3 ms·

"gross and immoral" is uncalled for, and a pretty toxic way to start a conversation. And you keep saying users "expect documents" but where is that coming from

"gross and immoral" is uncalled for, and a pretty toxic way to start a conversation. And you keep saying users "expect documents" but where is that coming from? Most users on the internet today do not expect documents. I'd argue they don't really expect apps either, webpages live in kind of a world of their own. PS: I don't particularly care for this proposal, but clearly a lot of effort has gone into it and I find it "gross and immoral" to post comments dismissing it so thoughtlessly like this one.

rektide 6y ago
I appreciate your attempt to be sensible & more moderate, but I don't feel like I'm overexaggerating my case. Yes, I could do a lot more work to support my case, to craft a more effective message. But this is immoral. It is highly destructive to user agency, to our ability to make extensions or to scrape pages. It is antitheical to freedom of thought, to our human liberties. I find the summation of what it implies to be a gross gross regression of human potential. Knuckling under something which is special, which is better, which has extensions, & making it become something pedestrian & mundane & inaccessible. It is gross, and to steal this power from the users would be immoral.
- scrollaway 6y ago
  I have the same principles you do, but I think that battle is a losing one if you go at it with that mindset. A lot of the web is already just javascript. Looking at "appification" and throwing our arms up in the air is just a form of giving up. Rather, we should find ways to ensure that whatever direction the web takes, we can keep building powerful tools to foster the creativity and agency you and I have today, and push them to the hands of the mainstream.
  - rektide 6y ago
    > A lot of the web is already just javascript. Looking at "appification" and throwing our arms up in the air is just a form of giving up. Yes, this certainly /feels/ like the trend. Yet folks like Github and Youtube and Microsoft are busy building a better web that does re-center & re-emphasize the DOM, by adopting & driving WebComponents forward. It's weird to me that there is such a sizable disconnect: that a lot of very big very large players have adopted good web technology, but that so much of the world hasn't caught on, doesn't see it, doesn't know how they'd do it themselves. The lessons, of what large scale application design look like in such an environment, have not started disseminating out. The tools are there, but visualizing how they come together to make a web app, that's still fairly mysterious. But being done at very large scales, seemingly quite effectively. > Rather, we should find ways to ensure that whatever direction the web takes, we can keep building powerful tools to foster the creativity and agency you and I have today, and push them to the hands of the mainstream. :hands-up: Very nicely said.
kortilla 6y ago
> but clearly a lot of effort has gone into it and I find it "gross and immoral" Wait until you find out how much effort goes into DRM schemes. It doesn’t make them any less anti-user which squarely lands in the immoral category for lots of people. Amount of effort and the engineering soundness of the design have no bearing on whether something is gross and/or immoral.
- scrollaway 6y ago
  wtf, you're comparing the work of someone who's a bit overexcited about redesigning the web, to DRM do you even have an argument here?
  - kortilla 6y ago
    I’m refuting the argument that someone spending a lot of time and engineering on something means it can’t be dismissed as “gross an immoral”. Proposing a system that destroys the open web with a bunch of applications that break link following, screen readers, text only browsers, etc is gross and immoral - no matter how sound the implementation.

rektide 6y ago

I appreciate your attempt to be sensible & more moderate, but I don't feel like I'm overexaggerating my case. Yes, I could do a lot more work to support my case, to craft a more effective message. But this is immoral. It is highly destructive to user agency, to our ability to make extensions or to scrape pages. It is antitheical to freedom of thought, to our human liberties. I find the summation of what it implies to be a gross gross regression of human potential. Knuckling under something which is special, which is better, which has extensions, & making it become something pedestrian & mundane & inaccessible. It is gross, and to steal this power from the users would be immoral.

scrollaway 6y ago
I have the same principles you do, but I think that battle is a losing one if you go at it with that mindset. A lot of the web is already just javascript. Looking at "appification" and throwing our arms up in the air is just a form of giving up. Rather, we should find ways to ensure that whatever direction the web takes, we can keep building powerful tools to foster the creativity and agency you and I have today, and push them to the hands of the mainstream.
- rektide 6y ago
  > A lot of the web is already just javascript. Looking at "appification" and throwing our arms up in the air is just a form of giving up. Yes, this certainly /feels/ like the trend. Yet folks like Github and Youtube and Microsoft are busy building a better web that does re-center & re-emphasize the DOM, by adopting & driving WebComponents forward. It's weird to me that there is such a sizable disconnect: that a lot of very big very large players have adopted good web technology, but that so much of the world hasn't caught on, doesn't see it, doesn't know how they'd do it themselves. The lessons, of what large scale application design look like in such an environment, have not started disseminating out. The tools are there, but visualizing how they come together to make a web app, that's still fairly mysterious. But being done at very large scales, seemingly quite effectively. > Rather, we should find ways to ensure that whatever direction the web takes, we can keep building powerful tools to foster the creativity and agency you and I have today, and push them to the hands of the mainstream. :hands-up: Very nicely said.

kortilla 6y ago

> but clearly a lot of effort has gone into it and I find it "gross and immoral" Wait until you find out how much effort goes into DRM schemes. It doesn’t make them any less anti-user which squarely lands in the immoral category for lots of people. Amount of effort and the engineering soundness of the design have no bearing on whether something is gross and/or immoral.

scrollaway 6y ago
wtf, you're comparing the work of someone who's a bit overexcited about redesigning the web, to DRM do you even have an argument here?
- kortilla 6y ago
  I’m refuting the argument that someone spending a lot of time and engineering on something means it can’t be dismissed as “gross an immoral”. Proposing a system that destroys the open web with a bunch of applications that break link following, screen readers, text only browsers, etc is gross and immoral - no matter how sound the implementation.