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Necessary how? All the actually useful things you can do on the web you could have done with a 90s browser. I bet Amazon still works in one! Moving apps into b

by gaius 9y ago

Necessary how? All the actually useful things you can do on the web you could have done with a 90s browser. I bet Amazon still works in one! Moving apps into browsers is a step backwards for most apps and most users. I was using Jupyter the other day; it’s clunky as hell compared to MathCAD from 20 years ago. We use 1000x the computing power, literally, to deliver 10% of the experience. Keeps a lot of devs employed I guess...

adventured 9y ago
> All the actually useful things You're pre-emptively trying to define what's useful for everybody else. That's the only way your premise works. In my equally subjective view, XMLHttpRequest radically altered and improved the useful things you can do with the Web. You can't use a 90s browser for Google Maps, Gmail, YouTube, nearly any online productivity software, and dozens of other common activities on the Web today. You would have to strip the services down to make them work, ie turn them into completely different products. Simply put, most of the things most people do online today, can't function in a 90s browser. Just try using IE 5 or Netscape 4 with nearly any of the major Web services today. You can't. IE 5 with Facebook's non-mobile site? You have to build an entirely different product to make that work, basic interactivity drops to near zero. 1990s MapQuest sucked, big time. Google Maps is a radical improvement. How about simple things, such as smooth, fast, highly interactive stock charts, or real-time updating stock quotes, without having to reload the page constantly? 1998 browser? Nope. Would the user experience be better if everything on the Web adhered to strict 1998 standards? That's an obviously subjective opinion. I don't think so. Do people like to see instant previews of the content they're about to post to Facebook or Twitter? When they click the little upvote arrow, do they like to see an appropriate reaction? When posting basic content or interacting with simple site features, do they like having to reload the entire page?
- gaius 9y ago
  All those things existed before they became web sites, and they aren’t web sites for any particularly good reason today. Email is a good example. GMail is Outlook rewritten in VBA running inside Word. Let me guess... you’re a JS dev and you think “little upvote arrows” are where the real value is?
  - bryanrasmussen 9y ago
    Gmail is Outlook rewritten in VBA running inside Word, except it works better and doesn't leave you open to a bunch of viruses. I mean did you ever use the Windows client of Outlook? On the one hand your argument makes it seem that you did, but on the other hand you also seem to prefer it to Gmail which makes me distrust the argument completely! Other than that Email is a good example.
  - incadenza 9y ago
    Except for the fact that most people use these services in the browser even when there are native clients available? In nearly all of the listed cases the bottleneck is almost always the network and not the JS runtime. Clearly the users are wrong, I guess? Perhaps you should explain to them why your delicate design sensibilities dictate that they should download native clients because you think HTTP has gone off spec. Let me guess... you're a COBOL dev and think computers should have never developer GUIs.
    - gaius 9y ago
      you're a COBOL dev and think computers should have never developer GUI Not quite that old, but I was doing web and Java professionally in 1995, so I’ve seen it all. The users are not wrong; they’ve simply been trapped in a local minima by inexperienced developers who would rather reinvent the wheel than make progress. Except every time the wheel gets squarer.

by gaius 9y ago

adventured 9y ago

> All the actually useful things You're pre-emptively trying to define what's useful for everybody else. That's the only way your premise works. In my equally subjective view, XMLHttpRequest radically altered and improved the useful things you can do with the Web. You can't use a 90s browser for Google Maps, Gmail, YouTube, nearly any online productivity software, and dozens of other common activities on the Web today. You would have to strip the services down to make them work, ie turn them into completely different products. Simply put, most of the things most people do online today, can't function in a 90s browser. Just try using IE 5 or Netscape 4 with nearly any of the major Web services today. You can't. IE 5 with Facebook's non-mobile site? You have to build an entirely different product to make that work, basic interactivity drops to near zero. 1990s MapQuest sucked, big time. Google Maps is a radical improvement. How about simple things, such as smooth, fast, highly interactive stock charts, or real-time updating stock quotes, without having to reload the page constantly? 1998 browser? Nope. Would the user experience be better if everything on the Web adhered to strict 1998 standards? That's an obviously subjective opinion. I don't think so. Do people like to see instant previews of the content they're about to post to Facebook or Twitter? When they click the little upvote arrow, do they like to see an appropriate reaction? When posting basic content or interacting with simple site features, do they like having to reload the entire page?

gaius 9y ago
All those things existed before they became web sites, and they aren’t web sites for any particularly good reason today. Email is a good example. GMail is Outlook rewritten in VBA running inside Word. Let me guess... you’re a JS dev and you think “little upvote arrows” are where the real value is?
- bryanrasmussen 9y ago
  Gmail is Outlook rewritten in VBA running inside Word, except it works better and doesn't leave you open to a bunch of viruses. I mean did you ever use the Windows client of Outlook? On the one hand your argument makes it seem that you did, but on the other hand you also seem to prefer it to Gmail which makes me distrust the argument completely! Other than that Email is a good example.
- incadenza 9y ago
  Except for the fact that most people use these services in the browser even when there are native clients available? In nearly all of the listed cases the bottleneck is almost always the network and not the JS runtime. Clearly the users are wrong, I guess? Perhaps you should explain to them why your delicate design sensibilities dictate that they should download native clients because you think HTTP has gone off spec. Let me guess... you're a COBOL dev and think computers should have never developer GUIs.
  - gaius 9y ago
    you're a COBOL dev and think computers should have never developer GUI Not quite that old, but I was doing web and Java professionally in 1995, so I’ve seen it all. The users are not wrong; they’ve simply been trapped in a local minima by inexperienced developers who would rather reinvent the wheel than make progress. Except every time the wheel gets squarer.