Aleksandar Kuktin wrote: > It was large, arcane and most of all, >had an abnormal number of bells and wistles, some of them (like >geolocation, persistent cookies and such) downright bad, in my opinion.
Some of the bells and whistles like geolocation are part of the HTML 5 standard. Personally, I really liked the XHTML standard that the W3C came out with. XHTML 1.0 and 1.1 really simplify and cut down on the number of tags. However, the W3C sort of went too far in one direction (part of the XHTML spec, a web site won't even render if it isn't valid XHTML) and weren't following what direction the browser developers wanted to go. From what I've read, the browser developers took over forming the WhatWG group and defining HTML 5. The W3C could either get onboard with the standard or be left behind. (The W3C has always been the HTML standards body in the past.) A lot of the major people involved in the WhatWG also seem to be the major developers involved in developing browsers. The goal for HTML 5 seems very different from the goals of HTML 4 and XHTML 1. XHTML was great for simplicity and cross-browser use. HTML 5 attempts to do many of the things that web plugins like Flash and Silverlight traditionally do such as handle music, video, database access, geolocation, etc. Plus, there are lots of new standard tags for semantic web development (which improves search engine capabilities and is good for companies like Google). The decision comes down to whether we want HTML to be very basic and work on all platforms and have the added functionality done by other components (like Java, Flash, etc.) or whether we want everything handled by the HTML 5 standard, JavaScript and the browser itself. The latter approach makes the browser much more complex and decreases the number of fully functioning browsers on the market. However, the previous approach leads to web sites that don't work because you don't have plug-in X or your browser can't support it. I've yet to see a good compromise for this situation. If web developers made simpler web sites that worked on more platforms, you could use whatever browser you want. Web developers want more functionality, so fewer browsers work properly with their sites. >Since that time, Mozilla foundation went full in and is now releasing a >new major version every few months (every six months, if I remember). >If I understood their stance correctly, they will cease supporting all >previous versions upon releasing a new one. Which means that you, as a >user, have no choice but to follow the Foundation as it blazes a path >forward, regardless if that path leads to desirable results or >undesirable results. I find this oppressive. Am not at all thrilled with the release early, release often mindset. >From what I've read, Mozilla is doing this to keep up with Chrome. A major issue is that online tools such as Google Mail will typically only support 2 versions back in software. However, big corporations and some web developers like IBM (we use their Cognos BI tools at work) can't afford to keep up with this development and release pace. Since Google is developing both an e-mail system (plus other web based tools) and their own browser, they can afford to keep all their tools in sync. I think a lot of the changes they make to their browser are specifically geared toward getting better feature usage for their online tools. It makes sense when the browser developer is also the web tools developer. It makes things very hard for businesses that want stable environments and can't afford to update lots of computers all the time. >First, there is Dillo >which appears to be well-supported, then... well, Links, a text browser, >can be coerced to display pictures, and w3m (if that is its name) does >the same by default. So, you know... I tried Dillo. Cross-platform portability support is very important to me. (Not just that it can work on Linux and Windows, but what about other operating systems like FreeBSD or variants of Linux with other C libraries? I dislike being locked into one operating system just to be able to use a tool.) I found D+ (a fork of Dillo) much better at cross-platform support. Am using it for some browsing functions including a replacement for tools like dialog, gtkdialog, etc. >Uzbl is an attempt to make >a browser adhering to the UNIX philosophy of "do one thing and do it >well". I tried this on one of my systems. Was using it to display a JavaScript fishtank locally on my machine. Worked pretty well. It has a minimal interface as far as controls, but Chrome and Firefox are headed that way as well. Didn't see it mentioned but there's also netsurf. Not finding it very easy to build or all that cross-platform portable, but it's another option. I've been trying all kinds of browsers that could be built from source just to find viable cross-platform solutions for various web browsing and web development tasks. Am still looking. I've used lynx for years. I've read security in many cases is better for lynx than other more modern browsers. A Microsoft employee demonstrating IE 9 laughed at me when I mentioned lynx as a viable browser alternative. Personally, I'd be perfectly happy continuing to use browsers like lynx. They seem so much faster at loading web pages compared to a modern browser. I typically browse the web for content to read and for articles and information. (Think of all the ads you can avoid if you have the graphics and scripting on a web page turned off.) However, web designers are touting the interactivity of Web 2.0 as the way to go. My impression of Web 2.0 is that you have a lot of complicated functionality designed on top of Open Source (or other) frameworks. Many Web 2.0 developers don't even do any real coding any more. They grab Drupal or Joomla and a lot of add-ins from various sources (which may or may not work well together). I find the Web 2.0 experience slow and bloated compared to many earlier web designs. There's more possibility that certain web site functions fail too. I don't see where there's all that much value added for the bloat and speed loss either. There were several protocols for Internet access such as e-mail (used by mailing lists), newsgroups, RSS feeds, etc. Web 2.0 tries to do everything with a web site (http). Web forums replaced newsgroups, RSS feeds are often part of web page displays not downloaded to a RSS client, etc. Would have been nice if time was spent to improve the separate protocols and their security instead of bundling them all into one. Wouldn't it be nice if they'd added better security to e-mail so you could actually track where spam came from? I guess I don't like where most web development and most modern browsers are headed. I like the keep it simple philosophy. Web development appears to be going towards slower, more poorly designed and more bloated (but I see that a lot in the entire software industry these days). There's also so much breaking away from standards or lack of implementing them in the available browsers that for a web design to look good on multiple browsers you have to special case a lot of things. That's probably one reason why bloated web frameworks have become popular. It's hard to test code on every platform and still make it work and look good. Unfortunately, in order to be able to continue to use more efficient browsers, enough web developers would have to take a stand and develop web sites that would work with them. From my experience, many web developers I run across are only concerned with specific browser platforms and could care less if their sites aren't accessible on others. Sites like http://www.anybrowser.org/ have been around for decades trying to encourage better accessibility. First, IE added a bunch of non-standard features (not W3C compatible) and web designers jumped on the bandwagon and their sites only worked on IE. Now, HTML 5 is the latest bandwagon and I run across many sites that say they're specifically designed not to work on IE. You would think the end goal of a web design is to reach every potential reader, customer and/or client out there, not to limit it to a priviledged few. Sorry to get on my soapbox like that. I just think it's a shame there aren't better, more accessible solutions out there. As long as average users are okay with sites that require special tools and applications just to work, we're going to keep having these types of problems. Sincerely, Laura -- http://linuxfromscratch.org/mailman/listinfo/blfs-support FAQ: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/faq.html Unsubscribe: See the above information page
