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The reason that the web is popular is because it supports these features for design-delivery and application delivery. You could probably implement an online t
by jiggy2011 14y ago
The reason that the web is popular is because it supports these features for design-delivery and application delivery.
You could probably implement an online text reading system with basic markup and hyperlinks over a weekend, but the problem would be that nobody would use it because it would be seen as strictly inferior to the web.
- hollerith 14y agoI hope you are not setting up a false dichotomy in your mind between the web as it is now and an online text-reading system with no design touches. I would want this "text-reading system" for example to have something like CSS. The difference would be that instead of creating ever-more powerful versions of CSS and Javascript, the architects and implementors of the text-reading system would pay attention to gotchas like the gotcha described in the OP (changing browsers so that what is copied into the clipboard is exactly the visible text the user has highlighted).
- jiggy2011 14y agoThing is that the ever more complicated web is a response to demand, from developers and from users. If at some point we had said "the web is powerful enough now, let's stop" then inevitably somebody like Microsoft or Google would have developed some other system that incorporated everything that the web does + extra stuff. In fact that's basically what stuff like Flash/ActiveX was in the late 90s. Then gradually people would have switched to this new thing and the web would have gone the way of gopher and usenet. Of course, if we could have redesigned the web from scratch right now with all the benefit of hindsight we could have (in theory) designed a better system. But as with most open things they rely on evolution rather than intelligent design.