1. Web pages used to be documents.
2. Then interactive documents.
3. Now often programs that create interactive documents in the browser.
4. And sometimes just programs that fetch and display data.
5. And sometimes a program that is a sort of web browser in a web browser.
I think that 3 and beyond are only suitable for control interfaces.
My moment of realisation came 14-15 years ago working for a media company whose href were: javascript:window.navigate("/URL/...")
Absolute idiocy!
Sam On 24 Apr 2016 7:56 p.m., "Paul Boddie" paul@boddie.org.uk wrote:
On Sunday 24. April 2016 20.09.20 Theo Schmidt wrote:
Am 23.04.2016 um 16:07 schrieb Paul Boddie: ...
... albeit in a world where every Web page wants to run scripts from a hundred sites, show ten videos or animations, and lay itself out over and over again.
This is becoming more and more of a problem for me. Many "modern" sites are unusable without scripting and with older browsers or hardware which don't provide up-to-date Javascript and enough speed to cope with the often crappy programming. An example is the site of Bern University http://www.unibe.ch which used to be really nice and usable but now won't run on any of my mobile phones (Nokia N900, an older Samsung-Android and a friend's older iPhone). On my PC it doesn't look nice and navigation isn't possible without Javascript. Ironically the relaunch is justified by the need to be usable with mobile phones.
What do they call that again? Adaptive layout? Usually involving pieces of the page appearing jumbled in the browser before things suddenly jump into place, often just as one is about to click on something, thanks to some JavaScript element-decoration technique being all the rage amongst Web designers a few years ago. After all that effort, the result is often very familiar: layers of boxes upon boxes on a white background. I guess the consensus is that this looks good on an iPad.
And, of course, Twitter, Facebook and numerous "content delivery networks" and analytics sites all have to serve up content onto the megapage (links to other pages also being unfashionable on some sites). I actually don't run NoScript, but I do block certain sites and domains, but one disables things at one's own peril because the site may have decided that some random "asset" needs to be loaded or the site's core functionality won't work. Even if one's browser has to join a long queue of browsers needing to download, say, the jQuery libraries (for the hundredth time today) or some Web fonts.
Unfortunately ever more companies and organisations are "relauching" their websites in this manner. Is there any campaign be FSFE, FSF or other organisations protesting against this developement?
Or am I just an old fogey who isn't "with it"?
I fear that we are part of a small club whose opinion can't be heard above the chorus of squealing influencers and those without the long-term perspectives to realise just how absurd and wasteful this all is.
Paul _______________________________________________ Discussion mailing list Discussion@fsfeurope.org https://mail.fsfeurope.org/mailman/listinfo/discussion