4 ms·

Ah. A project that actually changed the world for the better. Breath of fresh air after all the coverage on FTX.

imiric 4y ago
And yet it never completed the planned second phase, "allowing the users to add new material". I think this was a crucial misstep of the early days, when the main focus was to build the best browser. This made the web entirely consumer focused from the start, which gave way for silos and advertisers to take over. Imagine how different the modern web would've been if consuming content was as easy as publishing it, from the very beginning. There would've likely been tools built to give users control of the data they share publicly, and we could've ended up with a pull model, where companies _request_ access to user data, instead of there being massive central hubs everyone visits, that profit by tracking users, hoarding their data, and selling it on shady gray markets. There have been some attempts over the years to do this. Most notably Opera with Unite in 2009, which failed miserably, and more recently the fediverse, which has yet to gain mainstream traction. I don't think that the technology is the problem in either case. It's just that the consumer web has so much momentum now, that there are no supporting services to allow the tech to propagate (e.g. most people still have asymmetrical internet connections, or NAT'd routers, which makes sharing difficult). And the UX needs to be on par with modern web browsers, which is a tall order, given the few decades of head start browsers have had. I think we're just too late for that original vision to happen, but it's great reading that it was planned from the very beginning.
- ipython 4y ago
  Au contraire. The early web was chock full of original user content. People with shell access published all sorts of stuff in their Unix home public_html directory. Those who did not had geocities accounts. Today, it’s easier than ever to publish. Anyone who wants to create content can do so.
  - imiric 4y ago
    > People with shell access published all sorts of stuff in their Unix home public_html directory. Those who did not had geocities accounts. Exactly my point. Only technical users knew how to publish, and those who didn't had to use 3rd party publishers. Which is still the case today. What I'm talking about is making publishing web content as easy as consuming it. Publishing without a 3rd party to generate and host the content is still as difficult as ever. The modern web is entirely consumer focused, where large companies have stepped in to fill the gap of facilitating non-technical users to publish content. Imagine if we had a tool to do that that was as ubiquitous as the web browser is today. From these early design documents, it's clear that was the intention, but for some reason, it never gained traction.
    - ipython 4y ago
      Geocities and other public sites like it filled the void for people who did not have access to a shell account or didn’t have the skills to ftp files to one. As for html editors, frontpage, HoTMetaL, and eventually even Netscape itself (in version 3) were very popular wysiwyg html editors released in the mid to late 1990s. There is still innovation in this space as evidenced in this very thread! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33577086 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33577086 No non technical user wants to think about hosting. Especially in the mid 1990s when home internet was exclusively dialup, what value does holding your one phone line hostage 24x7 to host a web server provide you? So yes hosting has been and will always be the playground of the enthusiast and commercial entities. Self hosting made sense for academics as they had access to free high speed internet, free electricity and free high speed workstations, as well as the technical know how or easy access to those who could help.
      - imiric 4y ago
        > Geocities and other public sites like it filled the void for people who did not have access to a shell account or didn’t have the skills to ftp files to one. Again, you're echoing my point, while trying to argue against it(?). WYSIWYG editors came too late, and were woefully insufficient, far from user friendly, and still required technical know-how. A testament to that is the fact they died out, and were replaced by site builders and hosters, which still exist today. > No non technical user wants to think about hosting. Right. The fact "hosting" is in the modern vernacular is an indication that this is a failure of early web designers. End users shouldn't have to think about HTML and "hosting" content, just as they don't think about HTML and consuming it today. A web browser is simply a tool they use to get "online", which is only a part of what's actually possible with the web. > Especially in the mid 1990s when home internet was exclusively dialup I agree with you there. The infrastructure didn't exist for everyone to run a web server from home. But the web is what drove ISPs and the general move towards broadband. Had there been an early push towards self-hosting as much as there was for consuming, you can be certain that ISPs would've been forced to deliver a service that was equally capable of serving content, and technology would've been created to work around the limitations of dialup. Maybe we would've seen earlier broadband adoption, or at the very least, symmetric connections would've been standardized. Besides, none of that was relevant at the turn of the century, when broadband was seeing mass adoption. If self-hosting hadn't taken off by then, that could've been the turning point. But by that time, tech giants were starting to be established, and millions of people were getting online to an already established web. Regardless, there's not much point in discussing _why_ this didn't happen. I'm only lamenting it didn't, and theorizing about what might've been.

And yet it never completed the planned second phase, "allowing the users to add new material". I think this was a crucial misstep of the early days, when the main focus was to build the best browser. This made the web entirely consumer focused from the start, which gave way for silos and advertisers to take over. Imagine how different the modern web would've been if consuming content was as easy as publishing it, from the very beginning. There would've likely been tools built to give users control of the data they share publicly, and we could've ended up with a pull model, where companies _request_ access to user data, instead of there being massive central hubs everyone visits, that profit by tracking users, hoarding their data, and selling it on shady gray markets. There have been some attempts over the years to do this. Most notably Opera with Unite in 2009, which failed miserably, and more recently the fediverse, which has yet to gain mainstream traction. I don't think that the technology is the problem in either case. It's just that the consumer web has so much momentum now, that there are no supporting services to allow the tech to propagate (e.g. most people still have asymmetrical internet connections, or NAT'd routers, which makes sharing difficult). And the UX needs to be on par with modern web browsers, which is a tall order, given the few decades of head start browsers have had. I think we're just too late for that original vision to happen, but it's great reading that it was planned from the very beginning.

ipython 4y ago
Au contraire. The early web was chock full of original user content. People with shell access published all sorts of stuff in their Unix home public_html directory. Those who did not had geocities accounts. Today, it’s easier than ever to publish. Anyone who wants to create content can do so.
- imiric 4y ago
  > People with shell access published all sorts of stuff in their Unix home public_html directory. Those who did not had geocities accounts. Exactly my point. Only technical users knew how to publish, and those who didn't had to use 3rd party publishers. Which is still the case today. What I'm talking about is making publishing web content as easy as consuming it. Publishing without a 3rd party to generate and host the content is still as difficult as ever. The modern web is entirely consumer focused, where large companies have stepped in to fill the gap of facilitating non-technical users to publish content. Imagine if we had a tool to do that that was as ubiquitous as the web browser is today. From these early design documents, it's clear that was the intention, but for some reason, it never gained traction.
  - ipython 4y ago
    Geocities and other public sites like it filled the void for people who did not have access to a shell account or didn’t have the skills to ftp files to one. As for html editors, frontpage, HoTMetaL, and eventually even Netscape itself (in version 3) were very popular wysiwyg html editors released in the mid to late 1990s. There is still innovation in this space as evidenced in this very thread! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33577086 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33577086 No non technical user wants to think about hosting. Especially in the mid 1990s when home internet was exclusively dialup, what value does holding your one phone line hostage 24x7 to host a web server provide you? So yes hosting has been and will always be the playground of the enthusiast and commercial entities. Self hosting made sense for academics as they had access to free high speed internet, free electricity and free high speed workstations, as well as the technical know how or easy access to those who could help.
    - imiric 4y ago
      > Geocities and other public sites like it filled the void for people who did not have access to a shell account or didn’t have the skills to ftp files to one. Again, you're echoing my point, while trying to argue against it(?). WYSIWYG editors came too late, and were woefully insufficient, far from user friendly, and still required technical know-how. A testament to that is the fact they died out, and were replaced by site builders and hosters, which still exist today. > No non technical user wants to think about hosting. Right. The fact "hosting" is in the modern vernacular is an indication that this is a failure of early web designers. End users shouldn't have to think about HTML and "hosting" content, just as they don't think about HTML and consuming it today. A web browser is simply a tool they use to get "online", which is only a part of what's actually possible with the web. > Especially in the mid 1990s when home internet was exclusively dialup I agree with you there. The infrastructure didn't exist for everyone to run a web server from home. But the web is what drove ISPs and the general move towards broadband. Had there been an early push towards self-hosting as much as there was for consuming, you can be certain that ISPs would've been forced to deliver a service that was equally capable of serving content, and technology would've been created to work around the limitations of dialup. Maybe we would've seen earlier broadband adoption, or at the very least, symmetric connections would've been standardized. Besides, none of that was relevant at the turn of the century, when broadband was seeing mass adoption. If self-hosting hadn't taken off by then, that could've been the turning point. But by that time, tech giants were starting to be established, and millions of people were getting online to an already established web. Regardless, there's not much point in discussing _why_ this didn't happen. I'm only lamenting it didn't, and theorizing about what might've been.