The evolution of the web, and a eulogy for XHTML2

Re:The evolution of the web, and a eulogy for XHTML2 by nl on Sunday October 27, 2019 @08:05AM (#21369195)

For those who agree with this:

The reason HTML5 became what it is is because many people wanted to see the open web thrive as a competitor to closed, controlled eco-systems like the mobile application development platforms.

Just 10 years ago this was a mainstream view - there were groups who were fighting to give browsers web cam access so they could be used as video-messaging platforms, groups fighting to give location access so we could write location aware documents and apps etc etc.

I still believe this was the right decision.

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Re:The evolution of the web, and a eulogy for XHTML2 by klez on Sunday October 27, 2019 @08:45AM (#21369367)

If you view this in the context of needing separate models for documents and application, it means that you wouldn't need all that substrate of APIs for documents (i.e, why would you need a webcam API or even AJAX to render a blog article?).

So in that context I do agree with the article.

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Re:The evolution of the web, and a eulogy for XHTML2 by nl on Sunday October 27, 2019 @05:43PM (#21372622)

i.e, why would you need a webcam API or even AJAX to render a blog article?

This seems like a lack of imagination. The modern scientific publication Distill.pub makes heavy use of AJAX (eg https://distill.pub/2019/activation-atlas/) and it's easy to imagine it using a webcam (eg, to demonstrate semantic segmentation)

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Re:The evolution of the web, and a eulogy for XHTML2 by nl on Sunday October 27, 2019 @05:05PM (#21372388)

So.. don't use those APIs?

One of the reasond a platform succeeds is because it can be many things to different people.

I completely rejected the idea that there should be separated document and application models. Instead I think there are capabilities which should be layered to add abilities.

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