The WWW is a network built on a set of protocols. HTML is a markup language that allows for (indeed, that is is designed to facilitate) embedding and linking binary and executable content, including javascript, flash, java, audio, video, as well as marking up text. HTML is one, but not the only, content-type which can be distributed across the WWW. This is fundamental to the design of HTTP and the intent of HTML and the web itself.
By your rationale, no site created after the addition of the <SCRIPT>, <APPLET> or <OBJECT> tags in HTML could be considered a part of the WWW, which would exclude the entirety of the web after HTML 3.2. This is "not even wrong" levels of ridiculousness.
Yes, one could say that the Web has "jumped the shark" sometimes after 1997 (took some years), remember the mess when Flash and Java applets were everywhere ? (WebAssembly might be more sleek, but the issue is likely to be the same...)
I guess that multimedia could be part of the Web, but support for basic features like audio/video search is (still!) sorely lacking... (Though I'm pretty sure that the capability has been here for more than a decade.)
With the ability to run arbitrary code comes the loss of a common standard, and therefore the inability to communicate, especially for machines - you might have noticed that you hardly see search engines pulling up results for supposedly "Web"Sites like Facebook or Discord or Twitter ?
I can guarantee that no one was looking at a Java applet or a Flash site in the 1990s and thinking "I don't know what this is, but it definitely isn't part of the World Wide Web."
>Yes, one could say that the Web has "jumped the shark" sometimes after 1997 (took some years), remember the mess when Flash and Java applets were everywhere ?
On the other hand, Flash allowed animators and game developers an outlet for creative expression and distribution and led to an explosion of content, and launch more than a few professional careers. And Java applets... existed.
At the very least, I think it's controversial to say the web jumped the shark at that point.
>you might have noticed that you hardly see search engines pulling up results for supposedly "Web"Sites like Facebook or Discord or Twitter ?
I do see those results in search engines. Visibility in a search engine is a result of SEO and those sites' indexing rules, it has nothing to do with whether or not a site is part of the web - if I can reach it in a browser, it's part of the web by definition.
Browsers can do a lot of things these days that are not part of the Web : display pdfs, ftp folders, rtsp streams...
The browser becoming an OS inside the OS is at the crux at the issue. (And the main reason is likely Google trying to wrest control of personal computing from Microsoft.)
What does a "separate field" have to do with anything? Now a site is or isn't part of the web based on how Google formats them in their search listings? These sites serve media meta-tags specifically so that Google will index them, they depend on SEO. Find someone famous with a Twitter or Facebook presence and search their username and whatever public information they have, including excerpts of recent posts, will probably show up.
>Browsers can do a lot of things these days that are not part of the Web : display pdfs, ftp folders, rtsp streams...
But your assertion was that websites which use javascript to render text, applets or flash weren't part of the web, but somehow just part of "the internet," despite everything on the web also being on the internet.
We seem to fundamentally disagree on what the web is - it seems like your definition is more aesthetic than technical, and that you believe only static HTML pages should be considered part of the web.
But according to at least the w3C's Help and FAQ page[0], the difference between the internet and the web is:
The Web, on the other hand, is defined in W3C's
Architecture of the World Wide Web, Volume I as
follows: "The World Wide Web (WWW, or simply Web)
is an information space in which the items of interest,
referred to as resources, are identified by global
identifiers called Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI)."
But nothing supporting the claim that "If your "web"site can execute arbitrary code, and/or violates HTML guidelines (...) then it might be part of the Internet, but it's certainly not part of the World Wide Web!"
I mean, the <SCRIPT> and <APPLET> tags were added in HTML 3.2, and the reason <SCRIPT> had a "type" attribute was that the intent was for browsers to support multiple languages. It seems kind of absurd to argue that somehow embedded code was never intended to be a part of the world wide web, when it was considered so early.
No one who was actually involved in the architecture of the web appears to have ever had such a rigid definition of it, or such a limited vision of what it should or shouldn't be. Here's a thread from the www mailing list from 1995 about web scripting languages[2], I don't see anyone arguing that the concept is fundamentally hostile or antithetical to the web or HTML. Rather, as hackers tend to do, they discuss the ramifications and pros and cons and possible implementation.
You may not like that this is the web, you may not agree that this should be the web, but this is the web.
[0]https://www.w3.org/Help/#webinternet
[1]https://www.w3.org/TR/webarch/
[2]https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-talk/msg00099.html
It's about trying to push too many things on the Internet through HTTP, about trying to transform the browser into an OS inside an OS (which is a lot about the Microsoft vs Google battle over personal computing).
Protocols, not platforms ! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20841059
If your "web"site can execute arbitrary code, and/or violates HTML guidelines (required for web crawlers or accessibility software to work, or for browsers to tweak the layout) and/or requires JavaScript / Flash / Java to run properly, then it might be part of the Internet, but it's certainly not part of the World Wide Web!