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:What web? (Score:2, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
still the web (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Re:Fluff or content? (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 was so distressed that the teacher wasn't letting us use Flash! Maybe because this was a class about implementing things like CSS and JavaScript?
Sometimes I wonder if I'm in the right major, because I like good ol HTML pages better.
Re:I always thought... (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.
Re:Pointless pontification (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 hired a CS to optimize their driving routes, thus saving millions of dollars in fuel costs-- that's when I said to myself: this field is cool! That may not be the kind of thing you daydream about, but hey, I'm a geek, and I'm well past the age where I have to apologize for it.
Re:I always thought... (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 THEY AREN'T!*)
Then again, I'm used to this sort of thing. Years back, I had a tape drive that I used to back up my system. (It used the parallel port to give you an idea of how long ago this was.) A friend of mine had a virus infection and asked to borrow the tape drive and a spare tape. My father insisted that I couldn't do this because the virus would infect the tape drive (not the tape, but the drive itself) and then spread to my computer. No amount of arguing dented his "absolute knowledge" that this is what would happen. Of course, since the drive was my own, bought with my own money, he couldn't stop me and I gave it to my friend to use. Oddly enough, I didn't get infected by the virus via the hardware transfer.
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.
Re:Fluff or content? (Score:3, Interesting)
No browser that I know of supports flash by default. No 64 bit browser that I know of supports flash at all. Even when it does work, it's vastly inferior to any native media player.
In order to view videos, you're going to have to push something onto everyones computer. It makes a lot more sense for it to be a codec than an entire virtual machine.
There's a right way and a wrong way (Score:3, Interesting)
to do web applications.
For example, Google Maps (and Street View) allows you to get a direct url for exactly the area you're viewing at the moment. I can give you, for example, a direct link to a street level view of a museum in Chicago [google.com] or a park in Atlanta [google.com] or the Golden Gate Bridge [google.com]. Even though you got to them by searching, panning, and scrolling.
Most apps don't bother letting you pass these sorts of parameters in, which is unfortunate. But it's certainly possible to encode all of this in a URL (and even, potentially, publish an API so that other services can deep link into them) if the developer has enough foresight. Few do.