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Is Today's Web Still 'the Web'?
snydeq writes "Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister raises questions regarding the transforming nature of the Web now that Tim Berners-Lee's early vision has been supplanted by today's much more complex model. AJAX, Google Web Toolkit, Flash and Silverlight all have McAllister asking, 'Is [the Web] still the Web if you can't navigate directly to specific content? Is it still the Web if the content can't be indexed and searched? Is it still the Web if you can only view the application on certain clients or devices? Is it still the Web if you can't view source?' Such questions bely a much bigger question for Web developers, McAllister writes. If today's RIAs no longer resemble the 'Web,' then should we be shoehorning these apps into the Web's infrastructure, or is the problem that the client platforms simply aren't evolving fast enough to meet our needs?" If the point of 'The Web' is to allow direct links between any 2 points, is today's web something entirely different?
Have you ever seen a linear spider web?
... "the web" was lots of computers all networked together, clients and servers. Which, if it is, mean that the web remains what it was yesterday, what it is today, and what it will be tomorrow.
THE HONOUR OF THE KNIGHTS - CC Licensed Sci-Fi Novel
As long as there is a central place for me to go download my midget porn, the web will live on.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
but one constant remains: pRon!
theres still more porn on the inter tubes than one can shake a stick at
The point of a Web is to make one, wait for visitors, catch them, and then eat them. It doesn't really matter what the visitor does once it gets in the web. It's just a matter of the spider finishing the deal.
-516
Are today's stupid questions still 'stupid questions'? Thanks Taco for answering my question with this post!
You have two options:
1) Pages that provides information
2) Fluff
99.9% of the sites that provide information are static text pages with a bit of html mark up and most of the rest is fluff.
From a technical perspective, one that is concerned with transfer protocols and knows what "http" "CSS" "ISP" and "FTP" stand for and why it matters, I suppose that the current uses of our series of tubes no longer fits that rudimentary definition of The Web.
.Com-ing, so far as they know, they're using the web. (Don't SMSs travel on teh internets?)
From my mother's perspective, my boss's perspective, and 90% of people who are not concerned about the actual way data is transferred, it will be The Web until something supplants it on a wholesale basis. It doesn't matter if they think they're Surfing, Instant Messaging, FTPing, AJAXing, or
So it depends. Given our forum, yes, the web is probably not the same as it was. For the majority, they don't know the difference.
So the question is, could we continue to have this interoperability if we more frequently used different protocols, technologies, and backbones for different uses? (eg. if we took AJAX/online apps off the "Web" and put them on their own infrastructure to keep the "Web" fully indexable/searchable)
This reminds me of what I started doing AI and we spent ages fussing over the definition of "intelligence".
I asked my dad, who is an engineer, about it and he said: "who cares as long as it's doing something useful."
I know, I know, we might get better leverage from new apps with a big paradigm shift and massive restructuring, but as long as what we're using still fulfills requirements, there needs to be a very strong argument for messing with it.
The web is an abstract term to describe the general topology of interconnected connected computers. It has nothing to do with interfaces, etc. This would be like asking is the internet still the internet now that most of it's users don't use lynx and gopher. It's a ridiculous statement.
The web is merely a platform, what companies and software developers come up with to deliver what people and/or their customers want, is up to them.
How is it different from the real world, the real world is a 'web' if you think about it, a bunch of interconnecting roads and transportation lines (trains, etc), although people don't think of it that way, it is essentially a network, a platform for serving needs and solving problems.
It's still the web. So you're receiving something a little more sophisticated than just text and gif images. Big deal. No need to get excited and try to invent new terminology. As for clients not evolving fast enough. Uh, welcome to the real world where not everything conforms to your view of perfection.
Since this is an article with somebody complaining, that would seem to be prima facie evidence that it's still the same ol' web.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
The more mainstream the web becomes, the more bullshit we have to sort through... the more useless it becomes. There used to be a banner ad. Now there's a banner, links on the left, links on the right, popups, flash over the actual text, sound, video, and 10x as many pages all with the same shit to click through just to get the same content. And, we're already hearing about ISPs adding their own shit to our shitty internet experience.
It doesn't make any fucking sense that an article that could be entirely scrolled through takes 27 clicks to read.. It doesn't make any fucking sense that clicking 'yes' one time on the wrong thing can allow malicious software to install itself (that is your fault, microsoft). It doesn't make any fucking sense that our own damn web clients allow the developer to disable right-click on a page. It doesn't make any fucking sense that I have to watch a 30-second advertisement to watch a 10-second video clip.
The web is quickly turning into television - a bunch of stupid avertisements created by stupid people geared for stupid consumers. The web is still way better than anything else we got.
--- We need more Ron Paul!
Mod parent up. In that sense, the Web is more true to it's name than it ever was. And there's alot more spiders now.
Of course I didn't RTFA... why would I do that? You really are new here aren't you? Don't let my UID fool you.
Just what we need.
More complex porn...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
In the sites I visit, it's still pretty rare to see content presented in flash that would more appropriately be presented in html. I assume this is because people want to get indexed by google and have a high page rank, and they know they won't get indexed if it's in flash. If that's the case, then it's actually a bad thing that google is going to start indexing flash content.
As far as silverlight, what are the chances that it will succeed? I'm optimistic that it will fail. Although Windows has a high market share, especially in the US, IE doesn't have anywhere near that market share. There are entire countries in Europe where Firefox is the majority browser. I don't see how any web developer could commit themselves to silverlight when it means locking out so many users.
Find free books.
Everyone on this website is now dumber for having read that summary. I award you no points and may God have mercy on your soul.
Seriously...
That is, with 238% more lolcats, buttsecks, and social networking sites
The basic idea of the the internet is connections. It was originally just computers connected, and so the web they carried was computer oriented communication, sharing and growth.
Now, its connecting people, and when you offer a new means of connecting people, especially one as broad and global as the Internet, then it will become as diverse as the people involved.
If you dont think so, think about the differences between the stereotype programmer, vs the Corperate Cog with his Blackberry, vs the average WoW-head, vs a MySpacer, vs the Goons, vs We here at Slashdot. We are all widely different, but we are all sharing the same common forum: The Net
Common Sense isn't as Common as people think...
The "W3B," dude.
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
"...should we be shoehorning these apps into the Web's infrastructure..."
You might as well ask if we should be shoehorning data communications into lines laid for analog phones and TV.
Is the web a quirky, limiting platform for app development? Sure. If you want a platform where as many people have and are comfortable with the client software is there an alternative? Nope.
Acoustic and electric guitars are fundamentally different, but an electric guitar is still a guitar to a guitarist. Seems to me that we're in the electric guitar age of the web now.
I dream of a better world... one in which chickens can cross roads without their motives being questioned.
It was the commercialization of the web, that happened early in its history, that drove the importance of presentation over content. Technologies like Flash and Silverlight fit in well with the corporate desire to present a slick image to the public. Old style information based sites stated to look out of place. Adding flash and tweaking CSS doesn't usually add much to the users value of a site but for corporate marketing, it's essential.
When did we ever just have 1 link between 2 points? It's always been complex, unsettled, and a bit anarchistic. This is just the newest facet of it.
The change in the internet is continuous. This is not something different, this is the way it always has been.
Check out my sysadmin blog!
while the functionality (see any ads for a Gopher maintainer lately?) and access topology (the original Arpanet was by definition not commercial) have changed radically, the core definition is still valid. put a smiley behind www if you have to, but Your Connected Internet has grown up, and is chasing the almighty dollar like the rest of us.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
The web, since going mainstream, has never been as open as article suggests. There have always been the few who could access the source and understand it, just as now there are those who can some Flash and manipulate. I suppose that knowledge barrier was once more easily overcome, but increasing complexity is the nature of society. The web is just the transfer of information from many to many.
if a peer cannot share files with another peer?
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
The question is really "what defines the Web?". If the Web is just any system of transport and file protocols over the Internet that allows for easy indexing and cross-server linking, then sure, what we have today is still the Web. Personally, I'd like to see a major change in the Web - forget HTML, forget CSS, I want a real client-server approach. I think that so long as the protocols are easy to use (or at least scalable - the average 14 year old OMGPONIES girl needs to be able to throw together a site, but not at the expense of "Enterprise" sites) and it supports cross-server linking and indexing, then the average person will still identify it as the Web.
From an abstract viewpoint, how different is the modern Web from a bunch of remote X11 clients that can link to one another - XHTML, PHP, Javascript make a complex programming system with a myriad of frameworks, tools, and interfaces - much like the state of X11 and wrapping toolkits on the desktop! It's time to stop extending Tim Berners-Lee's first attempt at the Web; now that we know what we want and where the Web is going, let's come up with some real tools to do it and dump the HTML/Javascript mess.
Redefine "the world wide web" to your own private definition that nobody has defined it as before, and then claim it's dead?
Got news for you sparky, the web ain't dead.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Is it still the Web if[...]
Yes. All the "problems" you mention derive solely from your preconceived notions about what "the web" means.
Directness of navigation, indexing, searching, and browser compatibility have nothing to do with "complies with HTTP".
Now, in the last case (only certain clients or devices work), you can say that something using port 80 for non-HTTP traffic doesn't count as "the web"... But that seems like complaining that your PC doesn't run your favorite games when you use it as a boat anchor.
Such questions bely a much bigger question for Web developers
Well, yes and no. Web developers may need to ask themselves whether they want to write standards-compatible web pages, or arbitrary network-enabled apps (which would, IMO, make them no longer "web developers"). But beyond that... Nothing to see here, move along. If you eat an orange, don't complain that it doesn't taste like an apple.
As soon as POST forms were put into use, you stopped being able to access any page from any other page.
You should have been modded insightful rather than funny because to most people that is what and how the Internet works. Not just porn, but as long as they can go get whatever it is that they like, the Internet is working and they are happy with it. Few users of the Internet think about whether they are on the WWW or the Internet. To them they are the same thing. Some of us remember their first viewing of Mosaic. We remember the Internet before the widespread use of HTML.
As long as we can go online and get the information that we want for free, the Internet will be alive, at least as it is understood to be so by most of it's users. It doesn't matter if that is porn or the latest crap from faux news, or blueprints for the moon lander or thesis papers for last years PhD candidates in robotics theory.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
Does this really matter at all? For anything?
If you're implying that the web is an entity by which you can go to point B from point A, in your very post, you've answered your question of "is the web the same or entirely (not partially) different."
Okay, for those who missed the answer in the very post or are too lazy to scroll up and read it again - there are two links in it. Yep - going from point A to point B.
In fact, I have thousands of bookmarks directly to articles, products and whatnot - yep, they still work. I have found only a few - relative to the amount of sites I visit - a few sites that don't have this linkability.
So - the answer to the last question would be no - it's not "something entirely different." The web is still the web.
Flash and Silverdark may intrude, but they're certainly not going to remake the face of the web. And especially since Google will soon be able to crawl Flash - linkability could be applied to Flash. Perhaps Silverfart will follow.
Hmm... an interconnected system based on mathematical algorithms designed to transfer information... ...The Matrix?
Now it's the Web plus plastic.
Have you ever seen a linear spider web?
Yes. And the spider landed right on my keyboard as it came down, too.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Bogus article. Adobe must have made a big PR push to get so much attention paid to their indexing tool for Flash. Google has been indexing .swf files for most of a year.
As for "Web 2.0" adding execution capability, Java applets have been doing that for years. They work pretty well, and most browsers can run them. Most of the unpopularity of Java applets seems to stem from the fact that most of them look ugly, but that's not an inherent problem with applets. (Sun just has no clue about fonts.)
The big win with Flash is that it standardized video formats. There's a lot less of "download our annoying proprietary player to play this video." That's really YouTube's doing. Real has taken a big hit over this, and it's cutting into Microsoft's player. Today, if something starts downloading a codec, you probably hit "Cancel".
The fact that the WWW exists on a two-way network is its fundamental distinction from traditional one-way media. To say that the web today is no longer 'The Web' due to the introduction of more complex or proprietary content platforms is incorrect so long as the original mechanics (i.e. http and html) are still available and in use.
I'm not disputing that many would like to see the net put to use as another TV-like consumption platform through closed, proprietary, uncrawlable means. However, the myriad sites that enable and thrive on the participatory features of the web are considerable. The fact that it's so damn easy for even the average joe to make web pages these days (even if they are myspace pages) makes the current web more like 'The Web' than the TB-L web.
I thought TFA read like a rant by somebody mad AJAX and Flash (or Silverlight or whatever) exist because they are tough to index. Here's an idea: if we got rid of the web, it would be much easier to index the web!!
I can't remember the last time I forgot anything.
I suppose you'd like to only visit sites coded in HTML?
I can still type in an ip address with directory trees or a direct URL for a piece of content and 99% of the time i'll get what i was looking for.
Sure macromedia has made the spidering on flash video's an annoying freakin whore to get to, but if your client doesn't blow you can still get the direct link to the raw flash (FLV extension) through it's version of safari's "activity" window.
I can still load NTTP, and the technology still does a reasonable job of routing around censorship if you're savvy enough with tech to program the "off timer" on your TV.
This is yet another scare-mongering or "omg the good ol' days are gone" story.
When last I checked there were still people composing jazz, there are still people writing comic books, there are still sports cars and after-market parts that will let you make a hot-rod (or people who will do it for you), they still sell model M keyboards, and the internet is still there.
Things change, and usually the "old model" doesn't go away if it has any merit, but the evolution continues, expanding choice (unless the MAFIAA makes it illegal, in which case someone needs to be shot).
Case and point, the jitterbug phone is available to people who don't want the bloat, complexity, and OMGKITCHENSINK they throw into today's phones (15 menus to start dialing, oh I wonder why the vehicular collision rate among users is so high!).
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
>> is the web still the web?
Are you still the same person after you get a haircut, tattoo, piercing, lobotomy(too far?)? My point is that every major technology, especially technologies that gain widespread acceptance are constantly being modified or used for other purposes than originally intended. Was electricity originally intended to power telephones, dishwashers, mars rovers? No,no, and no. At the inception of any new technology the best its creator or the general public can wish for is that the technology is used in creative and novel ways.
Aside from that, although the editing and creation aspect of wikipedia relies on technologies which may not be considered the web, the viewing of wikipedia is almost the definition of the original web(all indexed static pages). Wikipedia alone I think is enough to maintain the original web structure to the age of 50 before replacement.
Not that any of this is particularly meaningful, since the article summary is, 'Is the web still the web' and the article title itself is, 'do new web tools spell doom for the browser'
...or is it actually designed to break the open web in the cause of Microsoft lock-in?
you had me at #!
YMBNH.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
The argument (from the OP, I didn't RTFA) seems to be that the web DOESN'T work.
Essentially, the OP is making a case which amounts to "well, we already accidentally killed a few flies, and flies were never perfect at digesting our trash anyway, so let's just wipe out all the insects and build a better kind of insect."
Yeah, it's a Web. Get it?
(12 oz. mouse for non-[Adult Swim] fans)
I remember when I was a wee lad, I used to think that "the world wide web" and the internet were the same thing. I didn't realise for years that the internet refers to an internationally connected network of computers and the web simply refers to sites linking from one to another.
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
No, everybody knows, the INTERNET is for porn!
...and it should be known by now
If it can't be archived, is it still web? Perhaps that's the main question that should be asked. So perhaps it's not a static web of hyperlinks and content anymore, but a dynamic web of everchanging content. But HTTP still defines the means for us to find content that has moved.
Now, what about user generated content? How about Youtube videos that were removed by some greedy corporation? The inclusion of video and audio in web content is definitely changing the web - content is no longer text-only.
And this brings into the map, the "semantic web" and the recent news that Adobe gave search giants the mean to index Flash content. Perhaps in a few years we'll be able to extract text from audio, and maybe later we will have textual descriptions of video elements in a scene. And who knows if there will be a revolutionary music compression method which will replace MIDI music - but with MP3 quality?
The web may have been thought as static, but it's not. To paraphrase Hannibal Lecter, "it's refining its methods. It's evolving". The web is no longer about simple information. It's becoming a part of our society, as we can see in internet cults, internet political campaigns, news containing uploaded user videos, internet video memes (Rick rolling), cyberbulling, etc.
As part of society, the web is subject to experience dramatic changes. Maybe one day we will find ourselves navigating in the Matrix, or submerge ourselves in dot hack's "The world".
Perhaps this is the true meaning of "web 2.0": The Web and Society merging into a third entity. I'm beginning to believe that the movie "Ghost in the Shell" had more truth in it than we originally thought.
Web, Internet, Web 2.0 whatever. Nobody fathomed what it would become when it first started and its hard to predict what it will evolve into.
Life is about being a Phoenix!
I'm sure Sir Tim would agree: with the web, it's far better to have violated its principles than to have violated its principals.
Is [the Web] still the Web if you can't navigate directly to specific content?
That's why web documents have internal hyperlinks ... and have since Berners-Lee's original ENQUIRE prototype.
Is it still the Web if the content can't be indexed and searched?
The Web (1980) predates the first search engine (Archie in 1990, Wandex in 1993) by at least a decade.
Is it still the Web if you can only view the application on certain clients or devices?
What, like a web-browser? Remember, a browser is a "certain [class of] clients": though they are ubiquitous now, they weren't always.
Is it still the Web if you can't view source?
Viewing source code has never been the primary interest of most users.
In short, it sounds like the author is saying "ZOMG! The Web has changed." Well, guess what, bucky--the Web (and computers in general) changes every single day. Old technologies give way to newer ones--sometimes a good thing, sometimes a bad thing, but it happens.
If you haven't been down-modded lately, you aren't trying.
Sacred cows make the best hamburger.
I still use hypertext transfer protocol to access this stuff. Looks like the web to me.
We had text only and liked it, now get off my lawn!
Monstar L
All the crap is depressing. I was looking for something Monday, and clicked on a link to someone's blog, and the browser just went into "not responding" mode. Happened on three different browsers on two different OSes. What the hell could some douchesack put in his blog that kills three fully up to date web browsers?
There's just too much clutter. Gaming sites are the worst. Most of them make 5 Mbps broadband feel like dialup again. And too many pages where you get a header, and then nothing but white space for a long time because some ad banner is getting lagged.
Ah, don't get me started. Oh, wait, you did. :-)
And I'm no Luddite. It's just they every new "innovation" seems to be implemented poorly in 95% of the cases.
And it really boils down to the fact that the web (html/javascript on top of http) is just a rotten way for a client and server to interact in any sort of tightly coupled way. The 'wire formats' available for data marshalling and unmarshalling are poor, at best. JSON is an abomination born out of a desperate attempt to shoehorn some sort of usable data format in on top of a client and communications infrastructure which is totally inappropriate at a fundamental design level for the task. Just go through that AJAX wishlist that everyone was talking about the other day. Virtually all of the issues simply stem from inappropriate use of technology.
Web clients are designed basically to deal with largely static content and a very simplistic page based UI model. Screen update and network operations are coupled in awkward ways, etc. No amount of hacking will fix that. True superior INTERNET applications are going to require a total rethink of client side technology and deployment of protocols that elegantly deal with complex data, state, transactions, and full duplex communication.
Without that, web apps will remain ugly kludges which are hard to program, harder to maintain, and perform poorly at best.
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
Slashdot post that talks about RIA technologies, mentions Silverlight and doesn't say anything about OpenLaszlo? What should we expect from Microsoft then...
I think the point is more Is your Web the same as My Web.
I live in the open web. You may go to the closed web.
If your government published in closed formats.
and I can see the links, is the content part of
the web. Not if we are talking about an open web
based on open source formats and content.
So my web and your web may over lap in some cases.
But I don't call it 'The Web" if I can't get to it without
closed products that only run on closed architectures.
Who's web has more spiders?
What makes the web and the internet "our" thing is the freedom of information, not the particular content it arrives in. People can use static text or embedded flash videos or whatever, it's an argument for techies and purists as to what's best. My concern is about what governments and corporations will try to do to stifle things.
I remember what it was like before the internet (at least before I was on it.) Local dial-up BBS's, that's it. Want national or international chatter? Get on Fidonet and wait days for messages to percolate through the system. My first net experience was with a freebie offering through the library, dial-up on a text interface. It was amazing. By the time I got on the proper net through a local ISP with a graphical browser, wow! What a difference.
The reason why the net has been so great is because it came about as an academic exercise and the corporations really didn't twig onto it until the basic work had already been done.
You know what the future portends at this point? It's not just a boot stomping on a human face forever, the person whose face is getting stomped is stuck with the reincarnation of AOL.
If the corporations get their way, our internet experience will be as naff as what we deal with on the cell phones. They'll bill us $1 per GB, charge extra for access to premium sites, and with this trusted computing bullshit, we won't even have control over our own fucking PC's anymore. It's one thing to have trusted computing and managed code on a game console like the Xbox, it's another to have my PC just as crippled. We won't even be able to say "It's my property, I can do what I want with it" because the EULA will trump that.
As far as computers go, we say "well, we can always install some flavor of Linux, that'll work!" Yeah? As suggested in another topic here, the trusted computing shit wil be built into the CPU, either there will be no way t get around it or it will be some sort of expensive hardware hack where you risk frying your motherboard to make it work.
Someone tell me there's a solution that doesn't boil down to wishful thinking.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
If today's RIAs no longer resemble the 'Web,' then should we be shoehorning these apps into the Web's infrastructure
No, we should not be shoehorning these apps into the Web's infrastructure. The reason it is being done is because some people see using a web-based GUI and HTTP as the quick and cheap way regardless of whether it is the proper, correct, or safe way.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
'Is [the Web] still the Web if you can't navigate directly to specific content? Is it still the Web if the content can't be indexed and searched? Is it still the Web if you can only view the application on certain clients or devices? Is it still the Web if you can't view source?
I remember the EXACT same questions being posed TEN YEARS ago, when the big trend in web development was to litter a site with Java applets.
The web stayed web-y through that fad, and it's stayed web-y through Flash (which has been around just as long), and it will stay web-y through AJAX and WUB and MRUEQ and whatever happens next to it.
These claims are wrong about what the Web used to be:
The Web has always pointed to content that couldn't be navigated "directly" (with a single click, if that statement means anything). In fact, the original Web (from 1990-1993-1995-1998-whenever) always had content that required intermediary steps. Mostly to build state: login with a password, or a "click trail" that set variables passed in URL or POST data. But also lots of content that couldn't even be opened in the browser itself, requiring external "helper applications". Like RealAudio or any other realtime playable media, lots of image formats, and of course the Acrobat that still opens an external app from most browsers.
Little or none of that content was ever indexed before. And in fact most content wasn't indexed at all, certainly not before Altavista came along at least 5 years into the game, and surely not as completely and precisely (and accessibly, which is the most important) as by Google.
The range of clients and devices that are mostly or completely useful for finding and consuming everything on the Web is extremely broad and diverse now. In the beginning, only the fastest PCs could do it. Now, Web access is embedded in lightswitches, not to mention mobile phones, watches, cars, and all kinds of damn fool novelties.
And of course most of the most valuable and useful parts of the Web have never been available with "view source". The CGI and other server code and databases have never been viewable like HTML source. The browsers themselves in the original Web were all closed source. Whether Internet Explorer, Netscape, Spyglass, AOL, or any other browser, all the source was secret, except the tiny fraction that was the HTML (how it actually worked "under the hood" was unknowable). As were of course most of the Webservers, since they were one of Netscape's or Microsoft's IIS (except for the original NCSA and CERN servers, which quickly became a minority). So in fact only a little bit, the HTML, was viewable, and the vast majority was secret, unavailable, anyone's guess.
So yes, it's still the Web. It's even more what we wanted it to be: all the info and apps in the world linked by simple clicks from any computer attached to the Internet. And the Web's explosive growth and demands for open source have made open source the standard expectation, even if it's still growing to become the standard delivery. And not just on the Web, but on all software (and hardware too) that we use, even as the Web has become the main software and hardware that we use.
Of course, lying about the Web, about the 1990s Web or any given snapshot, is about as old as the Web itself. So why shouldn't the Web catch fire with lies claiming the old Web was some kind of open source paradise that it wasn't, that today's Web actually is?
--
make install -not war
Have you tried installing the IE tab for FF and then tried using mlb.com by opening it in FF using the IE tab?
Ive found the majority of sites that work "only" in IE can work in FF using the IE tab.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1419
Interconnected computers is a "network". I have a network at home. The "topology" is the picture that these make when connected. That is, 5 computers are connected in a "star topology". 3 more in a "star topology", and there is a "bus topology" connecting the two "stars".
In turn, this network is connected to a cable modem, which connects this ENTIRE network to other networks. How? We are not sure of the topology, so we draw it as a "cloud".
This "network of networks" is the "internet".
Nothing to do with the data. That would be defined by public or private protocols. The "web" is defined as clients using servers with "http" protocol over "tcp/ip". It also defines a "URL" to allow linking from one server to itself or another, thus implementing hypertext documents.
Very useful stuff. But it only passes encoded data. Not food, water, or hygiene products. So I don't get where you get "need". It also doesn't solve problems. By facilitating information flow, the internet may provide you with data to solve a problem, but it's only data.
You are right -- the internet is not lynx and gopher. It is simply the idea that routing can be pushed to the edge, allowing networks to be trivially connected, and that the result would be useful.
In a sense, it is a fractal.
At the beginning I mentioned that I have two networks, each in a star topology, connected by a bus. That bus is the internet. Remember, the internet backbone started as a 56k link.
For convenience, we "users" of the internet allow certain functions to become part of the bedrock. As yet the "web" isn't there. What is there? ip, tcp, udp, dns, and routing protocols.
After all, we need a lingua franca; and dns is just too convenient to give us. Maybe the "web" will join in, but not until it loses bloat (as a hypertext publication method, not an application carrier).
As an example, I give you telnet. Once a noble and (considered) indispensable part of the "internet", it is now deceased. RIP.
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
When Henry Ford introduced the Model "T" it was an automobile. Today's cars are a far cry from the first production autos yet they are still automobiles. Taking this analogy further, the roads we travel down today are a far cry from the roads used by the Model "T". The same thing can be said for the web (think of the application as the car) and the internet (which would be the road).
A few years ago the primary way to connect to the internet was to dial-up which I would describe as painful today. You had your choice of a couple of clients and web browsers but that was about the extent of it. Today, high-speed access is everywhere and I would not want to count the number of different applications, clients, and browsers that are out there!
Today's web doesn't look aything like the web used to, it is like comparing the old roadster to an eighteen wheeler or like comparing a dirt road to the Dan Ryan Expressway!
The web has grown and that is a good thing. The web may not look anything like it's original developers intended but that is okay. It has become a vehicle of commerce and we will continue to see changes, most good, some bad. That is progress and it is good.
A simple, clean model was replaced by an ridiculously expanded blown-up mess of diferernt techniques. For most dynamical web-pages to work it would be best to make a Java application (without html). I am sick an tired of web-pages who have no notation that a user might have enable js, but disabled cookies (to name two thing which are often used together, but not really defined withint one model).
If my understanding is correct, Tim Berners-Lee's original vision was not really about the technology. Instead, the idea was that anybody could publish their own content freely. This is a democratic issue, and frankly I feel that the whole "Web 2.0" thing with social networks, blogs, and everything else has in fact empowered users to create their own content.
Granted, much of it is horrible horrible meaningless random thought streams, but that's beside the point. The fact that people can publish their ramblings proves that the web is alive and well.
.: Max Romantschuk
I would say this is a little bit wrong. Flash in applications can provide better UI animations and better user experiences. In the latest site I worked on, sometimes the user clicked something and something on the page would smoothly move. This effect could be used to draw a user's eye to the next step of the process, making the app less confusing. Just because UI usability often involves colors and animations rather than adding new content doesn't make it fluff, or worthless. It is important.
In addition, we had a lot of client code written into the flash rather than using javascript. I didn't actually write the flash code, but I do know that with silverlight, it is way easier to write the code in .Net, and the .Net framework is way better than the javascript framework. Additionally, it's easier to debug and tends to be cleaner. That's not a fluffy reason for moving away from AJAX, and can allow you to provide richer, or even more, content because development time is shortened.
Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.
Right now, it's still "The Web." In a post net-neutrality world, it'll be "The Webs." Or AOLSoftizoncast Presents: "The Web (the parts we want you to have access to)."
sic
What I've been working on the last ten years are web applications which allow users to interact with large legacy databases of relational and object data. The original document oriented nature of the web was much more simplistic and static (and therefore less useful). Online banking, booking your own flights, managing huge datasets across the globe. That's the true evolution of human knowledge to me. It's better than a book with a really great index (hypertext). The problem as mentioned above is indexing all that rich data to make it accessible and allow patterns of knowledge to emerge.
There are several aspects to what we today call "the web."
There's the traditional web that's pure, url-addressable content, wikipedia for example.
Then there's applications, like web office suites or webmail applications. They just happen to use much of the same infrastructure as the "real" web.
Listing AJAX and GWT separately in the writeup is redundant, since the latter is just one way of implementing DHTML applications.
There's nothing about DHTML apps that prevents the creation of sites where you can directly navigate to specific content. In the case of GWT apps, for example, the browser's history mechanism is fully functional, and specific content within a GWT application is typcially referenced by anchors at the end of the URL. Those same URLs can, of course, be used for both bookmarking and direct navigation to that content. It isn't spiderable, but that's a different issue.
I am a bit uncomfortable with DHTML apps being lumped-in with the likes of Flash and Silverlight. At least they're based on public & open specs, and have multiple competing implementations.
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
I point you to all the phishing sites, the spam sites, the malware sites, etc.
What you describe is what is happening. The only thing is that the spiders share the same big web, and that the spiders victims are also able to wander around the same big web.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
What can I say? Your logic overwhelmed me! Heaven forbid I should question the suitability of javascript for complex applications, or the appropriateness of HTTP for stateful bi-directional data interchange.
Whatever shall I do? My career is in ruins. ;)
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
of course the boobs are imaginary
You see, most blokes, you know, will be httping at port 80. You're on 80 here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, you're on 80. Where can you go from there? Where?
Oh, yeah, it's not easy to pad these out to 120 characters.
Never before has the term 'web' better described the nature of the internet. In the above article, it is questioned as to whether the fact that content cannot be directly navigated to suggests that the term 'web' is not as applicable. I would like to disagree. In the past, yes, there was a web-like network structure where content was neatly separate and distinct, thus it was possible to directly navigate to any content. However, due to the highly integrated nature of web 2.0 content achieved through such technologies as AJAX, XML, API's etc... information is shared and exchanged with such freedom and flexibility, that the content itself resembles a web-like structure, thus mimicking it's underlying hardware architecture. Thus, I feel that today's Web is even more of a 'web' than the web of yester-year. If there is to be a new term used at some point in the future, perhaps the "Intermesh" would be an appropriate replacement.
pronounced ehh-ner-ness
For all I care, the AJAX can reach out and give me good sex. But when the major networks started putting their week's content on the web I asked myself whether it was still the web or some TV/entertainment thingie.
internet is free at your place? i wish it was here too.. too bad heh! :P
If the point of 'The Web' is to allow direct links between any 2 points, is today's web something entirely different?
The point of "The Internet" is to allow that (despite the media-owned telco companies wish otherwise).
"The Web" is just one application that runs on "The Internet"
Ah the days of Gopher and Archie.... those were good times. Mosaic and if you paid, netscape..... oh let's not forget trumpet winsock. The web is still there, you just gotta cut through more noise today.
... is only one possible protocol/data structure/application that utilizes the Internet.
Lots of others exist and many more wil be created as time goes by. Some will be as big as all the crap we see on port 80, others will not. Many browsers will be extended to handle these protocols, but some will require special applications. Just because a web browser, or web server application supports something (albeit in a crippled fashion) doesn't make it part of "the web".
Have gnu, will travel.
My web hasn't been a web for years..it seems a continous cache repeating. To blame clients not evolving, after the actual web can't even stay one is absurd. I am on my last upgrade...I would even find used bent pin pgas to do what the nearly useless web has to offer for the price. To be precise, my web died 6pcs ago and 8 years (around 2000) 4 different locations and now I know to stop blaming myself, my stuff, or my locales stuff. To heck with your darn silverlights and artsy fartsy fantasies. Uh oh. can't forget to mention the socialist manipulation...freedom and truth my ass...and it REPEATS exacty the opposite of my searches and likes never evolving. I evolved. the web didn't and doesn't.
to do web applications.
For example, Google Maps (and Street View) allows you to get a direct url for exactly the area you're viewing at the moment. I can give you, for example, a direct link to a street level view of a museum in Chicago or a park in Atlanta or the Golden Gate Bridge. Even though you got to them by searching, panning, and scrolling.
Most apps don't bother letting you pass these sorts of parameters in, which is unfortunate. But it's certainly possible to encode all of this in a URL (and even, potentially, publish an API so that other services can deep link into them) if the developer has enough foresight. Few do.
The US free market: two halves of a government-granted duopoly are free to set the market price.
Locking content into closed formats is the antithesis of the Web, and we are lucky we have Google. As long as your web page popularity is dominated by what the bot, the lowest common denominator of client technologies, can find on your site, we have some hope of cutting the Flash/JS-required/no-right-click crap out of existence.
It is pitch dark. You are likely to be eaten by http://www.grue.com/ .
Det er i orden
You forgot the link...
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
when they introduced stylesheets - gone were the days of scalable pages, instead all of it became absolute font sizes and to many of us unreadable font sizes.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
... it's like wiping your ass with silk.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Some people need to watch out what kool-aid they've been drinking.
Sikker på det?
Some of us remember their first viewing of Mosaic. We remember the Internet before the widespread use of HTML.
Raises Hand
I remember gopher, ftp, pine, tin, and newsgroups long before Mosaic hit the scene. When it did hit the scene, there wasn't much to see... /. was just a twinkle in Cowboy Neal's eye.
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
I mean, is it just me, or is this kind of a dumb question? Things change. The better question is: are the new things better than the old things?
And by the way, AJAX doesn't stop you from viewing source.
// This is not a sig.