4 ms·

>In 10 - 15 years the web should be better than it is today. Is the web better now than it was in 2005-2010? I don't think it is and I don't see the trend arbi

>In 10 - 15 years the web should be better than it is today. Is the web better now than it was in 2005-2010? I don't think it is and I don't see the trend arbitrarily reversing. Tons of regular people (and even tech-savvy folks who should know better) voluntarily use, love, and advocate for using a browser (and email service!) made by the modern equivalent of DoubleClick.

nitrogen 6y ago
modern equivalent of DoubleClick Nitpick: they are DoubleClick: > DoubleClick was a company acquired by Google in 2007 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DoubleClick https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DoubleClick
terracatta 6y ago
Are there things that have gotten worse? Yes Are things way more complicated? Yes But net overall? I believe it's better than 2005 and even 2010. Meaning, I would not want to revert back to 2010 and start building back up from there. There is too much good we would lose in the process. I have no idea if my opinion is shared by the majority, but I am very optimistic about the future of the web.
lotsofpulp 6y ago
I would not characterize people's choice of web browsers, or people's choice of which websites they want to interact with as "the web". The characteristics of the web from 20+ years ago are still there. Many or most people just prefer not to use that type of web from 20+ years ago. Everyone is still free to use whichever browser they want to access whichever website they want (in the US at least) in the same manner they did in the previous decades.
jeffbee 6y ago
Were you actually alive in 2005-2010 or are you just guessing? Flash-based unskippable intros on fixed 640x480 centered viewports are the reality of the 2005 web, regardless of whatever nostalgia you suffer from.
- hollerith 6y ago
  Flash was easy to avoid unless you needed certain sites for work or for school; I kept it disabled by deleting some files starting about 2006 or 2007. HTML5 on the other hand is impossible to avoid unless you want to restrict yourself to a few familiar sites. And web fonts are getting harder to avoid because more and more sites are using them to draw icons and other small UI elements. For people whose tastes are sufficiently like my own, the web has been getting worse. I used lynx as my daily driver for most of the 1990s and through 2005. In contrast, these days it is impractical for the average person to use a browser that is not maintained by an organization employing many hundreds of full-time developers. This dependency on money (to pay the developers) limits a person's options. I never wanted to be able to replace my desktop apps with apps that run on the web, so I don't consider web apps to be compensation for the constant stream of annoyances (e.g., the moral equivalent of pop-up windows asking me to give the site my email address) that HTML5, web fonts, et cetera, enabled.
- minikites 6y ago
  We've replaced "waiting for unskippable Flash intros" with: - a web that is thoroughly unusable without an ad-blocker (ad-blocking was pretty optional in 2005) - waiting for 20 megs of minified JS to load over 3G - waiting for Google web fonts to load because apparently shipping more than 4 fonts in common is beyond the ability of plucky upstarts like Microsoft, Apple, and Google - web "apps" with worse performance characteristics than programs that ran on 66 MHz machines
  - jeffbee 6y ago
    > - waiting for 20 megs of minified JS to load over 3G I don't use Slack.
    - minikites 6y ago
      I didn't use pages with un-skippable Flash intros.
  - nitrogen 6y ago
    (ad-blocking was pretty optional in 2005) It was still pretty sweet to run a transparent Squid proxy with an ads blacklist.

nitrogen 6y ago

modern equivalent of DoubleClick Nitpick: they are DoubleClick: > DoubleClick was a company acquired by Google in 2007 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DoubleClick https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DoubleClick

terracatta 6y ago

Are there things that have gotten worse? Yes Are things way more complicated? Yes But net overall? I believe it's better than 2005 and even 2010. Meaning, I would not want to revert back to 2010 and start building back up from there. There is too much good we would lose in the process. I have no idea if my opinion is shared by the majority, but I am very optimistic about the future of the web.

lotsofpulp 6y ago

I would not characterize people's choice of web browsers, or people's choice of which websites they want to interact with as "the web". The characteristics of the web from 20+ years ago are still there. Many or most people just prefer not to use that type of web from 20+ years ago. Everyone is still free to use whichever browser they want to access whichever website they want (in the US at least) in the same manner they did in the previous decades.

jeffbee 6y ago

Were you actually alive in 2005-2010 or are you just guessing? Flash-based unskippable intros on fixed 640x480 centered viewports are the reality of the 2005 web, regardless of whatever nostalgia you suffer from.

hollerith 6y ago
Flash was easy to avoid unless you needed certain sites for work or for school; I kept it disabled by deleting some files starting about 2006 or 2007. HTML5 on the other hand is impossible to avoid unless you want to restrict yourself to a few familiar sites. And web fonts are getting harder to avoid because more and more sites are using them to draw icons and other small UI elements. For people whose tastes are sufficiently like my own, the web has been getting worse. I used lynx as my daily driver for most of the 1990s and through 2005. In contrast, these days it is impractical for the average person to use a browser that is not maintained by an organization employing many hundreds of full-time developers. This dependency on money (to pay the developers) limits a person's options. I never wanted to be able to replace my desktop apps with apps that run on the web, so I don't consider web apps to be compensation for the constant stream of annoyances (e.g., the moral equivalent of pop-up windows asking me to give the site my email address) that HTML5, web fonts, et cetera, enabled.
minikites 6y ago
We've replaced "waiting for unskippable Flash intros" with: - a web that is thoroughly unusable without an ad-blocker (ad-blocking was pretty optional in 2005) - waiting for 20 megs of minified JS to load over 3G - waiting for Google web fonts to load because apparently shipping more than 4 fonts in common is beyond the ability of plucky upstarts like Microsoft, Apple, and Google - web "apps" with worse performance characteristics than programs that ran on 66 MHz machines
- jeffbee 6y ago
  > - waiting for 20 megs of minified JS to load over 3G I don't use Slack.
  - minikites 6y ago
    I didn't use pages with un-skippable Flash intros.
- nitrogen 6y ago
  (ad-blocking was pretty optional in 2005) It was still pretty sweet to run a transparent Squid proxy with an ads blacklist.