The most serious problem with the web IMO the endless scope creep. Maybe, idk, set a clear goal, work towards it, and then just stop and consider the web "done"?
I hate it so much that almost everything in the IT industry is a process. It's necessarily unending. No one is shipping finished products anymore. Everything is in eternal beta. The web standards are the most egregious example of this.
I think what we need is not an HTML6, but rather HTML4-ish and something separate. I want web pages and web apps to be distinguishable, and not have every newspaper article and blog post hosted inside of a heavyweight application framework that either breaks or re-implements all kinds of basic user agent functionality. Simple pages should be implemented in a simple, constrained technology stack and heavyweight web apps should be something the end user opts-in to using.
> I want web pages and web apps to be distinguishable, and not have every newspaper article and blog post hosted inside of a heavyweight application framework that either breaks or re-implements all kinds of basic user agent functionality. Simple pages should be implemented in a simple, constrained technology stack and heavyweight web apps should be something the end user opts-in to using.
I don't see people putting that genie back in the bottle. Not when there are so many designers that override the scrollbar for aesthetics.
For the record, I'm with you - I think it would be great if most websites ran on gopher 2.0 that used markdown for its syntax. I just don't think it'll happen.
I don't see a way to make it happen, either. But it seems crazy to me that browsers can be adding so much OS-like functionality that's a risk to security or privacy without even attempting to bundle them under a "web app" permission to simplify the user experience of opting in to allowing a domain to do all the things a simple web page doesn't need.
And it's absurd that there's seemingly no way for a Chrome user—even with extensions—to prevent a web page from restyling scrollbars into something unrecognizable.
> The web standards are the most egregious example of this.
Of course they are, the end game is browsers being the OS. But it's way too risky to give web sites direct unfettered access to the computer (ActiveX, remember the time and the many ways you could be fucked by that?), so a loooot of stuff has to be built as abstractions. WebGL/WebGPU, WebUSB, WebSerial, WebBluetooth... the only thing I'm still pissed about that didn't make the cut is WebSQL - IndexedDB and localStorage just suck in comparison to a proper SQL shell.
Take a look at how Apple killed Flash: they made a product that people flocked to, that didn't support Flash. This put vendors that didn't use Flash at an advantage compared to those that did, which started a vicious cycle for Flash.
I don't want to get rid of JS entirely, I want to discourage building apps with it. I want it to be the macro language for hypertext like it was originally intended.
I hate it so much that almost everything in the IT industry is a process. It's necessarily unending. No one is shipping finished products anymore. Everything is in eternal beta. The web standards are the most egregious example of this.