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Get rid of most of JS to prevent 'appification' and keep the focus document centered. Edit: I think this would result in protocols over walled gardens. The pro

Get rid of most of JS to prevent 'appification' and keep the focus document centered. Edit: I think this would result in protocols over walled gardens. The problem is JS makes HTTP/HTML everything to everyone.

zarzavat 5y ago
Be careful what you wish for. JS and HTML5 is why we don't have Adobe Flash anymore. There was a whole period in the noughties when web interactivity sucked and so external plugins like Flash, Silverlight and Java applets took up the slack. The alternative to JS is not "no scripting", it's websites that only function with proprietary plugins installed.
- throwaway81523 5y ago
  > The alternative to JS is not "no scripting", it's websites that only function with proprietary plugins installed. Yes and those were websites that for the most part nobody gave a crap about. The important sites weren't willing to dump so many of their viewers. Heck, even post-JS, the web didn't suck so badly until the option of shutting off JS was removed from browser UI's. Before that, enough users shut off JS that sites wanting wide audiences had to be able to function without it.
  - teaearlgraycold 5y ago
    No one cared about YouTube? No one cared about Netflix?
    - throwaway81523 5y ago
      People were willing to set exceptions for sites they thought were important. Not important AND requires JS => bye.
      - vkou 5y ago
        I'm not sure the likes of YouTube and Netflix need further privileges compared to the rest of the web.
        throwaway81523 5y ago
        It's not that they needed privileges, it's that people were willing to grant them. They alternatively would have been willing to install desktop applications, like they do now for Skype, Slack, and a few other services, but not for random web sites that they don't deem to be worth it.
  - xeromal 5y ago
    I think you're underestimating the amount of sites that had flash.
    - chrisbuc 5y ago
      Yes, even getting copy /paste functionality to allow a user to click a button to copy a piece of text needed a bit of flash. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6355300/copy-to-clipboard-without-flash https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6355300/copy-to-clipboar...
- cm2187 5y ago
  There is a lot of stuff that html should do straight out of the box and that should never have required javascript, like form validation, autocomplete, date pickers, video streaming, etc. Javascript would have been limited to actual SPA instead of being required today even to render static content.
  - cookie_monsta 5y ago
    > form validation, autocomplete, date pickers, video streaming I'm confused by this comment - HTML5 does do all that out of the box. Are you saying it should have done it from the start? I don't get the bit about JS being required to render static content either...
    - cm2187 5y ago
      Yes, people started using javascript for basic things that should always have been part of the html syntax (when the web became dynamic which was the late 90s), to make up for what wasn’t in html.
- DeathArrow 5y ago
  It's not about proprietary vs open, it's about not mixing document rendering with code execution. Should MS Word and Adobe PDF also execute code? Should I only be able to run an application only by executing it in MS Word and Adobe PDF reader?
  - capableweb 5y ago
    > Should MS Word and Adobe PDF also execute code? Oh boy do I have news for you! https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/applying-actions-scripts-pdfs.html https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/applying-actions-scrip... Not sure about Word as I barely know it, but I'm sure you can execute some sort of code. If not JS, probably VBA or other Microsoft language.
- jeroenhd 5y ago
  In my opinion, HTML5 and Flash have always served different audiences. Flash got axed because the way it was implemented into clients was wasteful, insecure and a bad user experience in general. Same with Java; you can't make the same tools that Java applets once provided through the browser because of the browser's security model, so I'd say the two never competed. Making a quick interactive animation that works across all kinds of resolutions and sizes was trivial in Flash, but in HTML5 this is a challenge. HTML5 and friends fixed the problems that made web developers grasp at Flash for, like file uploads, animations and predictable interaction with the mouse and keyboard. These features were often already possible in browsers, but Flash was the only tool that made them appear the same in every browser available. They didn't replace the flash scene for games, interactive simulations and other online experiences. The Flash game scene pretty much died when Flash started getting blocked by Chrome, with only a small subset of the community fragmenting and finding their way to frameworks like Unity Web and its then plentiful competitors with high learning curves because they were designed for the "real deal" game developers rather than self-taught animators that turned game dev. I think JS is a necessity for the web to exist today, but we need an alternative for what once was Flash, Java, Shockwave and more. Too many features have been shoved into HTML and Javascript that have no business there, left to be abused by trackers and hackers alike.
dredmorbius 5y ago
That seems to be Web-specific, not general to the Internert as a whole.
nyanpasu64 5y ago
Encourage (coerce) writers of blog-like content to use a simplified format closer to RSS embedded articles or Gemini, making reader mode Just Work instead of relying on hacks to identify the portion of a deeply nested table/div/CSS soup that corresponds to an article. And replace CSS's hierarchical ruleset with a declarative format with a finite number of "axes of customization" (page background/foreground, font, size, spacing, header font and size, code bg/fg color, font, and size) which can be individually overriden or turned off altogether to create a "reader mode" experience.
mkl 5y ago
> I think this would result in protocols over walled gardens. I don't see how it would. I think it would have led to something equivalent to JavaScript, because that's exactly the route we took to get to here. The WWW started as just documents, and there were plenty of protocols for other internet things. Businesses and consumers (and almost everyone else) want more than documents, and avoiding requiring people to install and run a separate client for every purpose (and requiring developers to build said cross-platform clients) led to plug-ins and then capable JavaScript.
powersnail 5y ago
I feel that it will just result in more walled gardens. Eventually, someone would try to ship everything to everyone through the internet, and they'll figure out a way. It's all just byte streams anyway. Perhaps something like java applet or Flash, or some worse version of "Click this to install our plugin".
anaganisk 5y ago
Only to have native apps, that abuse your privacy more?

zarzavat 5y ago

Be careful what you wish for. JS and HTML5 is why we don't have Adobe Flash anymore. There was a whole period in the noughties when web interactivity sucked and so external plugins like Flash, Silverlight and Java applets took up the slack. The alternative to JS is not "no scripting", it's websites that only function with proprietary plugins installed.

throwaway81523 5y ago
> The alternative to JS is not "no scripting", it's websites that only function with proprietary plugins installed. Yes and those were websites that for the most part nobody gave a crap about. The important sites weren't willing to dump so many of their viewers. Heck, even post-JS, the web didn't suck so badly until the option of shutting off JS was removed from browser UI's. Before that, enough users shut off JS that sites wanting wide audiences had to be able to function without it.
- teaearlgraycold 5y ago
  No one cared about YouTube? No one cared about Netflix?
  - throwaway81523 5y ago
    People were willing to set exceptions for sites they thought were important. Not important AND requires JS => bye.
    - vkou 5y ago
      I'm not sure the likes of YouTube and Netflix need further privileges compared to the rest of the web.
      - throwaway81523 5y ago
        It's not that they needed privileges, it's that people were willing to grant them. They alternatively would have been willing to install desktop applications, like they do now for Skype, Slack, and a few other services, but not for random web sites that they don't deem to be worth it.
- xeromal 5y ago
  I think you're underestimating the amount of sites that had flash.
  - chrisbuc 5y ago
    Yes, even getting copy /paste functionality to allow a user to click a button to copy a piece of text needed a bit of flash. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6355300/copy-to-clipboard-without-flash https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6355300/copy-to-clipboar...
cm2187 5y ago
There is a lot of stuff that html should do straight out of the box and that should never have required javascript, like form validation, autocomplete, date pickers, video streaming, etc. Javascript would have been limited to actual SPA instead of being required today even to render static content.
- cookie_monsta 5y ago
  > form validation, autocomplete, date pickers, video streaming I'm confused by this comment - HTML5 does do all that out of the box. Are you saying it should have done it from the start? I don't get the bit about JS being required to render static content either...
  - cm2187 5y ago
    Yes, people started using javascript for basic things that should always have been part of the html syntax (when the web became dynamic which was the late 90s), to make up for what wasn’t in html.
DeathArrow 5y ago
It's not about proprietary vs open, it's about not mixing document rendering with code execution. Should MS Word and Adobe PDF also execute code? Should I only be able to run an application only by executing it in MS Word and Adobe PDF reader?
- capableweb 5y ago
  > Should MS Word and Adobe PDF also execute code? Oh boy do I have news for you! https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/applying-actions-scripts-pdfs.html https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/applying-actions-scrip... Not sure about Word as I barely know it, but I'm sure you can execute some sort of code. If not JS, probably VBA or other Microsoft language.
jeroenhd 5y ago
In my opinion, HTML5 and Flash have always served different audiences. Flash got axed because the way it was implemented into clients was wasteful, insecure and a bad user experience in general. Same with Java; you can't make the same tools that Java applets once provided through the browser because of the browser's security model, so I'd say the two never competed. Making a quick interactive animation that works across all kinds of resolutions and sizes was trivial in Flash, but in HTML5 this is a challenge. HTML5 and friends fixed the problems that made web developers grasp at Flash for, like file uploads, animations and predictable interaction with the mouse and keyboard. These features were often already possible in browsers, but Flash was the only tool that made them appear the same in every browser available. They didn't replace the flash scene for games, interactive simulations and other online experiences. The Flash game scene pretty much died when Flash started getting blocked by Chrome, with only a small subset of the community fragmenting and finding their way to frameworks like Unity Web and its then plentiful competitors with high learning curves because they were designed for the "real deal" game developers rather than self-taught animators that turned game dev. I think JS is a necessity for the web to exist today, but we need an alternative for what once was Flash, Java, Shockwave and more. Too many features have been shoved into HTML and Javascript that have no business there, left to be abused by trackers and hackers alike.

dredmorbius 5y ago

That seems to be Web-specific, not general to the Internert as a whole.

nyanpasu64 5y ago

Encourage (coerce) writers of blog-like content to use a simplified format closer to RSS embedded articles or Gemini, making reader mode Just Work instead of relying on hacks to identify the portion of a deeply nested table/div/CSS soup that corresponds to an article. And replace CSS's hierarchical ruleset with a declarative format with a finite number of "axes of customization" (page background/foreground, font, size, spacing, header font and size, code bg/fg color, font, and size) which can be individually overriden or turned off altogether to create a "reader mode" experience.

mkl 5y ago

> I think this would result in protocols over walled gardens. I don't see how it would. I think it would have led to something equivalent to JavaScript, because that's exactly the route we took to get to here. The WWW started as just documents, and there were plenty of protocols for other internet things. Businesses and consumers (and almost everyone else) want more than documents, and avoiding requiring people to install and run a separate client for every purpose (and requiring developers to build said cross-platform clients) led to plug-ins and then capable JavaScript.

powersnail 5y ago

I feel that it will just result in more walled gardens. Eventually, someone would try to ship everything to everyone through the internet, and they'll figure out a way. It's all just byte streams anyway. Perhaps something like java applet or Flash, or some worse version of "Click this to install our plugin".

anaganisk 5y ago

Only to have native apps, that abuse your privacy more?