Comment by JohnFen

6 years ago

> you'll never get a web browser with more features than the ones released in the '90s

I would actively prefer a web browser that lacks the features added since the '90s.

4 comments

JohnFen

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shadowgovt  6 years ago

That's understandable, but it isn't what most people want---developers or users alike.

Browsers aren't just thin-clients to support HTTP protocol and HTML rendering. They've grown to adopt a new distributed computing paradigm, not unlike UNIX and its descendants grew to support a new multi-user-cum-multi-process paradigm. The things web development offers---location agnosticism, platform agnosticism, combined multimedia interaction, a workable security model for multi-source aggregate-component content---are eating software development, and the browser is becoming the OS of the modern era. We know users want this because users were willing to use Flash (even though Flash broke out of the security model of the old browser).

There'll always be a place for small text-based pages much as modern computing will always have a place for command-line tools, but the genie is out of the bottle and it won't be put back in.

  • JohnFen  6 years ago

    > it isn't what most people want---developers or users alike.

    I'm fully aware of this, and this, at heart, is why I'm certain that the day will come when I can no longer use the web at all.

flukus  6 years ago

The mozilla suite in 1998 included a browser, an email/newsgroup client, an IRC client, an address book and an html editor.

Modern browsers for all their bloat actually have less features.