Comment by dijit
1 day ago
The funny thing is that we fought so hard against pop-ups throughout the 90's and 2000's only to re-implement pop-ups in javascript as soon as we could.
1 day ago
The funny thing is that we fought so hard against pop-ups throughout the 90's and 2000's only to re-implement pop-ups in javascript as soon as we could.
I have always wondered what the web would be like if we added the scripting language later and only solidified CSS and HTML for the first 15 years or so.
I wonder if things would actually be better overall. I’m not going to argue that having a scripting language for the web was a mistake, it definitely isn’t on the whole, but I think having it come at a more mature point for the web might have helped stave off a lot of really bad decisions
I think what would have happened if the web didn't have scripting languages was that you would be forced to download java applets... which now can also run on javascript/wasm coming full circle.
Also, java's dominance I guess was the reason that javascript is named after inspiration of java.
What you are asking for are static pages which already exists and most people do use static pages due to it being very easy to deploy on github pages etc. , though I wonder we would've way more abundance of static pages as compared to non static pages, like there are some pages which could've been static but they aren't.
Though I still think the difference would've existed & it could've been net positive IDK, I just like to go create websites as apps which can be booted on any pc,device without worrying about anything, installing and running it would likely require a setup and it would've been a bigger hassle as well.
And well noone's stopping you from doing it right now. There's gopher and gemini if you are interested.
A static page has nothing to do at all with the discussion.
There’s nothing preventing me from adding globs of nightmare JavaScript to my static website to try and chase engagement.
What’s stopping the people making static pages is not technical, it’s cultural.
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> Also, java's dominance I guess was the reason that javascript is named after inspiration of java.
Very loosely, was named that was as an marketing ploy as Java was the new language at the time.
JavaScript is actually ECMAScript or a v.close direlect of. Originally it was called Mocha, and then relabeled to LiveScript and during the NetScape / Sun Microsystems thing, changed itself to JavaScript and Oracle carried it on from there.
It has some quite interesting history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JavaScript#History
We could look at the print world for reference.
Everything is perfectly static and linear, and instead of popups we get full-page ads, double-full-page ads sometimes, and ad inserts in the rest of the pages, with stealth marketing for the content left.
The fundamental issue is not technology IMHO. Scripting can make it worse, but it wouldn't have been great in the first place.
Flash would still be around I suspect.
I dunno, I think it was a net negative by a large margin. 1) html only Gmail shows that pretty advanced, well made apps are possible without scripting; 2) There are very few web apps that without JavaScript wouldn't just be implemented as native without loss of convenience; 3) OTOH for simple apps and sites JavaScript adds inconvenience (non standard links breaking browser features etc), security risks, compatibility issues, massive bloat and tracking.
Nothing like 3 paragraphs of text that requires downloading 2 megabytes of crap, runs code from 20 sketchy looking domains, takes 15 seconds to load, cannot be linked to, and demands you upgrade your browser. As a consolation you can have slightly slower maps in browser instead of downloading an app, once.
I think web scripting is probably THE worst technology ever invented in the IT field. "If I ruled the world", a full ban would be better than its current state; or some AMA on steroids (+Jones act) making JavaScript developers extremely rare and well paid, so that it was limited to the best (as determined by the market) uses with better quality.
You can't think about alternate web evolution without considering (1) the early browser wars (specifically Netscape vs IE) & (2) the need to decouple data transfer and re-rendering that led to AJAX (for network and compute performance reasons).
Folks forget that before js was front-end frameworks and libaries, it was enabling (as in, making impossible possible) async data requests and page updates without requiring a full round-trip and repaint.
It's difficult to conceptualize a present where that need was instead fully served by HTML+CSS, sans executable code sandbox.
What, ~2000 IE instead pushes for some direct linking of HTML with a async update-able data model behind the scenes? How are the two linked together? And how do developers control that?
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We would have ended up with Flash and then Chrome, just as we did. Client-side programming is essential to creating certain experiences, and with all great powers comes the extractive shit, etc. This is typically where economists will claim the free market is producing an efficient outcome; regulation would be the only preventative, and that’s anathema to tech libertarians.
The modern web has successfully liberated applications from mostly vendor locked OS environments into mostly agnostic browser environments. I think this has been a good thing.
Otherwise, with just CSS and HTML, you'd have a web strictly dedicated to publishing. A read only experience curated by those who are willing to invest the time and tooling into being a publisher.
Even then with the advent of RSS and other data exchange formats it's arguable we didn't even need that part of the web. It would be far better for publishing to deliver headlines and summaries via RSS and then allow me to purchase full content and issues digitally.
I think the bigger complication in the creation of the web was the complete lack of payment systems and user trust in entering their payment information into these platforms. So only the large well moneyed entities like advertisers were willing to absorb that risk and built out the platform. Instead of us conveniently and safely paying creators for content we now have aggressive advertisers who litter the web so publishers can shake pennies out of the CPM tree.
TCL was to be javascript but didn't happen. Google offered to sell Google to Yahoo and AltaVista $1m for Google, but didn't happen.
I wish to think all these things exist in a alternative universe and we've just not constructed the time-portal yet.
socialism. that's what we're talking about. No one every said, "Should we try to make the internet a publish good?"
I use the following code (as a toolbar bookmarklette) for a quick button which disables all pop-overs/cookie requests:
Doesn't always work (sometimes it kills the website functionality), and I have no clue what it's actually doing (I'm not a coder)... but usually it gets rid of hover-overs.
At least, generally, they no longer open hundreds of windows above or below the current window, which may or may not have browser control bars, may ‘warn’ on exit etc etc
If a page wants to cover itself in noise and dialogues, sure it’s annoying but it’s not quite on the same level as back then.
Why do I keep seeing, "it's not as bad as that" as a defense? It's still bad!
It's not a defense particularly, it's just that it's not the same sort of experience. The old popups were so bad I was regularly killing the browser process just to make them go away. Now there's a lot less they can do, thank god.
We have the browser (and extension) people to thank for this of course, not advertisers who would still be doing it if they could.
The one saying it’s not as bad are probably the same ones whose salary depends on their users’ engagement with those same pop ups.
Remember how wild pop-ups on the early web could be: https://youtu.be/LSgk7ctw1HY
Computing history is rife with examples of APIs that would never have existed, had the API designer stepped back for a few seconds and asked himself "Why am I letting developers do this?" Someone deliberately added the ability to move the browser window around and pop up other browser windows, yet somehow never imagined this use case???
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Yeah sometimes you’d have to just powercycle the computer if they started cascading too fast and bogging down the system. People would make websites specifically to troll and do this.
> we fought so hard against pop-ups throughout the 90's and 2000's only to re-implement pop-ups in javascript as soon as we could
A group of people who thought that web users should not be abused may have won the first pop-up battle, but the businesses that made money from intrusive advertisements clearly won the war.
In hindsight maybe it wasn't a such a great idea for web users to switch en masse to a browser made by an advertising company.
The endgame is a probably a war between web sites that are endless mazes of advertising and user agents that try to navigate the maze and extract the non-advertising content.
I don’t know if hindsight is quite right. There were people raising alarms about this when Chrome initially came out and repeatedly as it grew in popularity. Especially when sites started requiring Chrome. It’s just they were dismissed as conspiracy theorists or brushed aside because right now Chrome is faster and the present is all that matters. This was 100% pushed by tech enthusiasts and web developers… the average person would’ve otherwise stuck with their OS default browser.
I’m not trying to correct you. It’s just a sequence of events I’ve seen play out repeatedly and I’m not sure if there’s a solution. Most recently I’ve seen it with Bambu Lab locking down their 3D printers. Prior to that Autodesk yanking the Fusion 360 enthusiast licenses.
Maybe there isn’t a solution. There’s a lot of UX work that isn’t fun to do and so it’s hard to get volunteers to do it. It’s hard to do product management in a distributed group of volunteers in general. So, companies that can afford to bankroll projects often gain traction with performance or usability gains and suck away attention and funding from open source options. Then when they amass enough of the user base they flip the switch and now folks are stuck. The cost of changing is often prohibitively high and the OSS option is generally far behind at that point.
I think people are bad at thinking longer term. Or maybe they just prefer immediate gratification. In any event, absent a shift in human behavior I expect we’ll see this sort of situation to continue to play out. It’d just be nice if folks were less antagonistic about it when those concerned raise that alarm.
"OK Gemini, please take this 10-minute video on youtube and give me a version without any advertising or promotional content."
"I'm sorry Dave, but I am unable to accept requests that oppose Google's business interests."
"Well, send it to ChatGPT then!"
"Sure thing. Here is your... 5 second video:"
(Video) "Hey what's up? Be sure to like and subscribe." (end of video)
Google began as a search engine with a popup blocker extension for a competitor's browser. Now they're a display ad company with a browser that includes a built in popup blocker extension blocker.
Google began as a company that cared about users. Now they're a company that cares about advertisers.
Well, there are really only three things that form the aggregate of the world we see today.
There are accidents of history, money, and ideology.
These things fit squarely in the money category. The advertising industry was subsumed by adtech during that time, which was driven by government grant and fiat debt-based financing. Advertising fraud has never been harder to account for, and the justified use of analytics for that purpose has driven surveillance capitalism with governments being the customer.
Money printing is the role of the state, so technically if you remove all indirections its state apparatus which makes sense that an individual wouldn't be able to fight against it.
At least these popups are restricted to the page. It's one thing for a website to decide to block my use of it for some asinine reason. It's quite another for it to block my use of everything else on my computer.