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Is Today's Web Still 'the Web'?
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Thu Jul 03, 2008 11:00 AM
from the worth-thinking-about dept.
from the worth-thinking-about dept.
snydeq writes "Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister raises questions regarding the transforming nature of the Web now that Tim Berners-Lee's early vision has been supplanted by today's much more complex model. AJAX, Google Web Toolkit, Flash and Silverlight all have McAllister asking, 'Is [the Web] still the Web if you can't navigate directly to specific content? Is it still the Web if the content can't be indexed and searched? Is it still the Web if you can only view the application on certain clients or devices? Is it still the Web if you can't view source?' Such questions bely a much bigger question for Web developers, McAllister writes. If today's RIAs no longer resemble the 'Web,' then should we be shoehorning these apps into the Web's infrastructure, or is the problem that the client platforms simply aren't evolving fast enough to meet our needs?" If the point of 'The Web' is to allow direct links between any 2 points, is today's web something entirely different?
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I know it's still the web 'cause it still has porn (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I know it's still the web 'cause it still has p (Score:5, Insightful)
You should have been modded insightful rather than funny because to most people that is what and how the Internet works. Not just porn, but as long as they can go get whatever it is that they like, the Internet is working and they are happy with it. Few users of the Internet think about whether they are on the WWW or the Internet. To them they are the same thing. Some of us remember their first viewing of Mosaic. We remember the Internet before the widespread use of HTML.
As long as we can go online and get the information that we want for free, the Internet will be alive, at least as it is understood to be so by most of it's users. It doesn't matter if that is porn or the latest crap from faux news, or blueprints for the moon lander or thesis papers for last years PhD candidates in robotics theory.
Parent
What web? (Score:5, Insightful)
Fluff or content? (Score:5, Insightful)
You have two options:
1) Pages that provides information
2) Fluff
99.9% of the sites that provide information are static text pages with a bit of html mark up and most of the rest is fluff.
Re:Fluff or content? (Score:4, Insightful)
Sad but true. Fluff is pretty much all the "new technologies" are about.
Let's be blunt here. Was it so much "harder" to navigate a page before the advent of Flash? Or did a page offer less information? 99% (at least) of Flash in existance is, as you put it, fluff. I'd call it waste of bandwidth.
What does Flash accomplish? There are basically 3 main applications on "the web" today:
1. To get Ad-Spam past blockers.
2. To hide there's no content between all those glorious special effects (for reference, watch a movie).
3. Games
Basically, there is very little content (aside of information that can only be relayed sensibly through movies) that cannot be done in plain ol' HTML. You can't even tell me that those Flash pages are easier to navigate. First, navigating a webpage was never so hard that you couldn't figure it out in 5 seconds, and second, those 5 seconds are wasted on a Flash page with the time it takes to load the crap.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Flash is not a particularly "new technology".
It was being widely used for movie and design agency websites 10 years ago. It's only a couple years newer than HTML itself.
Slashdot loves to yelp "oh noes flash!", but to a significant degree it's actually less popular as a web design element than it was 5 years ago.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure, videos on the web are useful, but there are better ways of delivering them than flash. For instance you can provide a direct HTTP link to the video which your browser will then pass to your favorite media player.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Using flash to view videos is the wrong solution, for the same reason that using flash to view images is the wrong solution. The right solution is for us to standardize on a few formats that will be supported by every browser.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm currently studying New Media Design, which is proving to be largely about putting as much fluff into pages as possible. The more I look at Flash websites, the more I'm amazed at how little content there often is, and how frustrating they can be compared to a plain HTML page. Okay, the graphics are awesome, but I don't really like the trade-off with usability on many sites.
I took Web Design and Implementation recently, and I was appalled at the reactions of my teammates on our term project. Everyone w
Depends... (Score:4, Insightful)
From my mother's perspective, my boss's perspective, and 90% of people who are not concerned about the actual way data is transferred, it will be The Web until something supplants it on a wholesale basis. It doesn't matter if they think they're Surfing, Instant Messaging, FTPing, AJAXing, or
So it depends. Given our forum, yes, the web is probably not the same as it was. For the majority, they don't know the difference.
So the question is, could we continue to have this interoperability if we more frequently used different protocols, technologies, and backbones for different uses? (eg. if we took AJAX/online apps off the "Web" and put them on their own infrastructure to keep the "Web" fully indexable/searchable)
More mainstream... more useless.. (Score:5, Insightful)
The more mainstream the web becomes, the more bullshit we have to sort through... the more useless it becomes. There used to be a banner ad. Now there's a banner, links on the left, links on the right, popups, flash over the actual text, sound, video, and 10x as many pages all with the same shit to click through just to get the same content. And, we're already hearing about ISPs adding their own shit to our shitty internet experience.
It doesn't make any fucking sense that an article that could be entirely scrolled through takes 27 clicks to read.. It doesn't make any fucking sense that clicking 'yes' one time on the wrong thing can allow malicious software to install itself (that is your fault, microsoft). It doesn't make any fucking sense that our own damn web clients allow the developer to disable right-click on a page. It doesn't make any fucking sense that I have to watch a 30-second advertisement to watch a 10-second video clip.
The web is quickly turning into television - a bunch of stupid avertisements created by stupid people geared for stupid consumers. The web is still way better than anything else we got.
google (Score:3, Interesting)
In the sites I visit, it's still pretty rare to see content presented in flash that would more appropriately be presented in html. I assume this is because people want to get indexed by google and have a high page rank, and they know they won't get indexed if it's in flash. If that's the case, then it's actually a bad thing that google is going to start indexing flash content.
As far as silverlight, what are the chances that it will succeed? I'm optimistic that it will fail. Although Windows has a high market share, especially in the US, IE doesn't have anywhere near that market share. There are entire countries in Europe where Firefox is the majority browser. I don't see how any web developer could commit themselves to silverlight when it means locking out so many users.
Re:google (Score:5, Interesting)
Fixed that for you. Sadly there are those who will use Silverlight regardless of the hassle it causes users. MLB.com is one example. In their retarded drive to drm their (free) video content on their site, they use Silverlight. Despite being a paying MLB.TV subscriber, I cannot get any of their video to work on Firefox whatsoever on my windows box, I have to use IE -- it is the ONLY site I use IE for. And nothing at all will play it on my G4 iMac. Not Safari, not Firefox -- nothing.
If you are developer that works for a company that doesn't give flying fuck, about its customers choices then you'll cheerfully use Silverlight. And it's these developers that are the real enemy, they are the ones "only obeying orders". They need to be condemned more. They can stop this -- but they are cowards, and just as unethical as the suits they work for.
Parent
No, it's the Web 2.0 (Score:4, Funny)
1 link? (Score:5, Insightful)
When did we ever just have 1 link between 2 points? It's always been complex, unsettled, and a bit anarchistic. This is just the newest facet of it.
The change in the internet is continuous. This is not something different, this is the way it always has been.
Pointless pontification (Score:5, Insightful)
Does this really matter at all? For anything?
Re:Pointless pontification (Score:4, Insightful)
This reminds me of a quote:
It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious.
-- Alfred North Whitehead
If you don't care about these distinctions, don't be a computer scientist. Those of us who care about making computation easier, faster, and more useful should pay attention. Sometimes the niggling little details you don't care about are the key to understanding all of it.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Please don't take that too seriously; as I'm sure you've seen us EEs love to kid CS people and vice versa. :)
To be fair to computer scientists, in my experience it is a rare CS who looks down his nose at a traditional engineer. But don't worry, I don't really have a problem with what engineers think about computer scientists, because computer science has an effect on everything that we do in modern society, just as traditional engineering does. The fruits of computer science have made modern engineering tools possible, made the web possible, online banking and buying, and so on.
I remember when I heard that UPS
Re:I always thought... (Score:5, Insightful)
No, that would be the Internet. It's very important not to confuse the two.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The worst part is, here in Québec people keep calling them "Site internet" because they seem to fear the english word "Web" in "Site Web".
Stupid Office de la langue française,
Re:I always thought... (Score:5, Informative)
The good news is that Web sites are at Internet sites. Internet site isn't strictly a wrong word, it just also applies to sites that serve only FTP, but no HTTP, and so forth. It's just a less specific term.
Parent
Re:I always thought... (Score:4, Funny)
Fixé ça pour vous.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Actually the name is "Office de la langue française", so me saying "stupid Office de la langue française" is right.
I know you were trying to be funny, but you changed their name ("office" is in french so you can't translate it to "bureau"), so it doesn't work like you intended. :p
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
No, that would be the Internet. It's very important not to confuse the two.
No, that would be MSN, AOL, Yahoo, Google, etc. The Internet was a neat idea but has a crappy ad campaign.
Obligatory (Score:5, Funny)
YMBNH.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I always thought the Web was lots of computers all networked together: HTML clients and HTML servers.
Fixed that for you. Kinda breaks your argument when you add accuracy, eh?
Re:I always thought... (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're going to nitpick, probably a good idea to learn about the difference between HTML and HTTP first, eh?
Parent
Re:I always thought... (Score:5, Informative)
...and to understand that FTP resources are also part of the web.
According to W3C, the web is "the universe of network-accessible information, the embodiment of human knowledge." [w3.org]
Some of the stuff under question is applications for using information, not information itself, and thus isn't really part of the "web" in that sense. A bunch more - perhaps the majority - neither contains nor uses actual information, except in the information-theoretic sense in which noise has more "information" than signal...
Parent
Re:I always thought... (Score:5, Funny)
Every time you use the phrase "fixed that for you," God makes you look like a tool.
Parent
Re:I always thought... (Score:5, Funny)
God is not required for that step. :-P
Cheers
Parent
Re:I always thought... (Score:4, Funny)
Except for 12 steps -- God (or a reasonable facsimile) is a requirement there. :-P
Cheers
Parent
Re:I always thought... (Score:4, Funny)
God gets mod points? We're screeeewed!
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
God gets mod points? We're screeeewed!
Yeah; he's the only person who can mod something up to +6 or down to -2 ("Heretical").
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Who on Earth modded the "fixed it for you" asshole "Informative"? The answers to both our questions are no doubt similar.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
For instance, I don't think most people refer to sending email as using the web.
You must not get out much.
Re:I always thought... (Score:5, Funny)
The people I deal with have the reverse problem: Internet Explorer* is "The Internet". Outlook (or even worse, OE) is "The Email", which is completely separate from "The Internet". Even if they learn to use a webmail service, they assume that Internet Explorer magically takes them off of "The Internet" and on to "The Email".
If you asked them what "the Web" is, they'd look confused for a minute, then say "oh, that's The Internet."
*And, of course, "The Internet" is disconnected from their computer whenever they close Internet Explorer.
Parent
Re:I always thought... (Score:4, Funny)
One user impressed me, by saying he quit using Microsoft products. Then he explained that he was using "Foxfire for XP".
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
"FoxFire" is a pet peeve of mine for some reason. I set up my father-in-law's computer with FireFox (for increased security over IE and since I think it's just a better browser overall) and he insists on calling it "FoxFire." No matter how many times I correct him, he keeps mangling the name.
Of course, he also talks about sending us an "e-mail" while using Instant Messenger. When I try to correct him, he says "well, it's all the same." (*MUST... KEEP... FROM... LECTURING... FATHER-IN-LAW... ABOUT WHY TH
Re:I always thought... (Score:5, Insightful)
We have a winner. AJAX applications do not "break the web". They create richer documents and points of interest on the web. You can still link from one HTML application to the next, so the hypertext functionality is not lost.
What *is* a challenge is to find good methods of indexing these richer HTML applications for purposes of searching, indexing, and cataloging. Since these applications can pull and display information in a variety of ways, search engines are presented with a challenge when they treat the application as a simple textual document.
Parent
Re:I always thought... (Score:5, Insightful)
We have a winner. AJAX applications do not "break the web". They create richer documents and points of interest on the web. You can still link from one HTML application to the next, so the hypertext functionality is not lost.
Not always. There are LOTS of sites on the web that you can not link to a specific page of information. Any attempt to try just links you to a home page which might be 40 clicks away from the information you want to link to.
Hypertext is almost useless if I can only link to the front door of an application or website.
search engines are presented with a challenge
Not just search engines. Regular people looking to send a link to their parents, or including one on their blog or website find it challenging too...
you used to be able to just send a link, now its... send a link to a starting page with instructions... ok, go there, then click enter, halfway down hit search, enter Q44425466, then submit, then 2/3rds of the way down click download, then 'scroll' through the license and tick of 'Accept', then 'Download', then choose a mirror, then uncheck 'install yahoo toolbar', and 'send me the newsletter', then 'download', and it should start.
That pile of needless bullshit navigation is precisely what hypertext was supposed to allow you to avoid.
Parent
Re:I always thought... (Score:4, Interesting)
and, sadly, what most hosts and advertising revenue driven sites don't want you to be able to avoid.
The more ads they can shove in your way and get you to accidentally click.. the more malware they can infect your computer with.. the more money they make.
Parent
Re:it might be more complex now (Score:5, Funny)
theres still more porn on the inter tubes than one can shake a stick at
When referencing porn, could you PLEASE choose a better expression?
Parent
Re:Oh No! (Score:5, Funny)
Complex porn? You mean like porn with things like sqrt(-boobs)?
Parent
Re:Oh No! (Score:4, Funny)
You're going to need some real porn to go with that. As it stands, it's just imaginary.
Parent
Re:Oh No! (Score:4, Funny)
log(boobs) == scheisseporn/cleveland steamer.
ln(boobs) == amateur scheisseporn/cleveland steamer.
(boobs)^2 == lesbian porn.
1/(boobs) == acrobatic porn.
Parent
Re:Dumb question... (Score:5, Insightful)
The web is an interconnected collection of documents. You're confusing the web with the internet.
The web is being destroyed because it's being monetized. To monetize something is to assert control over it, then exploit that control. This is the antithesis of what made the web powerful in the first place.
Hell, look at Google. "Organize the worlds information" was a very lofty goal. What did they do once they got there? They sell the right to lead users away from the information they're looking for towards professionally written propaganda, and they're given a disgusting amount of power and influence as a reward.
As far as I'm concerned, the promise of the web died when we decided there wasn't anything wrong with giving citizens dynamic IPs that they can't use to self-publish and selling those IPs to large corporate interests.
Big Money wanted the Internet to be a Television, and lazy short-sighted sheep rolled over and let it happen. It's old news, and discussing the technical particulars this late in the game is kind of irrelevant.
Parent
Fix your idea... (Score:3, Informative)
Interconnected computers is a "network". I have a network at home. The "topology" is the picture that these make when connected. That is, 5 computers are connected in a "star topology". 3 more in a "star topology", and there is a "bus topology" connecting the two "stars".
In turn, this network is connected to a cable modem, which connects this ENTIRE network to other networks. How? We are not sure of the topology, so we draw it as a "cloud".
This "network of networks" is the "internet".
Nothing to do with the
Yes (Score:5, Funny)
Have you ever seen a linear spider web?
Yes. And the spider landed right on my keyboard as it came down, too.
Parent
Re:Is an electric guitar still a guitar? (Score:4, Funny)
Parent