I know what you mean about this, except I'm not sure about "just", as in, solely or exclusively that. Isn't it, a lot of work in return for useless, visuals-related objects and methods, but aggregated together in a bundle (you have to implement the entire library or none,) with the potential for pragmatic and new use cases which may make the users happy?
I don't know though. I take your point about being concerned about where it's heading. I think the discrete, teletype web is often just better. The chatty timers are new, and it's a little disconcerting to press 'db4' in edbrowse and realize that "oh, it's no longer entirely turn based - edbrowse is doing a layer of things without waiting for me to enable them." And the more the big websites are working, the more edbrowse is exposed to what you're talking about, like advertising and tracking. I remember reading the list thread earlier this year that took the example of a stock ticker. Weren't youall saying, maybe implement the chatty web in order to support more sites, but always have an interface that keeps the user in control with a discrete 'rr' command? We have 'rr' now- isn't this the best of both worlds sort of?
or covertly gather information on our net surfing habits,
Well, one remark on doing things covertly - edbrowse is very demystifying and a tool for demystification, I think. I would say it makes the covert overt. I think anyone trying to fight tracking has greater power over internet intrusions to the extent that they flow in in the form of a discrete CLI or a transactional, matter-of-fact timestamped log, and the further you get away from the quicksand of visually oriented design tricks which goes mercilessly right for your reptilian brain. For instance, there's the clickbait. Web advertising uses finely honed images designed to be as compelling as possible to a viewer's baser impulses, probably focus-grouped, so that you will click through. It works almost tautologically and is very manipulative. Then there's the streaming video advertising bloat, that you are obliged to download and that defaults to "play", like in the middle of a news story. I associate this trick with The Guardian but I'm sure it is a lot of other places too. Let's say the Huffington Post, they're notorious. Edbrowse is way less covert than this. I could be overdramatizing, but I think if clickbait is a little like "bread and circuses," or the Roman coliseum, edbrowse restores some sanity to digitally-mediated environments. Kevin _______________________________________________ Edbrowse-dev mailing list [email protected] http://lists.the-brannons.com/mailman/listinfo/edbrowse-dev
