Some thoughts on the web. On web engines, content, and web rent (2023)

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.

> What happened in the meantime? A mess.

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.

> 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.

Interesting times, these ...

> The web is, by now, Chromium-shaped.

Ending in this conclusion.-

> 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.

I like how URL sums it up perfectly:

liberda.nl/weblog/javascript-was-a-mistake/

> 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

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.

the irony, is while the web is distribution is easy - bandwidth costs are high for both producers and consumers.

with apps you download the executable once - and it updates infrequently. saving bandwidth. carefully crafted apps produce smaller binaries as well.

> 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?).