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Mobile 'Deep Links' and the Fate of the Web
An anonymous reader writes: Mobile developers call the links they're forging between apps "deep links," but so far the whole idea seems to be more about marketing than deepening understanding. This essay over at Backchannel argues that we still haven't delivered on the original promise of links online — the idea of enabling people to build and share "cathedrals of context." Quoting: "The people who invented the link saw it as a tool for relating ideas in illuminating ways—for making conceptual leaps and connecting disparate thoughts. If these visionaries had achieved their aim, the kind of tech-cultural amnesia represented by the recycling of the term 'deep links' shouldn't have been possible, two decades into the Web era. The links with true depth that they envisioned would have made sure of that."
ok. go ahead and do all that. for free.
For a second I thought they meant these deep links.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
...but things change, and the primary purposes of links now, on almost all platforms, is for one primary reason: to generate income.
You click a link, it goes to a page with an ad, which, when served and clicked on, will generate income, allowing the owners to pay for the website. While some websites are purely informational, most websites generate information in order to make money, and most of that money is made by people clicking links.
"Deep links" are only the tip of the iceberg.
As Alan Kay pointed out almost 20 years ago (!) when the web get reinvented twice over it STILL kept missing its true potential.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Right now the web has been relegated to content consumption, posting stupid obvious questions, posting controversial material to get eyeballs (clickbait), trying to get as many clicks as possible by splitting articles up into N pages, or even bullshit like only liking to articles on the same site. /glares at Phoronix
The web has become a clusterfuck of bad design and worse implementations.
When you have standards misspelling referrer in the HTTP header standard it is depressing that everything about the web is literally half-assed.
What's new? :-/
Somebody bought into stuff that he knew was bullshit. Let's look at this example:
Bzzzt. Stop right there. I am aware that NYT has an app, but you are a moron if you are using it. Before you install it, you know it can't possibly be as good as their website. You are making a conscious decision to lose. You thought, "Hey, this would suck! Let's do it!"
So.. what happens if you choose otherwise? What if you're trying to have a good experience? What happens is that you don't "exit" any apps. If the article failed to link to something related to Barcelona, then you just highlight that and search.
Plenty of people aren't trying to lose, and they're still on the web. Yes, you know some idiots. Maybe you're one of them. But nobody is going to make you be, or remain, stupid. The #1 mobile app is still the web browser, and that's not going to change.
The whole article reeks of this stuff: he's talking about all kinds of stuff that normally isn't really happening. It only happens to people who don't care how well stuff works. Life also sucks when you hit yourself with a hammer, but most people don't belabor that: they just stop with the fucking hammer.
yabbering about "deep links" in obvious clickbait linkspam. Now posted as AC because nobody reads the named serial spammers' submissions any longer?
..pretty well actually.
It's been at least 20 years since I saw the best web page ever. Very simple: the lyrics to Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire", with each term linked to yet another external site discussing its history.
For those who don't care to read the long article, the problem is that phone apps can't link into each other very easily, the way websites can. The answer to this problem and so many others is just to make your phone app a web app, instead of a native one.
When I am on a desktop machine, SeaMonkey is my browser of choice, because I still believe in the old ideal of a symmetrical web.
Every machine on the web should be client/server, or at least connected to and capable of creating web content based on an open standard. A 'browser' should have an 'edit' button on the left most window, and 'edit' should open the wysiwyg html editor (Seamonkey is still like that! Though you're usually editing a new local copy of the content).
Instead we mostly get herded to leave any content we generate in forms on curated proprietary servers. The web has been dumbed down for most people to be little more than somewhat more interactive television.