The death of the URL | Hacker News Reader

The death of the URL

factoryjoe.com

52 pointsgenieyclo25 comments

Not everything needs to converge to become a Free and Open, Turing-complete, net-neutral web machine. I don't need to surf the web on my TV; I have a laptop on my lap most of the time I'm watching TV. I want my TV to expose the TV interface, not the Turing Machine interface; that's why I bought it and not another laptop. There is room in the world fo both special-purpose and general-purpose machines, and the Internet is a utility they can both be built upon.

Thank you for saying that better than I would have.

You sound like one of those people who used to argue that you just want you mobile phone make calls and that putting cameras and software into them was pointless cause you could just carry camera an PDA everywhere.

Personally I see the TV as just another monitor which may or may not also contain a general purpose operating system.

The difference is with a really big monitor is that you can share what you are looking at with other people in the room , some of whom may not have a laptop glued to their legs. So for example you can do stuff like taking turns at selecting your favourite youtube videos.

I never said you couldn't have a TV that allows general-purpose access to the web. But also having TVs that are "just" TVs gives you more options, not fewer. Devices can integrate, but the future is not one kind of device that does everything (e.g. a phone that is also a TV that is also a toaster that is also a book reader that is also a game console); it's an infinite variety of devices that represent the power set of all possible device synergies.

A world full of crippled devices that only allow you to use them in the specific ways that the manufacturer allows (or has thought of) does not give you more options - it gives you less options.

The reason I say crippled is that a general purpose TV (or other device) can encompass all the functionality of specialist device. It can even masquerade as a specialist device, only exposing its extra functionality to users who really want it. Often it is easier for the manufacturer of the device to use a general purpose operating system to build their specific functionality on. So the specialist device is actually just a crippled version of a more generally capable device.

Remember we are only talking about computation here, not hardware capabilities. A TV with a inbuilt toaster is a stupid idea because you are combining hardware capabilities without any real purpose. However if both the TV and the toaster are controlled by processor chips with networking capabilities then why not let them to talk to each other? Why not allow a toastcam app to run on the TV? Why not a allow an app that would allow to to draw a shape on the TV's touchcreeen and that shape would be burnt onto the toaster? We are obviously talking about a future with very cheap processing power here (and very precise heating in toasters) but that is the direction things are moving in.

All those questionable examples and not one mention of search engines? I'd argue that search engines are a much much bigger threat to URLs than all of the author's examples combined. (You don't need to know a URL if you can just search for the site name!) But it's also a counter-example: search engines haven't killed the URL yet, so I doubt any of those other examples will.

Good point. While I provided a bunch of examples, I didn't exhaust the number of examples of this trend. Search is another, and so are mobile experiences (beyond the App Store).

At least with search there's a degree of "infinite" in the results. Of course, the results are defined by SEO and robots.txt files, and so aren't as egalitarian as URLs, but search engines are another example of the increasing minimization of URLs in interfaces.

I was tempted to stop reading after the WebTV example, and did actually stop reading after the "slicker, simpler interfaces" example.

A couple of points: first, none of these ideas or vaporware products are doing anything to prevent anyone from using the web the way they want to. You can still buy a new computer, install Firefox, and type in a URL. I would be somewhat more worried if, for example, Microsoft made it impossible to type URLs into Internet Explorer, but that's not the case. (And even then, as long as other browsers exist, it's not that big of a deal.)

Secondly, I doubt the author has worked with the "average" computer user all that much. I do, every day, as an IT consultant -- whether with individuals or employees of large or small companies. The great majority of them don't know what the "address bar" is; if I ask them to go to "www.google.com", they click on their homepage -- whether it's yahoo or iGoogle or what-have-you -- and type "www.google.com" into the search box.

These companies are trying to serve a market, and it's a very real -- and very large -- market of users that don't know an IP from a URL, and they definitely are confused by this stuff.

Hell, one of my clients was furious with me because every time she clicked on her email address on the new website, it opened up Outlook Express on her computer, and dammit, she uses Gmail...

Although how to handle mailto: links is a browser setting, of course, you could have detected her IP and redirected her to GMail. That's probably why she was furious with you.

I can't tell if this is a joke or not. :-) She was more concerned that the mailto: link wouldn't work on other people's computers, and wanted me to fix it so that it would.

I replaced the mailto with a contact form.

I don't see his examples as the death of URLs at all. The underlying technologies will continue to rely on URLs, not to mention the legion of systems and standards with the URI as a backbone. I see this as the URI being shoved further down the stack. The more we can abstract above the URI, the easier it will be for everyday people to get to what they point to.

Well, I can't phreak my phone anymore. I can't finetune my Toyota Prius. I can't switch video cards in my laptop. I can't freeride on a tram hook anymore. Or if I can, it's much more difficult and/or dangerous than it used to be.

That's technological progress for you. Deal with it.

I thought it was ironic that the beginning of this article shows that specific Matrix scene.

It simply comes down to choice - would you want the URL, or not?

38 years after the advent of C, programmers use it everyday (well, at least I do). Back to URLs - web developers still use URL construction as access to resources (REST).

It simply comes down to choice - what knowledge do we want/need to have control over?

URLs are still useful, and they will be because the internet is still maturing.

Phone numbers, on the other hand, could propose a more convincing argument. But this is only recently becoming a reality over 130 years later.

The inclusion of the App Store as an exhibit doesn't seem relevant. URLs are artifacts of the web. The App Store is for the purchase of native applications. Yes, it's not an open platform, but things have been this way in the mobile space for a long time, and it has nothing to do with the web or URLs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_Runtime_Environment_for_...

I would disagree. Just because the App Store is designed to make it easier to get apps onto the phone, nothing prevents these apps from being accessible by URLs. In fact, many iPhone-friendly apps are available as web apps that simply look and behave like native apps — and the distinction between native and web is becoming evermore so slight.

I think that there is a role for App Stores in the future, but I think that the healthiest future would be comprised of hybrid app stores that give you access to the best web and native apps — without having to distinguish. Thus you could go through the app store if you want the exposure, or you could go directly to the web app's URL if you knew it.

Seems simple enough to me.

...nothing prevents these apps from being accessible by URLs.

That's true. In fact, they already are:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/super-monkey-ball/id281966695...

That page doesn't show Super Monkey Ball; it's a prompt to download iTunes.

True, and all of the flash content on the web shows me a prompt to install a plugin, and therefore can't be referenced by URL either.

Meanwhile, Flash gets no mention in the article?

That's because everyone can publish Flash. No middlemen, gatekeepers or censors required.

For the most part you need to have purchased the right kind of tools to create Flash software, or acquired a license to the Flash server technology.

As well, to the best of my knowledge, no one besides Adobe can change the underlying Flash spec, so I would completely disagree with your assertion.

You disagree with my assertion that everyone can publish Flash apps because you cannot change the Flash spec and you have to pay for Adobe's tools if you choose to use them? I don't get your logic.

Even if I had to pay Adobe to create or publish Flash apps, which is not the case, they wouldn't be able to censor me. Big difference for me.

Except that I can't actually access the app from that URL, so I wouldn't consider that equivalent.

Rich apps like Google Wave, however, can be accessed directly in the browser, as can apps like Gmail and Google Latitude. It's unfortunate that the majority of these apps are developed by Google, but frameworks like iUI and jqTouch bring this kind of functionality to the broader web.

I think it's silly to suggest that Apple's app links that redirect to iTunes are somehow equivalent or equally meaningful as fully functioning applications.

I understand what you're saying, but it strikes me as a very tortured and flimsy excuse for the App Store's presence in the article.

By your reasoning, there's no URL for GIMP either. Does that make it part of the URL's death knell? (I wouldn't consider a URL to an Debian repository to be much different than a URL to an App Store, after all...it doesn't take me to the program, but it will allow me to configure a special piece of software to obtain & install the program for me.)

Actually, I really wish Apple would pull their head out on this one; if I'm browsing on a computer that doesn't have iTunes installed, that doesn't mean I don't want to see the information about the app, and it does mean I might interested in buying it later. As it is, it's not uncommon of me to click on a link, expecting to be directed to a page about an app, and being told that I don't have iTunes installed (duh! it's Linux).

I think apple costs app developers sales every time they fail to show people information they asked for and instead give idiot messages about not having the proper software to view a link.

I like the iphone a lot, but keeping me happy with it involves removing some of the obstacles that make it compare poorly with Droid (and hopefully many other phones in the near future). For instance, I would like to run an interpreter on my phone...

Maybe the solution is "simply" to build stuff that is so cool that nobody can afford to lock it out of their platform.

Also, there always seems to be a mass market of people doing what everybody else does (TV, Facebook, ...?), and lots of companies survive with the few more curious remaining people.

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