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Web We Want

webwewant.org

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I want the Web as in its heyday: circa 1999, give or take. When sites loaded blazing fast on my 256k DSL modem--faster than they do on my 50 Mbps connection today. No JS, no flash ads. Just text, images, and hyperlinks like TBL originally intended.

I hear what you're saying, but even inline images weren't originally part of HTML...

http://1997.webhistory.org/www.lists/www-talk.1993q1/0182.ht...

If I'm being extra nitpicky, Flash and JS were both doing the rounds in '99, but that's beside the point, I understand you want a 'linked documents' web.

In a hypothetical situation where that happened, would we have a different tech stack for zero-install client-server apps? I suspect people would still want to have them. What might this tech stack look like? What currently available software might be a good fit?

Whats wrong with Java? Its bloated, but if OS X's energy meter isn't lying, less so than a Chrome-based "native" app.

You could use Java, but it doesn't solve the zero-install issue, updates aren't as seamless as web apps, both for the JVM and the apps itself. You could rework it into something that could work better, but the same could be said for web apps.

I think static content generators get us really close. Something like Jekyll creates easy to maintain, and optionally very low tech, sites of almost any size.

Jekyll and octopress out of the box with their 'standard' themes are still quite bloated.

Then don't use the standard themes, it's not hard to find minimal themes.

http://qrohlf.com/posts/5-best-jekyll-designs/

Or make your own...

My blog runs on Jekyll and a longish post (~4000 words) doesn't get above 32kb, I would say that is pretty small, even by dial-up standards it wouldn't take long to retrieve.

Where is your blog?

I seem to remember the web of 1999 very differently: Java applets for navigation trees, stuff that requires ActiveX and only works in IE on Windows, HTML tables with background images in cells for layout, almost nobody used SSL, almost no server could max out a reasonably fast connection (if you were lucky enough to live/work where broadband was available). Barely any audio/video.

Yes, some things were better and easier then, but it wasn't all great.

In my opinion, most technological problems have been solved: Broadband is widely available, we have fairly good standards for HTML/CSS/JavaScript, reliance on plugins and stuff like ActiveX and Java is at an all time low. The question is now what we do with our newly-gained freedom – and as usual, this one is trickier than the technical stuff.

This is the 1999 I remember as well, with the addition of visual clutter (see present-day excite.com for a reminder), JavaScript everywhere (DHTML, not AJAX), and pop-up and pop-under ads making the Flash ads of today look tame and gentle--those that don't autoplay video, at least. I've heard OP's tale before, but it was certainly no more than a tale by the late 90s.

And "blazing fast" is definitely a relative term. I remember the feeling of liberation when we got rid of dial-up, but there were still plenty of seconds-long load times just to see the main content--only to find it scrunched between two fixed-width sidebars (arranged in a table). And it was quite possible that the page would do its utmost to slow your browser down with custom scrollbars and cursors.

Image maps for site navigation, font size=1, and precious little free hosting of user content without ads pasted at the top and bottom of the page, more prominent than ever.

> almost nobody used SSL

Sad part is that this wasn't an issue back then.

Oh, unencrypted data was an even bigger issue back then. I remember still having ethernet hubs at the time and watchin the data go to and from my buddies computer on the our network.

It feels we've all been through a huge circle that landed not far from where we were, except built on different foundations and with higher resolution content (hd images, and videos). Still loads of crappy websites full of popup and void of content, javascript only webpages, some good surprises from time to time though, lots of dusty tech still worthy (IRC, ML, boards). As if we were optimizing the wrong variables.

That's the web I want too, which is exactly the reason I re-worked my whole blog. The best way to ask for stuff like this is to show it.

Your blog design is awesome, especially on mobile.

You might be interested in uMatrix https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix

Point & click to forbid/allow any class of requests made by your browser. Use it to block scripts, iframes, ads, facebook, etc.

I'm a pretty happy user of uMatrix, it takes a while to get used to but it is very powerful and gets the job done.

Sites going down on the regular because they hit their bandwidth cap and couldn't pay hundreds of dollars in overage fees.

I came to this conclusion recently as well. There are certainly use cases where JS et al are appropriate but otherwise the style of 99 is much more pleasant.

Frankly I love flash advertising banners since my browser supports click-to-play on Flash.

"Balance commercial profit with public benefit" isn't a thing that happens voluntarily and asking nicely for it is a joke. If we want pu lic benefit, we're going to have to make it ourselves, or take it. I'm going to ride a unicorn off into a sunset before people making money on the Internet (or elsewhere) are going to suddenly grow a conscience.

Well, the old web was profit-less and only public benefit oriented, and a lot of stuff still is – lots of people in the open source community provide services that are used by hundreds of millions of people and thousands of companies completely for free.

I wouldn't say I want it back to the old web completely - there are lot of for-profit things that I use daily. But I feel that the profit mindset indeed poisoned the Internet. You could cut out 90% of people's attempts to make money on-line and the net (and the world) would be much better off.

Well, the old web was profit-less and only public benefit oriented

When? Banner ads appeared in '94 (in HotWired), and targeted ads in '96 (service by Affinicast).

A 4 MB front page is not the web I want.

12 scripts and 2 tracking cookies (Noscript/Privacy Badger). Not so bad actually. Does the 4Mb include the download for that video?

How about an SHA-1 cert and a form that posts to HTTP? Is that the web you want?

To improve fundraising, I believe the expenditures should be transparent. And the funded elements of the organization should have progress bar, like they have in kickstarter.

Given TBL is involved (who helped start the Open Data Institute in the UK) I would have thought they'd be pretty much 100% open by default. I guess not.

A responsive website would be a good start...

This was my first thought too! Even on desktop, to be honest, this thing looks hideous. The grey text on almost-black background also completely fails the WCAG contrast ratio test.

And, honestly, what on earth is this? https://webwewant.org/news/We_are_announcing_the_Small_Grant...

Probably besides your point but: Instead of cropping that cat picture, they set a custom size in html that doesn't match the picture's ratio... if you want to see the cat's real proportions, right click on the picture and click view image.

What's this site for exactly? Their about page is sort of vague.

The web I want has websites using SHA2-based TLS certificates and TLS cipher suites that aren't vulnerable to padding oracle attacks (AES CBC).

I want the Web that was originally intended: One source of data, the document, which allows you to be as expressive and semantic as you want. Clients read this data and implement it in their own way depending on how you're reading it, what kind of client you're using (screen-reader, etc.), whether you're on a mobile or a tablet, etc. No need for this responsive design bullshit that just wastes a ton of money and time for everyone involved.

You may be asking yourself, how are we going to "design" this web? The answer is still CSS and JavaScript, with the added use of web components. Web components attach behavior and styling to your elements, and can even allow the browser to interpret new elements for you that inherit from other elements or components. This means that `<div class="the-actual-element">` goes away, and we are left with a tag name that actually tells you what kind of content there is inside, class names that specify "mixins" to load in styles or event bindings for multiple elements, and the content of the element can be styled in any way.

All that aside, I still wonder if HTML is the "right" language for the job. Sure, it's in use everywhere, but why? Could we make something better and lighter for browsers to interpret, so that the same document could be parsed quickly by an API client of some kind? I really like the significant whitespace of Haml, and especially Slim's DSL which lets you just define new elements without prefixing them with '%'. Although Haml is pretty sweet, a language looking like Slim would clearly be less annoying to type out given most of your elements are totally custom. What I'd really like is a language which combines Slim for document layout and Markdown for copywriting:

  article#the-name-of-my-article
    title
      The name of my article
    preview
      This is a preview of the article content. It's parsed with _Markdown_.
    content
      This is the *actual* article content, parsed with **Markdown** as well.
      
      - [A link](http://news.ycombinator.com)
    time.localized
      2000-01-01T00:00:00Z
    category
      general bullshit

I've written a series of articles on some of the changes I'd like to see.

http://jimkeener.com/posts/alt-login

http://jimkeener.com/posts/barcode-html-tag

http://jimkeener.com/posts/http

I also created a got repo to help merge and coordinate ideas. Contributions are always welcome.

https://github.com/jimktrains/http_ng

The web I want is merge of SIP and rendering engines for HTML5/css. SIP is federated and decentralized but really similar to HTTP. The problem is in difference between URL and URI, because URIs are hosted/registered directly on user computers/agents, so for example it's not possible to take advantage of javascript/css. If someone could hacks this, transition would be really smooth.

But we already have webRTC, why SIP? It's standardized, mature and more basic protocol. Ofc WebRTC is based on SIP, but with who knows how many additional layers.

SIP? SIP is terrible, it's an attempt at replicating the telco model of separate control plane vs talk channel of a traditional telephone company.

URIs are hosted/registered directly on user's computer, so for example it's not possible to take advantage of javascript/css

This doesn't follow either. If I host a webpage on my personal computer, I can host the js/css in exactly the same way.

> SIP? SIP is terrible, it's an attempt at replicating the telco model of separate control plane vs talk channel of a traditional telephone company.

Good point and I agree, but it solves problem of direct communication between users (NAT traversal). It would be great if SIP had plain and simple GET method (without need for session/dialog).

> This doesn't follow either. If I host a webpage on my personal computer, I can host the js/css in exactly the same way.

How can I get your js/css from outside, if you are behind NAT? STUN? NAT traversal is already part of standard SIP infrastructure.

Sorry on stubbornness, just trying to brainstorm a little.

STUN is indeed used by SIP to traverse NAT, as part of a whole pile of techniques called ICE. However, this ultimately requires that you have a central server on which you can "advertise" your SIP presence and exchange SDP data. Yes, the session payload transport (RTP) is peer to peer, but the signalling still requires a central point.

> How can I get your js/css from outside, if you are behind NAT?

The same way you get the HTML, whatever approach is used.

I don't think it's impossible to build a system involving distributing "advertisements" saying how to reach systems on a distributed hash table, then using either ports opened through UPNP on home routers or a "supernode" collection of STUN servers to communicate to home systems. There are three big downsides to this which are probably why we've not seen one yet:

- no way to monetise it if it's truly distributed and open source => reduced incentive to build and maintain

- no central party to fight spam and abuse => system will drown in spam and abuse

- necessarily broadcasts an association between home IP address and person => vulnerable to privacy problems and DOS attacks

Let's start with disallowing loading 3rd party resources of any kind. That was always a terrible idea.

The Web is a huge disappointment. It not only provides the technical infrastructure but also the data for unprecedented social control and mass surveillance. It's a delusion to think that anyone can influence the Web's advancement. It's already clear cut.

It's why I wrote this: "A Magna Carta For The Web" http://blog.higg.so/2015/07/31/a-magna-carta-for-the-web/

No kidding :/ . If anything, there should really be a movement to get people to migrate off of it more and more.

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