Mozilla Jetpack and the Battle For the Web 280
snydeq writes "Mozilla Jetpack makes it so easy to filter, modify, and mash up pages that it might end up pitting developers and users against content producers in a battle for the Web, writes Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister. By allowing users to modify the behavior, presentation, and output of Web apps and pages to their liking, Jetpack gives users the ability to 'patch the server, in a sense,' McAllister writes, bringing us one step closer to a more democratic Web. Good news for developers and users; not so good for SaaS providers and media companies that have a vested interest in controlling the function, presentation, and distribution of Web-based content and apps. In other words, as Jetpack produces fruit, expect more producers to call for 'guardrails for the Internet.'"
Re:Revolution (Score:3, Interesting)
Pining for the good old days (Score:4, Interesting)
I miss the days when just about everyone using the web was a developer, user, and content producer all in one. I think we all saw the commercial 'content producer' jackals circling and licking their lips, but we thought we had the power to fend them off, that the web would never be fully commercialized like every other media. How wrong we were.
Yeah, Sorry Guys. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:that explains it! - Why Slashdot is so slow (Score:5, Interesting)
And so the new slashdot layout is finally explained in full.
Yes. There's so much crap running on Slashdot's pages now that Firefox sometimes reports that a script is running too long. Pages load slowly because the five or so different ad servers all need time to respond. The page code has "document.write()" calls which load more Javascript, forcing operations which ought to be in parallel to wait for the previous step to complete. I just had a Slashdot page load wait 9 seconds for "bs.serving-sys.com". That's a 9 second delay for a useless site that's trying to load a "tracking cookie". A Jetpack add-on to block all that stuff will be a huge win.
Ad Injections (Score:2, Interesting)
Once you take the route of deliberately modifying content, this is just next logical step. I hope that is not the case.
failure to read what the average webuser wants (Score:3, Interesting)
i remember reading about a startup in the dotcom days that allows users to annotate webpages in ways that can be shared. complete failure
why? no one wants to exert the extra effort. what's the benefit? the summary makes it sound like some sort of revolutionary anticorporate antimind control movement. guess what: most users not only want to do nothing, they want to make sure they are seeing exactly what everyone else sees
its a basic human desire for commonality of culture: sharing anything on the web is all about being part of contributing to a group, and consuming what is the same for everyone else. this is a basic human social drive. that if they had content that was "special" and only visible to them in a certain way, even if in just cosmetic appearance, you are driving a wedge between the user and that sense of shared commonality. what is the whole point of the internet? what is the driving force behind its popularity and adoption?
this project flies directly in the face of that basic human social impulse and drive
ps: this observation of mine applies most especially to subcultures: small splinter groups that are outside the mainstream and proudly so. their desire to see the same thing the rest of the subculture sees is accelerated due to the fact that it takes more effort to be part of a subculture than be part of the mainstream, they need to "work harder" to remain synchronized in bona fides with the rest of the members of their subculture. suggest to them that they aren't seeing quite what everyone else sees in that subculture and it will disturb to them, that they aren't fully part of the group yet
Re:Already available (Score:3, Interesting)
While in theory this will make it accessible to everyone, that doesn't convert to a reality of everyone using it.
Linux, believe it or not, is to the point where to use it you can just pop a CD in the computer and turn it on. Yet how many people actual do use Linux and of those, how many would have not done so if LiveCD's weren't around?
This means powerusers will find being powerusers slight less cumbersome, but not that everyone will become a poweruser.
Re:Yeah, Sorry Guys. (Score:3, Interesting)
If you really wanted to support someone it would be far more effective to cut out the middlemen and just send them a check.
Pay-via-advertising is unreliable at best, annoyingly disruptive to readers, and has a tendency to alienate those who would otherwise support you. It only exists due to the lack of an economical micro-payment system. Direct-charge with automatic negotiation would be far superior, but the overhead of handling many small payments is just too high--for now. The incredible degree of regulatory interference regarding anything to do with finances is a big part of the problem; everyone who comes close to implementing a viable electronic cash-equivalent gets charged with "money laundering", or some other such catch-all offense--never mind that ordinary cash can be used the same way.
Re:Pining for the good old days (Score:3, Interesting)
Except for a bit of expansion in DHTML and Flash, you could do everything then that you could do now. The only differences is bandwidth and processing power. The real dynamic changes have been the underlying programming languages and the use of backed databases. You could do it all in perl back then, just no one really thought to.
Re:Already available (Score:3, Interesting)
While in theory this will make it accessible to everyone, that doesn't convert to a reality of everyone using it.
Linux, believe it or not, is to the point where to use it you can just pop a CD in the computer and turn it on. Yet how many people actual do use Linux and of those, how many would have not done so if LiveCD's weren't around?
This means powerusers will find being powerusers slight less cumbersome, but not that everyone will become a poweruser.
I'm absolutely fine with the fact that not everyone (most people actually) wants to be a poweruser. I just wish they'd accept responsibility for that decision. The easiest way to explain that, is to say that I don't want to hear their complaints when the only reason why something doesn't work out for them is that they didn't RTFM or when they're mystified and frustrated by a task that would be relatively straightforward if they were willing to do a little reading.
To address some knee-jerk responses, being able to RTFM is not remotely the same thing as being an expert. Since you mention Linux, if the requirement of having to learn a few things about how the system works in order to be able to effectively use it means that Linux will never replace Windows as the dominant desktop platform, I'm fine with that. I'm not one of those folks who thinks that Linux needs to have the goal of replacing Windows; I think the two operating systems are intended for entirely different audiences. Just wanted to get those two things out of the way because those are the two most predictable and therefore unenlightening replies that seem to constantly come up in these discussions.
What I am saying applies to many things, not just computers. The basic principle is simple: if there are reasonable measures someone can take to address the problem they are having, and they refuse to take those measures, then it's hard to take their complaints seriously.
Re:Yeah, Sorry Guys. (Score:5, Interesting)
Am I the only one that finds it interesting how short the lifetime is for Internet business models? Traditional business models can be successful for dozens if not hundreds of years. Web based models seem to only remain viable for around a decade at best, then competition crops up with a new idea or some independent developer ruins the model (Ad-block anyone?).
It seems to me that if your business is going to survive on the web, you'd better be spending time and effort every single day looking for new revenue streams and business models.
Re:Pining for the good old days (Score:3, Interesting)
Frame content doesn't bookmark nor spider very well, resulting in undesired situations. Users end up with bookmarks to entrance content instead of the desired content, or end up without navigation menus when search engines sent them directly to the frame content which didn't include the outerlying frames.
DHTML pages solve this by adding information about inner content into the anchor part of the URL, so every page loads entirely upon first entrance and Javascript takes care of the inner content. Nowadays you could probably make this work for frames as well, but back then it either wasn't possible or nobody thought about it because Javascript wasn't used as much.
Re:Already available (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes and no, for Linux.
As far as desktops go, no, linux isn't there yet. You can pop in a CD and turn it on and have everything working for a lot of systems, but there are still a lot that that doesn't work on. There were a relatively small percentage of machines that had serious issues with Vista, but it was a lot larger than a normal XP install and it blew up in MS's face. Linux distros tend to have smaller, more persistant issues at a much higher percentage than even the Vista issues. Two ongoing examples are wireless support and sound support. It's great if it works, but it can be hell to try to fix it. Normal users often have a hard time figuring out how to connect to a wireless network if it doesn't do it automatically, forget trying to troubleshoot linux wireless problems. Also, UI is critical for normal users. They need to be able to do -everything- in the GUI. Can't do that with Linux yet.
Where normal users use Linux is those times they don't know they are using linux. Like those linux-based wireless routers and such. For desktops, the reason normal users don't use linux is because it is a lot harder than using windows in general. Until that changes significantly, most people will stay away from Linux.
If the new mozilla tool makes the stuff greasemonkey does more seemless and less cumbersome, then people will use it. A lot of non-technical people manage greasemonkey as it is (they don't write the scripts, obviously), and FF addons are used extensively by non-powerusers.
Anything that makes it easier to use broadens the potential user base. If it's easier for powerusers, it's easier for non-powerusers as well.
Re:"one step closer to a more democratic Web" (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't believe anyone deserves to get free access to content if the owner doesn't want to.
The snide 'oh those greedy fatcats feel they deserve to make millions' type comment is belittling the fact that people do need money to get by in life.
It's not greed to ask for people to pay for a service.
Again you seem to be arguing against someone else's post and not mine because I never claimed this.
If millions of people are enjoying someone you made you're entitled to get something out of that if you want to.
Well sure you do. But the fact is that many people who produce content that ends up not selling well will end up blaming everyone but themselves for their failures which is my point. I don't know where in my post I ever said I supported piracy or being forced to give away things for free which you seem to be attacking me as if I said.
Re:Sorry Dudes... (Score:3, Interesting)