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Comment by brudgers | Hacker News Reader

The problem framed by JWZ is not a technical one. It is a social one, and centered upon values. Eliminating <blink> changes the existing content of the web. There's a reasonable argument that that is a bad thing - again one based on values not technology.

To put it another way, <blink> has meaning by virtue of its history. Its presence on a page says something to the viewer - not something technical but something cultural.

<blink>'s removal does not make the web richer or more meaningful. Instead, its removal does something quite the opposite.

I won't say that it is vandalism - but it does wantonly alter the expression of existing web content, and does so to the very content that is most in danger of being lost to history. It neuters what makes some web pages representative of their time and place.

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> To put it another way, <blink> has meaning by virtue of its history.

I agree. The Book of Mozilla stated: "Their tags shall blink until the end of days", and they are now violating the scripture.

On the other hand, the tag has been on it's way out since IE started catching on in 1998. So very few will notice their apostasy.

Or, the end of days is upon us.

I think we shouldn't expect historic pages to work in modern browsers. As long as we can reliably run older browsers we can also view historic pages as they were once rendered.

It'd be interesting if we saw a browser actually version-compatibility break, in the sense of "HTML5 supported, HTML4 won't even render."

What about pages that are intended to look like historic pages, because they are e.g. paying tribute to them, or mirroring how far a programmer has come from when he first started using the Internet.

I think there's enough cruft on today's bloated Internet that the blink tag is hardly a significant step in a right direction.

What old browsers can we still run reliably? Serious question.

Any. That's what VMs are for.

And statically linked binaries, if necessary.

So johnny six pack who made a web site for his crochet club back in 1997 using microsoft front page is going to fire up a VM and install an old browser to look at it? uh huh.

Yes, much like I can never visit a faraway country because I can't pilot a plane.

So I need to have the level of skill needed to pilot a plane just to look at my old family photos, drawings and poetry? And you make products with the expectation from your customers, perhaps?

"Trust me with your data, I am a technologist. It's okay, I'll take care of it. Though I will expect you to fire up a VM if you still care about it 10 years from now."

I agree that we shouldn't expect it.

Not expecting it is not the same as not wanting it - and the demise of <blink> is an expression of wants - or rather want nots.

We absolutely should expect historic pages to work in modern browsers (you want to just wantonly throw away history for no good reason?) And you absolutely cannot reliably run older browsers. This logic doesn't even work out right- So, once all the servers in the world break backwards compatibility with the old browsers (thus making them absolutely incapable of being run on modern networks), THEN we should go back to our modern browsers, and make them render the old pages again, after we dropped support. What?

Lots of mediums have gone extinct - tapes, punch cards, what not. To view them now, one has to get a capable device. Maybe to see some old web sites in all their glory we just need to download Mosaic again. Perhaps someone will even make a Javascript emulator of Mosaic. It happened for other things, like C64 games.

I think something can be said for getting rid of useless stuff in a codebase.

This is right on. Bring back the blink tag

www.iwantmyblinktagback.com

I'm pretty sure it would be trivial to add a userstyle for having <blink> back. Actually... I think I'll do just that.

Blink's removal makes the Web less likely to make people sick. Epileptics have a terrible time with flashing things.

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