Websites should be built based on widely accepted standards, not quirks or monoculture 'standards'.
When there were legally enforced browser ballots they had to ... and they did.
When there were legally enforced browser ballots they had to ... and they did.
But I disagree that we shouldn’t also try to accommodate quirks. That’s why we have `Array.flat` instead of `Array.flatten` — the standards body decided to come up with a slightly atypical name for the feature rather than breaking a bunch of websites.[1] Our collective history is too valuable for us to be breaking stuff just to make engineers’ lives easier.
Hard agree. I've become convinced their power to ignore, replace, and EEE standards requires legal intervention. So far it seems only randomized browser ballots can effect any meaningful change. Otherwise websites will just build for the dominant browser regardless of any agreements among them.
I'd argue that software standards make it harder for everyone to write a "history". How many people simply gave up on their own websites and outsourced their work to an entity they do not control the actions of?
How much of that fancy web standard is about optional visual? What are we really getting from it? Would you consider a new API for drawing rectangles "progress"?
Your `Array.flat` example may make sense, but only because we are way too deep to even consider alternatives. We have mostly no idea how these standards will evolve and decided to keep on putting band aids to remain afloat.
The best way to keep information accessible is to make it understandable by a human without mandatory automation. Don't you find it horrible that all the information websites can provide you is actually dependent on a thousands pages long spec? Is it really the only solution you can think of?
The resiliency of the web is mostly equivalent to papyrus, if not worse.
Look, I don’t like how complex web browsers are any more than you do. But it’s the situation we’re in today.
We have no reason to indefinitely use our web.
I do not know about Gemini but the problem with current minimal formats is that they cannot evolve without change to the spec, they lack emergence. And therefore when you want to expand on it, you need to add complexity to the spec, not your code.
One of the idea I had was to make all websites provide natural language text, without any standardization (send whatever text you want).
Which would have these benefits:
- Ease website development, your goal is to make the text as simple as possible to understand for a human.
- (also means that website won't have the luxury to send unnecessary data anymore)
- More performant.
- Literally cannot break as it does not depend on any standard. Text will remain understandable forever.
- You can have an infinite amount of browsers, some may only render the raw text, some may render the text and give you very fast tips as to how you should render it, and others dedicated to specific disabilities.
- You can have a working browser in a matter of hours. And the way you expand on it is independent from how the server operates.
- No fancy standard can appear to break this simplicity, as many people would depend on the text being unopinionated.
- Can still support anything the web currently does, but tracking without contentment will become harder. As users would have a deeper understanding of what the website actually is, its text is on plain sight.