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> Essentially, "just pass me the bare minimum of response to make Firefox Reader View work." What would that constraint look like? Is animation and interaction

> Essentially, "just pass me the bare minimum of response to make Firefox Reader View work." What would that constraint look like? Is animation and interaction prohibited there, for example?

ethbro 8y ago
I think the one-sentence summary would be "Content without code, and a bare minimum of formatting." The lesson from the modern web being, if you give web developers a toolbox, they'll figure out how to build a surveillance system. And for decades we've been creating more powerful tools (Flash/ActionScript, ActiveX, JavaScript, Wasm, etc). The answer would seem to be that we should be far more careful what tools we allow to be used. (Note: Not saying restrict all the web this way, but if one wanted to build parent article's wikipedia-esque info web)
- pharke 8y ago
  I don't think the issue is the tools available but the motivation behind their use. Until we get rid of the ad revenue model we'll be stuck with user profiling and tracking. Micropayments or some other model will have to take it's place before we see a return to the ideals we used to aspire to.
coldtea 8y ago
I'd prohibit interaction aside from clicking on links to get to the next page. As for animation, only embedded videos. If we allow all those, it's just the modern web again.
- Wowfunhappy 8y ago
  If there's support for embedded assets (you mention videos, so I assume also images, etc), how do you prevent "tracking pixels" that can monitor what content is viewed per IP address? I think it's generally useful to look at email here, where only a small subset of html—primarily photos + text—are reliably supported across clients.
  - coldtea 8y ago
    >how do you prevent "tracking pixels" that can monitor what content is viewed per IP address? No third party connections allowed. As for the originating server, they already know you requested the page, no?
  - kd5bjo 8y ago
    Content addressing can help here. If every asset is identified by a cryptographic hash, the user agent is free to fetch it from any available source. In the case of images, you can hash over the rendered pixels instead of the file encoding, so all transparent 1x1 images are concise red interchangeable. Alternatively/in addition, the user agent can treat embedded assets like textbooks do, and present them all as numbered, boxed, and captioned figures.

> Essentially, "just pass me the bare minimum of response to make Firefox Reader View work." What would that constraint look like? Is animation and interaction prohibited there, for example?

ethbro 8y ago

I think the one-sentence summary would be "Content without code, and a bare minimum of formatting." The lesson from the modern web being, if you give web developers a toolbox, they'll figure out how to build a surveillance system. And for decades we've been creating more powerful tools (Flash/ActionScript, ActiveX, JavaScript, Wasm, etc). The answer would seem to be that we should be far more careful what tools we allow to be used. (Note: Not saying restrict all the web this way, but if one wanted to build parent article's wikipedia-esque info web)

pharke 8y ago
I don't think the issue is the tools available but the motivation behind their use. Until we get rid of the ad revenue model we'll be stuck with user profiling and tracking. Micropayments or some other model will have to take it's place before we see a return to the ideals we used to aspire to.

coldtea 8y ago

I'd prohibit interaction aside from clicking on links to get to the next page. As for animation, only embedded videos. If we allow all those, it's just the modern web again.

Wowfunhappy 8y ago
If there's support for embedded assets (you mention videos, so I assume also images, etc), how do you prevent "tracking pixels" that can monitor what content is viewed per IP address? I think it's generally useful to look at email here, where only a small subset of html—primarily photos + text—are reliably supported across clients.
- coldtea 8y ago
  >how do you prevent "tracking pixels" that can monitor what content is viewed per IP address? No third party connections allowed. As for the originating server, they already know you requested the page, no?
- kd5bjo 8y ago
  Content addressing can help here. If every asset is identified by a cryptographic hash, the user agent is free to fetch it from any available source. In the case of images, you can hash over the rendered pixels instead of the file encoding, so all transparent 1x1 images are concise red interchangeable. Alternatively/in addition, the user agent can treat embedded assets like textbooks do, and present them all as numbered, boxed, and captioned figures.