undefined | Better HN

0 pointsmynameislegion10y ago0 comments

> Firefox with NoScript cannot display Blogger pages; the Tor Browser with high security cannot display Blogger pages.

These configurations disable universal features, so the premise holds.

> The Web is, fundamentally, about resources — documents — and their state, not about behaviour.

Yes, in 1990. Also, you choose to conflate "resources" with "documents".

> w3m doesn't. lynx doesn't. links doesn't. elinks doesn't

These are browsers that choose parts of the standard hodge-podge and they suffer for it by not being able to display all pages.

I'm not arguing the situation is great or that you should like it. Hell, I don't even like it. Your criticisms of JS are valid. But your expectations of how the Web should work are _broken_ and they would have been broken 20 years ago. Whether it's 1996 or 2016, the only way your reality could come true is if there was an HTML-first programming style enforced universally. It's so impractical it's barely worth mentioning, so why evangelize?

0 comments

2 comments · 1 top-level

zeveb10y ago· 1 in thread

> These configurations disable universal features, so the premise holds.

> These are browsers that choose parts of the standard hodge-podge and they suffer for it by not being able to display all pages.

So, the Web is not broken because all browsers which use a feature are able to display pages which use a feature — anyone who disables that feature is responsible for breakage due to pages using it, and anyone using a browser which doesn't support that feature is responsible for choosing such a browser.

Your logic would justify every vendor-lock-in attempt from Apple & Microsoft; it would support the idea that all the Internet's IE.

> But your expectations of how the Web should work are _broken_

No they most definitely are not. My expectations of how the Web should work are based on mathematical truth. REST is symbolic manipulation: it's correct in the way that only math can be.

> Whether it's 1996 or 2016, the only way your reality could come true is if there was an HTML-first programming style enforced universally.

Not HTML-first, resource-first. Figure out what your resources are, figure out how they are related, figure out what behaviour makes sense, then wire it all together. Once you have all your resources (images, HTML, whatever) working well, then feel free to wire it up with JavaScript.

HTML's power is that it is declarative, not imperative. It shares that character with plain text: when you read my words you do not give me root access to your brain. No-one should be forced to execute unknown, newly-served code in order to read a document.

When you require JavaScript, you break the Web. Please don't.

mynameislegionOP10y ago

> Your logic would justify every vendor-lock-in attempt from Apple & Microsoft; it would support the idea that all the Internet's IE.

Except in this case the "vendors" are the makers of every popular browser and the standards body governing Web technologies. Not exactly apples-to-apples.

> My expectations of how the Web should work are based on mathematical truth. REST is symbolic manipulation: it's correct in the way that only math can be.

Right, a programming style. Your 'mathematical truth' is arbitrary given current web standards. The lack of it does not break interlinking, which, by your own admission, is what the Web is about.

> Not HTML-first, resource-first. [...]

You didn't actually address the fact that you would need to have everyone follow this style. You expect the Web to work in a way that can never be enforced; that is a broken expectation. I agree, this is the way it should be done but it's completely obvious it won't ever happen. The incentive to follow that style is no where near enough to generate any sort of defacto standard. So why evangelize?

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse