Its not 100% clear to me what the author's thesis is - but i think its that ever incrasing complexity of web standards results in bad user experience.
I dont think that is true - or as they say correlation does not equal causation.
The web used to be smaller and the corporate world didn't know what to do with it. It was creative and original. Eventually corporate america figured out what to do with it, and now it gets value extracted in a very impersonal way - as if your fave underground punk band sold out.
Complexity didn't cause this. It might be a symptom of this, but if the complexity went away, the corporization of the internet would still be there - the suits understand the internet now, and there is no stuffing that back in the bottle.
If neccessary, it would be entirely possible to recreate facebook in html 3.2. Its a social phenomenon not a technical one.
I agree. There have been numerous posts along these lines which seem to misunderstand the issue.
The post hypothesis is that [something is wrong with the Web] because [browser functionality]. But it's not browser functionality that is the issue here, it's the site author. The premise of the problem is wrong, thus the proposed solution makes no sense, and it will fail.
This is easy to demonstrate. Install a second browser. Turn off JavaScript completely. Disable cookies completely. You now have your minimal document viewer. Done. No need for a new protocol, no need to create anything.
Now feel free to view all your static-site destinations in this. It'll be rocking fast. Then use your regular browser for everything else.
I suspect you'll find that the browser is not the problem. The problem is that the sites you want to visit use JavaScript. You'll discover that your alternate browser is basically not used. Oh and that the sites it can use are equally fast in your main browser.
The browser is not slow. Sites _choose_ to be slow as the cost of other things they want (mostly advertising). Any site you think is slow in your browser would not be in your other Web.
Do new developers choose inappropriate tools to build simple stuff? Yes of course. Do they go with what they know best, yes of course. Do most senior developers do the same thing? Of course yes.
Is the solution a new protocol and a new browser? I fail to see how this would change anything.
This times a hundred. It's not that the complexity is the reason, it's simply the audience changing, whether it's the people creating the work or the people consuming it. Look at any online content platform like Medium or Quora or Clubhouse. Quality starts off high, but plummets as more people start finding/using the platform and more businesses see it as a way to make money. Or any entertainment medium. It's not unique to the web, film, television and video games all went a through a similar evolution.
People miss the old days, without realising that those days only happened because no one saw the monetary potential in a medium, and the few people with a deep interest in the field (and enough resources to work for free) created stuff as a hobby.
Its not 100% clear to me what the author's thesis is - but i think its that ever incrasing complexity of web standards results in bad user experience.
I dont think that is true - or as they say correlation does not equal causation.
The web used to be smaller and the corporate world didn't know what to do with it. It was creative and original. Eventually corporate america figured out what to do with it, and now it gets value extracted in a very impersonal way - as if your fave underground punk band sold out.
Complexity didn't cause this. It might be a symptom of this, but if the complexity went away, the corporization of the internet would still be there - the suits understand the internet now, and there is no stuffing that back in the bottle.
If neccessary, it would be entirely possible to recreate facebook in html 3.2. Its a social phenomenon not a technical one.