website that I might want to visit a few times each month? Forget it. It's like the 'X different streaming services' problem writ much, much larger.
This is why I had so much hope in the readability approach — $5 in total, the site I visit most might get $2.50, then the next gets $1, etc.
Indeed, what you mention (death by a thousand cuts) is an issue ...
... for the sake of argument, however, you then end "back on square one", so to speak, with a "centralized" "gatekeeper" for content ...
... so, what to do (maybe): An open standard for pre-paid balances that is interoperable, as a sort of "pay-per-rss-article" standard, with standarized pricing. But, good luck with any of that ...
Well that’s certainly one uncharitable way to read that.
People have spoken with their usage. They aren’t picking native apps, they are picking webapps. There isn’t some massive underserved “I wish this was a desktop app” market or someone would be making a killing there.
Desktop apps have their place but all things being equal people seems to gravitate towards webapps.
On HN people hate on Electron apps and webapps but they are the vast minority of the overall population and they rarely offer viable alternatives, just grumbling. What their arguments so often overlook is it’s not native vs electron/web it nothing vs electron/web, as in a lot of these products would simply not exist or would be windows/mac-only if not for webapps.
