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A web limited to textual content is a pretty quaint and uninspiring vision, IMO. The web started that way because static documents are relatively easy to repre

A web limited to textual content is a pretty quaint and uninspiring vision, IMO. The web started that way because static documents are relatively easy to represent, but the future (and present, for that matter) is rich experiences that can be distributed in the same way. But there are many steps left to get there, so either buckle up and help build that future, or get used to an ever-shrinking ecosystem of the purely textual Web. I'm personally very excited by the convergence of mobile and web development, PWAs, improved functionality for layouts, self-hosted app architectures (like Tent and Sandstorm, language-agnostic runtime via Web Assembly, better serving performance via HTTP/2, low level multimedia APIs, encapsulation of rich UX via Web Components, and so on and so on. Sure, it's bewildering right now, but in the future, this will all be knit together in a cohesive way.

frogfuzion 10y ago
Do you want to bet on that last one?
rashkov 10y ago
Sure, but in the meantime the web is a much less accessible place for screen readers, underpowered mobile devices, and those without good internet connections
ajross 10y ago
> Sure, it's bewildering right now, but in the future, this will all be knit together in a cohesive way. Could have said those same words literally a decade ago when we were all struggling to figure out all this Rails and MVC stuff and how automated ORMs worked above MySQL. Seven or eight paradigm shifts later, we're all still confused and I see no cohesive knitting.
taeric 10y ago
My opinion happens to differ. Textual content is incredibly rich and is likely a target for all content in the future. Consider, we are literally training models to accurately caption things today. Why? Because language is a hell of an abstraction. More, it is approachable and can often be bounded. Consider, I am not even remotely skilled in art. However, I can adequately describe, for me, a picture by saying who is in it and the event. Try doing the same without language. Often "quaint and uninspiring textual" language. Do I opine for the what we had in the 90s? Not necessarily. But I do grow weary of folks reinventing frameworks that merely further complicate the very abstractions that they created and now require these frameworks.
gnaritas 10y ago
> Sure, it's bewildering right now, but in the future, this will all be knit together in a cohesive way. You'll get over that optimism when 20 years passes and it's a worse mess than it is now; that's what going to happen.
hobs 10y ago
It was was has worked for almost 5 thousand years, so I am going to go ahead and say it is not quaint, its not uninspiring, and when you say "in the future it will all be knit together in a cohesive way" I laugh heartily. It never has been, and it wont be.
bluesnowmonkey 10y ago
You could say the same thing about flying cars. A car with four wheels is a pretty quaint and uninspiring vision, IMO. However it happens to be infinitely more practical.
NoGravitas 10y ago
The fact is that 99% of what's done on the web is (mainly textual) document management/display. Facebook (the website responsible for React!) is 99% document display. The truth is that "rich experiences" are mostly made by enhancing the basic experience of reading rich documents. If you want an inspiring vision of a document-centered future, look at IndieWeb.org. And/or roca-style.org. It's a vision of how the web can be knit together into a cohesive whole based on URLs, rather than segmented into a bunch of unaddressable silos.
newsat13 10y ago
About self-hosted app architectures, Cloudron is really good in terms of stability. Just got a newsletter from them that they are hitting 1.0 soon.

frogfuzion 10y ago

Do you want to bet on that last one?

rashkov 10y ago

Sure, but in the meantime the web is a much less accessible place for screen readers, underpowered mobile devices, and those without good internet connections

ajross 10y ago

> Sure, it's bewildering right now, but in the future, this will all be knit together in a cohesive way. Could have said those same words literally a decade ago when we were all struggling to figure out all this Rails and MVC stuff and how automated ORMs worked above MySQL. Seven or eight paradigm shifts later, we're all still confused and I see no cohesive knitting.

taeric 10y ago

My opinion happens to differ. Textual content is incredibly rich and is likely a target for all content in the future. Consider, we are literally training models to accurately caption things today. Why? Because language is a hell of an abstraction. More, it is approachable and can often be bounded. Consider, I am not even remotely skilled in art. However, I can adequately describe, for me, a picture by saying who is in it and the event. Try doing the same without language. Often "quaint and uninspiring textual" language. Do I opine for the what we had in the 90s? Not necessarily. But I do grow weary of folks reinventing frameworks that merely further complicate the very abstractions that they created and now require these frameworks.

gnaritas 10y ago

> Sure, it's bewildering right now, but in the future, this will all be knit together in a cohesive way. You'll get over that optimism when 20 years passes and it's a worse mess than it is now; that's what going to happen.

hobs 10y ago

It was was has worked for almost 5 thousand years, so I am going to go ahead and say it is not quaint, its not uninspiring, and when you say "in the future it will all be knit together in a cohesive way" I laugh heartily. It never has been, and it wont be.

bluesnowmonkey 10y ago

You could say the same thing about flying cars. A car with four wheels is a pretty quaint and uninspiring vision, IMO. However it happens to be infinitely more practical.

NoGravitas 10y ago

The fact is that 99% of what's done on the web is (mainly textual) document management/display. Facebook (the website responsible for React!) is 99% document display. The truth is that "rich experiences" are mostly made by enhancing the basic experience of reading rich documents. If you want an inspiring vision of a document-centered future, look at IndieWeb.org. And/or roca-style.org. It's a vision of how the web can be knit together into a cohesive whole based on URLs, rather than segmented into a bunch of unaddressable silos.

newsat13 10y ago

About self-hosted app architectures, Cloudron is really good in terms of stability. Just got a newsletter from them that they are hitting 1.0 soon.