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That all sounds like a pretty good idea to me. I was happy with the distributed document viewer system and never actually wanted the complex application platfor

That all sounds like a pretty good idea to me. I was happy with the distributed document viewer system and never actually wanted the complex application platform. I still don't want it, but I'm forced to put up with it if I want access to the document viewer system, because the two wildly different projects have been smashed awkwardly together. Since the web as a document viewer system appears to be dying, leaving only the distributed application system I don't really want to use anyway, perhaps in a few more years I'll be able to abandon the web thing and do something else.

krapp 9y ago
>Since the web as a document viewer system appears to be dying, leaving only the distributed application system I don't really want to use anyway, perhaps in a few more years I'll be able to abandon the web thing and do something else. How many real "distributed applications" do you see on the web, though, versus documents with dynamic content? Is Medium, which is primarily intended to serve text, but which depends on javascript, an app or a document? What about Facebook, which despite its complexity still looks and acts more or less like a document, albeit with interactivity and asynchronous loading. Is it a matter of static versus dynamic content? Memory usage and computation? Features like AJAX and session storage? If documents are only static, non-scripted HTML pages, then do they become applications if there is server-side logic involved? I don't think there is an objective description of "web app" versus "document", I don't think the web is as cleanly cut along those lines and many might like to believe.
- marssaxman 9y ago
  There's a simple heuristic that works pretty well for me: does it still make sense in Reader View? If so, it's a document, and it shouldn't have needed Javascript. If not, then it's probably a web app. I am less concerned about server-side logic than the expectation that I'm just going to be happy to run arbitrary code provided by other people on my machine.
  - wvenable 9y ago
    Doesn't the mere existence of reader view make your point moot? The web browser is your software -- I have mine customized with plenty of plugins, blockers, and reader view. You can take content, remix it, and display it however you like. I can render this site as green text on a black background if I wanted to. I can write my own web browser if none of the existing ones do what I want.

krapp 9y ago

>Since the web as a document viewer system appears to be dying, leaving only the distributed application system I don't really want to use anyway, perhaps in a few more years I'll be able to abandon the web thing and do something else. How many real "distributed applications" do you see on the web, though, versus documents with dynamic content? Is Medium, which is primarily intended to serve text, but which depends on javascript, an app or a document? What about Facebook, which despite its complexity still looks and acts more or less like a document, albeit with interactivity and asynchronous loading. Is it a matter of static versus dynamic content? Memory usage and computation? Features like AJAX and session storage? If documents are only static, non-scripted HTML pages, then do they become applications if there is server-side logic involved? I don't think there is an objective description of "web app" versus "document", I don't think the web is as cleanly cut along those lines and many might like to believe.

marssaxman 9y ago
There's a simple heuristic that works pretty well for me: does it still make sense in Reader View? If so, it's a document, and it shouldn't have needed Javascript. If not, then it's probably a web app. I am less concerned about server-side logic than the expectation that I'm just going to be happy to run arbitrary code provided by other people on my machine.
- wvenable 9y ago
  Doesn't the mere existence of reader view make your point moot? The web browser is your software -- I have mine customized with plenty of plugins, blockers, and reader view. You can take content, remix it, and display it however you like. I can render this site as green text on a black background if I wanted to. I can write my own web browser if none of the existing ones do what I want.