Re:Kosmonaut: web browser from scratch in Rust
by tmd83 on Saturday August 15, 2020 @03:56PM
(#24171850)
Right after a comment I realized #3 or perhaps #1
Most popular sites won't adopt the simpler web even if they can afford to do 2 version of their site, even if users like it. Because the lighter web most certainly will be worse for ads and tracking.
Re:Kosmonaut: web browser from scratch in Rust
by ghayes on Saturday August 15, 2020 @04:21PM
(#24172047)
FWIW, check out CNN's light page [0]. It's an amazing experience for a text-only page that loads blazingly fast.
Re:Kosmonaut: web browser from scratch in Rust
by acjones8 on Saturday August 15, 2020 @10:55PM
(#24174535)
If you like CNN's, also check out NPR's and CSM's pages! VoA also has a Gopher mirror and an RSS feed with actual content instead of just a link. I'm still looking for more text only sites like these, but so far these 4 cover general news pretty well.
Re:Kosmonaut: web browser from scratch in Rust
by vikiomega9 on Saturday August 15, 2020 @04:40PM
(#24172190)
Brilliant. There should be some way to incentivize lite pages, even if only for news websites.
Re:Kosmonaut: web browser from scratch in Rust
by tux1968 on Saturday August 15, 2020 @07:35PM
(#24173396)
Using them instead of the main page is a good start.
Re:Kosmonaut: web browser from scratch in Rust
by DarthGhandi on Saturday August 15, 2020 @08:40PM
(#24173757)
Wow, that's such a pleasant experience for a news site.
Re:Kosmonaut: web browser from scratch in Rust
by Aeolun on Saturday August 15, 2020 @06:25PM
(#24172961)
I think any version of a simpler web would still be 100% compatible with the full version of the web. So you’d really only need to build one version.
Re:Kosmonaut: web browser from scratch in Rust
by jefftk on Saturday August 15, 2020 @07:34PM
(#24173393)
Perhaps AMP? A declarative specification for websites that is fully backwards compatible with the traditional web via a JS runtime.
Re:Kosmonaut: web browser from scratch in Rust
by mofeien on Saturday August 15, 2020 @05:09PM
(#24172417)
Maybe the right approach (feature creep beware) would be to bundle this lite web standard tightly with a pay per view API or some other monetary distribution scheme for web content.
Each of the two standards might not receive enough attention on their own, but they complement each other: getting rid of the necessity of ads means going lite is an option for website owners, and the lite web will allow for many different lite web clients (that might finance itself through in-app ads shown to the user). In combination these two might overcome some threshold and gain traction!
Take your example. In 2020 there are already many ways that video can be decoded simply, efficiently and with excellent quality. We don't need to accept marginal user experience improvement at the cost of simplicity. So we don't accept changes to the standards at the expense of cost implementation complexity.
It's about having a different mantra. Instead of an emphasis on backwards compatibility and bleeding edge user experience, there's an emphasis on a democracy by simplicity.