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Ask HN: If you could change one thing on the Web, what would it be?
We often find ourselves in a situation where we notice that things just aren't right. For instance, we believe that CAPTCHAs should not exist on the Web. HTML Newsletters are nasty and ugly, but at the moment we just have to work with them because of the popular email clients out there. What would you change on the Web if you could make a difference?
What would it be and how would you change it?
- renegademaniac 15y agoOnly one, Webkit powered browser by Google.
- stephenr 15y agoI'm sorry, did you not see what happened when Microsoft effectively "owned" the browser market? And even if you had to pick a single company to make a browser - why would you pick the one browser maker whose major source of income is whoring out your details?
- canistr 15y agoMake all buttons, particularly "next" buttons in photo albums or forums, much much bigger. Every forum, photo album, multi-page news article, and website has a habit of making tiny links/buttons to get to the next page. This makes it incredibly difficult to click on anything but a mouse. Trackpads aren't accurate and trying to press these tiny buttons on a touchscreen is futile. To UI Designers: MAKE YOUR BUTTONS BIGGER!
- pagekalisedown 15y agoSame thing for mobile app designers. 10 pixel high text on a Retina display? Really? Can I borrow your bionic eyes?
- athst 15y agoI would kill all mailto: links. In the age of gmail, how many people does this actually apply to? I always accidentally click these links, and it opens up some default email program that came with my OS that I've never touched before.
- brianwillis 15y agoDepending on what browser you're using, extensions are available to make those mailto links work with Gmail. Some instructions to get you started here: http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=10966 http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=10966
- stephenr 15y agoWebmail is a poor replacement for a real email client, and the usage stats back this up: http://www.campaignmonitor.com/stats/email-clients/ http://www.campaignmonitor.com/stats/email-clients/ More people used the Mail app on iOS devices than Hotmail, Yahoo Mail or Gmail. A better solution to your problem would be for the browser/OS to allow the user to specify a web app to handle mailto: links
- cstefanovici 15y agoI'd make data with a meaning like on listered.com, structured data,searchable and sortable not static text
- mhd 15y agoNo more JavaScript. I don't think some transparent bytecode would ever make it, but a simple lisp- or stack-based programming language would be sufficient for a lot of normal tasks and a better target for more advanced systems to compile to. (That's the "one thing" approach. In an ideal world, I'd replace the whole arcane HTML/CSS/JS/SVG/etc shebang with an improved version/variation of DPS)
- bkudria 15y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Display_PostScript http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Display_PostScript
- don_m 15y agoI envision a world where all browsers have the same CSS capabilities.
- melling 15y agoHow about a realistic one that developers could actually do? Take the Google approach and remind/nag everyone to upgrade their browser if it's more than 2 versions old.
- dfrankow 15y agoFor people who don't have admin on their own machines (i.e. many large organizations), that would suck.
- frou_dh 15y agoThere would be a (mostly) standard keyboard scheme to efficiently navigate and use all sites.
- kamakazizuru 15y ago1. Set standards for HTML CSS etc that EVERYONE uses, so things look the same across browsers, screens and geographies. 2. Get rid of http:// http:// from all URLs - we dont need it - its pointless, even Tim-Berners Lee says so. 3. Make it easier for everyone to mark websites as spam and have them taken off easily (im talking about the ones that show up whenever you search anything health related and promise you magical immediate cures).
- phyllotaxis 15y agoThe day my mother can log on and do what she wants without instruction will be the next generation of the internet. We're nowhere close to that today. I want Star Trek for Baby Boomer moms : "Computer: send email to Gladys." "Computer: turn the channel to Polyanna" "Computer: calculate 2011 taxes paid to date and print results on the den" "Computer: show me favorite restaurant list with realtime estimated wait. Make reservation for two at 8:10. Charge bill to home account:" I want "the internet" to be that simple. I want it to stop being called "the internet". I want it to be so ubiquitous that it's just the way you get things done. Not just a way to do things. When it finally is, we'll watch the world kick into a future we've been wastefully squirreling away in fantasy novels. *Oh, and forced audio on any webpage for any damned reason whatever is more inappropriate than farting at the dinner table.
- orangecat 15y agoThis is isomorphic to artificial general intelligence, which will have implications way beyond making the Internet easier to use.
- pagekalisedown 15y agoI would deprecate all clear text protocols in favor or their secure counterparts. For example, HTTPS vs HTTP.
- jswinghammer 15y agoMore websites support SPDY: http://www.chromium.org/spdy http://www.chromium.org/spdy
- noonespecial 15y agoAs long as I'm completely absolved from proving feasibility of implementation... A reputation system for domains that are held for a long time and don't piss off users. Videolan.org should show a green dot by it's name. Getvlcforfree.com should have a blinking red one. You earn your domain's credibility over time. Browsers and search engines can be set just not to bother with karmas below 0 (or any given value). Don't put your password or cc number into a red-dot Internet site is advice my mom could handle.
- dfrankow 15y agoCould this be implemented by a third party (e.g., Google) with a browser plugin? In fact, e.g. http://www.siteadvisor.com/ http://www.siteadvisor.com/
- raldi 15y agoReverse the order of domain name components. Most significant should be on the left: com.ycombinator.news/blah/file
- hollerith 15y agothe Brits wrote them that way into the 1990s.
- waqf 15y agoyes! that was the original convention on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JANET http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JANET.
- lkrubner 15y agoThat is, of course, one of the regrets that Sir Tim Berners Lee has: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1220286/Sir-Tim-Berners-Lee-admits-forward-slashes-web-address-mistake.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1220286/Sir-T... "In the past, Sir Tim has also said that he would reverse the order of domain names, in order of size. This would mean that the web address for the bird guide on the RSPCA’s website, for example, would read: http:uk/org/rspca/wildlife/birdguide. "
- mvzink 15y agoCouldn't this be accomplished on the level of web browsers (and lower), just by rearranging the domain name before asking the DNS? It does seem very abritrary convention-y, you know.
- ehutch79 15y agoteach everyone how to speel
- enomar 15y agoThe document.cookie API has to be the worst API ever invented. I'd fix that and resolve the differences between JS and HTTP cookies.
- jcmhn 15y agoBrowser error messages and warning dialogs about POST data and mixed encrypted and un-encrypted data are worse than useless. Browsers need to be silent by default regarding things that users are not equipped to make decisions about.
- salsakran 15y agoThe DOM + Javascript manipulations of it. Specifically the zillion ways. Replaced with something else. Just about anything else, so long as it's a single clear standard.
- karthikm 15y agoNo more ads
- matts10 15y agosounds like a good way to ruin the web..
- slyall 15y agoI've like SRV records to work correctly. So URLs could be http://example.com http://example.com https://example.com https://example.com ftp://example.com skype://example.com mail://example.com and the correct servers (or aliases) would get pointed to. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SRV_record http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SRV_record
- hollerith 15y agoI'd like to be able to browse my favorite sites with a browser as secure, stable and responsive as Emacs or Vim -- even if this stable/responsive browser is unable to run 3-D immersive games and other desktop-like software -- and even if this browser does not run Javascript very well. (Of course this last part would work only if my favorite sites do not rely heavily on Javascript, which is currently the case.)
- dgallagher 15y agoWhen you visit a webpage to consume some content, such as a written article, a picture, or a video, that should be the main focal-point of whatever you're doing, and nothing else should be allowed to interrupt or delay you from consuming it. This includes pop-up/hover dialog boxes, advertisements which waist your time, webpages animating their skeleton while you're trying to read now-moving text, grouped-content unnecessarily split across multiple pages, etc... All of these things annoy users, and introduce inefficiency to the entire internet race. How many trillions of seconds are lost every year because of this? Do you think in 2050 people will put up with 30 second commercials before watching a 1 minute Hulu clip? Obviously a lot of these things exist to fund websites, and getting rid of them would destroy business models. There needs to be a way to de-annoy the internet, and compensate content providers for lost revenue. The number of solutions are plenty, but finding the best one will be tricky. It would have to be adopted by most of the internet to succeed, after-all. One idea might be to bill at the ISP-level. Each client pays ~$100/mo (made up number), where $50 of that goes to the ISP, and the other $50 goes into a bucket. Pending on what websites you visit online, and for how long, they earn a certain percentage of that bucket and get paid at the end of the month. Users who only want to pay $50/mo get the annoying internet. How would you do it?
- Zumzoa 15y agoLarge, reputable company which people already pay a monthly/annual fee to (such as an antivirus service) offers free no-script and ad-block install to customers; something continually updated and intelligently moderated to remove adverts except on sites the user green-lights. Animated and flash-based adverts are the primary targets, while text and static images are left alone. This encourages websites to use these forms of advertising. If a video requires an unskippable video longer than 5 seconds to play before the feature video, a pop-up box with a list of alternate links to the video is generated; again, to push advertisers into short or static advertising. The average user knows they need an antivirus program, and one brand in particular is recommended above all others because it helps keep the internet 'clean', in a sense.
- ujjvala 15y agoURL as only one word(alphabets) no use of dots, slashes and other funky characters, like while you want to go to google you simply type google
- pradeek 15y agoWeb Development. HTML and CSS weren't meant to do the things they are being used to now..
- noonespecial 15y agoTurn off all of that domain parking and domain sampling nonsense. If you're going to grab a domain and keep it from everyone else on the net who could use it from doing so, you should bloody well pay full price for it every year.
- privateparty 15y agoI think it is hilarious that no one has mentioned how Internet Explorer continues to ruin the web. It has wasted incalculable hours of time for developers because it is pre-installed and never uninstalled on every little minded client and supporting IT team. I don't know how many times a great web product I have been involved with has been presented to executives who are still using IE7. REALLY IE (in general)!? How can a person make any sort of creative decision when they themselves have the worst internet experience of all? Ridding the web of that awful browser and allowing technology grow and foster more inspiration is what we need. Without needing to support that god-awful wreck of a browser would allow developers and creatives a better space to work within to bring the web out of this lame web 2.0 era that will lurk around us for even more years. BAH
- pbreit 15y agoSome sort of seamless client certificate functionality to help out with authentication and identity. The "com.google" vs "google.com" is interesting since it obviously should be "com.google" except that "google.com" is better for presentation purposes.
- m0nastic 15y agoThe DOM. I'd take it out back and shoot it in the head.
- wlievens 15y agoCompliant browsers without any of the subtle differences and hacks. A performant Canvas implementation, available in 2005, would have been neat.
- wccrawford 15y agoUsage and improvement of open standards. We are seeing an increasing number of closed protocols that should be open, such as IP Telephony (video and audio) and instant messaging. All those services could work with each other and increase the size of the market, but instead they work against each other. If everyone used the same video calling protocol, it would be a lot more popular because the common Joe would be able to use any client they wanted and know it would work with whoever they want to call. Like a telephone. Could you imagine if every telephone network was different and you have to use a Sprint phone to talk to someone who only owned a Sprint phone? It's ludicrous.
- d_rwin 15y agoA relative perspective on print design publishing to internet platform: www.psfk.com/2011/07/cory-doctorow-in-connected-age-what-role-for-a-publisher-today.html platform agnostic content is losing the relevance. The question- Content platform will bring the change? Does projects like percolate.com prevail against social interaction platforms? Up against: blog.comscore.com/2011/06/facebook_linkedin_twitter_tumblr.html