Is Today's Web Still 'the Web'? 312
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?
Re:I always thought... (Score:2, Informative)
Well I always thought that the computers - and computer networks - networked together were the internet and "the web" was a collection of applications that ran over the internet. Specifically those associated with web browsers. For instance, I don't think most people refer to sending email as using the web.
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...
Re:I always thought... (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.
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 data. That would be defined by public or private protocols. The "web" is defined as clients using servers with "http" protocol over "tcp/ip". It also defines a "URL" to allow linking from one server to itself or another, thus implementing hypertext documents.
Very useful stuff. But it only passes encoded data. Not food, water, or hygiene products. So I don't get where you get "need". It also doesn't solve problems. By facilitating information flow, the internet may provide you with data to solve a problem, but it's only data.
You are right -- the internet is not lynx and gopher. It is simply the idea that routing can be pushed to the edge, allowing networks to be trivially connected, and that the result would be useful.
In a sense, it is a fractal.
At the beginning I mentioned that I have two networks, each in a star topology, connected by a bus. That bus is the internet. Remember, the internet backbone started as a 56k link.
For convenience, we "users" of the internet allow certain functions to become part of the bedrock. As yet the "web" isn't there. What is there? ip, tcp, udp, dns, and routing protocols.
After all, we need a lingua franca; and dns is just too convenient to give us. Maybe the "web" will join in, but not until it loses bloat (as a hypertext publication method, not an application carrier).
As an example, I give you telnet. Once a noble and (considered) indispensable part of the "internet", it is now deceased. RIP.
Re:Fluff or content? (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:I always thought... (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:Fluff or content? (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:Fix your idea... (Score:3, Informative)
We are talking about terminology. And you just did it again - what "network mesh of computers"?
Please do not refer to a network as a mesh, unless it actually is. Treating a non-mesh as a mesh may well end up breaking things horribly. I give bittorrent as an example (which works, but is causing telcos to scream, simply because it is trying to use the internet AS a mesh).
I understand that network applications are changing, and the issue on the table is whether to refer to an interactive content that happens to layer on http as an extension of the web or as the web.
You are right in that regard. Simply put, it is what the users of it make it, or want it to be.