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Slowly but surely the creative potential of the web is eroded until nothing is left but plain text and ads, to thunderous applause. Gross overreaction after gro

Slowly but surely the creative potential of the web is eroded until nothing is left but plain text and ads, to thunderous applause. Gross overreaction after gross overreaction and now we're in a state where extensions are a shallow husk of their former glory, you need to jump through legally vague ridiculous hoops to do anything involving user data, a vast trove of great Flash content is no longer accessible to the average user, web apps with sound and video aren't allowed to work seamlessly without an obnoxious "click here to let the webpage do what it should be able to do anyway" button, and various other unnecessary restrictions. How soon until it's the default that you need to give a website permission to display images and you need a license to make a webpage? That's the direction it feels like we're heading in. I'm saddened that the golden age of the web is probably behind me, but at least I was alive for it. I went over the subject here too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19087332 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19087332

benj111 8y ago
Staying on the subject at hand, do you not find it annoying trying to find which tab, and where on the tab a video is playing? "I'm saddened that the golden age of the web is probably behind me" Funny, I'd place the golden age before all these things you cite. Out of curiosity what's your favourite website, what most sums up your golden age?
- jimmaswell 8y ago
  I'm not sure if I'd call it my favorite anymore but I probably use reddit the most. I'm thinking of golden age in terms of the power available to webpages/browsers. This would be when HTML5/webgl/etc features had just gotten implemented, plugins like Flash and Java were still supported, and Firefox used the old extension system. All of the old web was still there alongside the cool new stuff. Now the old stuff is gone and the new stuff is getting ruined.
  - benj111 8y ago
    Reddit, I can see that. Would you want a reddit where every embedded video in a thread auto played though? I'm guessing our disagreement is over who has final say over display of content? I would say the client, you would say the server (or creator)? Is that fair?
    - jimmaswell 8y ago
      The user should be able to make the client do whatever they want, but a blacklist for autoplay sounds a lot better to me than a whitelist. It harms the creative potential of things when they're limited by default and most users aren't going to manually add your site to a whitelist. It wouldn't even be so bad if the website could just request autoplay permissions the same as it requests permission to know your location etc. Better would be if the browser heuristically detected the site potentially abusing autoplay and then asked the user if they want to block the site from doing so in the future - at least giving webpages a chance by default instead of being guilty until proven innocent. As a web user I've never been so bothered by autoplaying news videos etc. that I felt it would be fair to stick a wrench in the entire web over them. On the subject of Reddit I do find it unnecessarily burdensome that I have to give Reddit Enhancement Suite permission for every individual domain that it wants to embed stuff from, another place where I feel like browsers went too far locking themselves down.
      - benj111 8y ago
        What about banning autoplay on background tabs, with a blacklist for abusers on the focused tab? The problem with blacklists is that they default to letting bad things through if not maintained. But yeah it would be nice to think that we still have a web where the blacklist would be less unwieldy than the whitelist.
unionpivo 8y ago
I sort of get where you are coming from, and i miss all the geocitys weirdness, and the home build blogs (before everyone used wordpress with the same 5 themes). But web is also a tool (and a necessary one for many jobs). And advertisers have abused web to such degree, that there had to be a push back. As far as white listing vs black listing goes, white listing is always better option. Especially for things like this, because i know that i don't want ads/videos/sound from 99% of websites I visit.

benj111 8y ago

Staying on the subject at hand, do you not find it annoying trying to find which tab, and where on the tab a video is playing? "I'm saddened that the golden age of the web is probably behind me" Funny, I'd place the golden age before all these things you cite. Out of curiosity what's your favourite website, what most sums up your golden age?

jimmaswell 8y ago
I'm not sure if I'd call it my favorite anymore but I probably use reddit the most. I'm thinking of golden age in terms of the power available to webpages/browsers. This would be when HTML5/webgl/etc features had just gotten implemented, plugins like Flash and Java were still supported, and Firefox used the old extension system. All of the old web was still there alongside the cool new stuff. Now the old stuff is gone and the new stuff is getting ruined.
- benj111 8y ago
  Reddit, I can see that. Would you want a reddit where every embedded video in a thread auto played though? I'm guessing our disagreement is over who has final say over display of content? I would say the client, you would say the server (or creator)? Is that fair?
  - jimmaswell 8y ago
    The user should be able to make the client do whatever they want, but a blacklist for autoplay sounds a lot better to me than a whitelist. It harms the creative potential of things when they're limited by default and most users aren't going to manually add your site to a whitelist. It wouldn't even be so bad if the website could just request autoplay permissions the same as it requests permission to know your location etc. Better would be if the browser heuristically detected the site potentially abusing autoplay and then asked the user if they want to block the site from doing so in the future - at least giving webpages a chance by default instead of being guilty until proven innocent. As a web user I've never been so bothered by autoplaying news videos etc. that I felt it would be fair to stick a wrench in the entire web over them. On the subject of Reddit I do find it unnecessarily burdensome that I have to give Reddit Enhancement Suite permission for every individual domain that it wants to embed stuff from, another place where I feel like browsers went too far locking themselves down.
    - benj111 8y ago
      What about banning autoplay on background tabs, with a blacklist for abusers on the focused tab? The problem with blacklists is that they default to letting bad things through if not maintained. But yeah it would be nice to think that we still have a web where the blacklist would be less unwieldy than the whitelist.

unionpivo 8y ago

I sort of get where you are coming from, and i miss all the geocitys weirdness, and the home build blogs (before everyone used wordpress with the same 5 themes). But web is also a tool (and a necessary one for many jobs). And advertisers have abused web to such degree, that there had to be a push back. As far as white listing vs black listing goes, white listing is always better option. Especially for things like this, because i know that i don't want ads/videos/sound from 99% of websites I visit.