Comment by 🐐 satch

Re: "Which parts of the web want saving? Which can we do without?"

Loading JavaScript from CDNs is bad and unnecessary. But using an iframe to embed? Not so clear.

Feb 21 · 3 months ago

5 Later Comments ↓

I was thinking about the "throwing the distributed application system" and I have a few handful reasons to throw it away.

1- Ownership. It is something being talked about a lot in videogames, with everything turning into digital downloads tied to an account on a service. The day the company goes belly up... you lose what you paid for. Same principle here, and I will cite Google Reader and its untimely demise.

2- The freedom to know what your computer is running. A coworker, sysadmin, asked the frontend team "Can we see what's exactly the code that is running on the client". The reply was "You doin' drugs, mate?". Not even the devs can really say

(Goes on)

🦉 ResetReboot · Mar 02 at 21:46:

3- Overcomplicated system to develop: Try to start a new JS application. Do a simple hello world. You have a lot of frameworks (phased out in mere months!) with a lot of dependencies and requirements. With other programming languages, you can get the compiler, create your hello world and in a minute, you are up and running. There's a lot of well seasoned developers that sigh and reach to see how to start a new JS project.

4- (And this is a personal take!) Starting your base on a language that was only thought to be a glue with Java applets and make a couple nice effects. Then drop a ton of patches to make it more usable.

☕️ tenno-seremel · Mar 19 at 17:23:

I’m with no-scripters. Once you allow scripting it is only a matter of time before it will be extended. Exactly as it already happened. Forms, which can be validated client-side, should stay, though, so every website didn't have to do things this one had to do. And they should be useable without spending lots of time to drag them to present times.

🐙 norayr · Mar 20 at 01:17:

btw there is now this new technology called nextjs which runs js only in backend and only gives the browser prerendered html and css but i doubt corporations will give up browser side scriytss, they need their tracking scripts in your machine.

😎 decant · May 28 at 04:01:

script must go, we all know not to download software from random website in cybersec 101, why run script from random website? javascript is the worst case, I mean, webusb? webmidi? webgl? I think if you need rich graphical designs you could just put up some compressed bitmap. Printed media are just images on paper, we will do ok with image over the wire. even pdf over gemini:// is ok. I like what lab6 are doing.

Original Post

🌒 s/SmallWeb

Which parts of the web want saving? Which can we do without? — Let’s have an unrealistic hypothetical here. Suppose the http web were replaced entirely by a new protocol (or maybe set of protocols?) which allowed for client side scripting, unrestricted styling, and all the other aspects of the web which make it distinct. Except this time, everything was being built from scratch, with person-first values in mind, like privacy, accessibility, ease of use, etc. The designers of this protocol are...

💬 satch · 22 comments · 2 likes · Feb 18 · 3 months ago