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Groups > comp.infosystems.www.misc > #273
| From | Ivan Shmakov <ivan@siamics.netREMOVE.invalid> |
|---|---|
| Newsgroups | comp.infosystems.www.misc |
| Subject | non-mainstream web |
| Date | 2025-08-15 15:05 +0000 |
| Organization | Dbus-free station. |
| Message-ID | <vYX1pwrP1Qvfvuit@violet.siamics.net> (permalink) |
| References | (11 earlier) <87cybb4838.fsf@nightsong.com> <AdZti608eZMoyhay@violet.siamics.net> <10788vk$1g8ve$1@dont-email.me> <Mf78sQ4PEdT8GlJ_@violet.siamics.net> <107dsmb$2u9o3$1@dont-email.me> |
>>>>> On 2025-08-11, Doc O'Leary wrote:
>>>>> For your reference, records indicate that Ivan Shmakov wrote:
> I'm contending that the problem is not that there are different
> cultures, but that there are inevitable culture clashes.
Whatever little I can do about culture clashes ("explain your
point, try to understand the other party, do not escalate"),
I believe I do. Other than that, I find it unproductive to be
concerned with things I can do nothing about.
> It just doesn't make much sense to gripe about Lynx or any
> other browser not working well with the modern web; it's not
> the obligation of the web to "live the life" of Lynx.
Web is not a person, and cannot have obligations as such.
Moreover, almost all web pages that I visit (whether pointed
from web search, from Wikipedia articles, or from "old" IRC and
netnews), are readable with Lynx. (Examples below.)
Of course there's a certain selection bias in that; and it was
never my intent in the first place to ascertain the fraction
of /all/ websites in existence that can or cannot be read with
Lynx, but so far as my experience goes, the observation holds.
From whence, while I /do/ agree that switching from, say,
Chromium to Lynx /is/ a big lifestyle change, I'm going to argue
it's /less/ because there're millions of websites that one
cannot read with Lynx, and /more/ because there's a /handful/
of such websites that are used by millions.
Other than the aforementioned selection bias (Wikipedia doesn't
like to reference resources that Wayback Machine cannot archive,
for example; and if Wayback Machine /can/ archive it, chances
are, Lynx will be able to read it, too), I believe there're two
major factors at play.
* The long-term maintenance cost for "simple" sites is less than
that for "complex" ones. A major PHP (WordPress, MathJax,
- you name it) upgrade can put quite a few extra workhours
on your plate; while a "just bunch of files" website can be
left untouched for a decade, and served with pretty much any
HTTP server (case in point: http://am-1.org/dimath-2016/ .)
Hence: there's a number of unmaintained /but still useful/
"simple" websites; while "complex" ones, once no longer
actively maintained, tend to die out.
* The way search engines interact with site's JavaScript (or
CSS / WebSockets / whatever, for that matter) will necessarily
be different than the way a person with a browser does. Too
much emphasis on interactivity and (or) "modern standards"
can hinder search engines just as well as it hinders Lynx.
My only "problem" with "modern" web is my indifference to it.
Someone starts talking about Facebook this, or Youtube that,
and, frankly, I'm at a loss how to feel and what to suggest.
I tend to respond along the lines of "if it hurts you to use it,
then don't?" but I can't say that's received all that well.
Some of the webpages I've read recently (i. e., from Lynx'
history) follow.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Earth
http://taiga-experiment.info/taiga-hiscore
http://supercheats.com/pc/warcraftorcsandhumanscheats.htm
http://analog.com/en/resources/app-notes/an-740.html
http://bradrodriguez.com/papers/moving8.htm
http://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/entry/26880/
http://malvaceae.info/Genera/Lavatera/herbaceous.html
http://w3c.github.io/geolocation/reports/implementation.html
http://ru.wikibooks.org/wiki/?curid=14978
http://ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/repositories/1.4/
http://otvet.mail.ru/question/6603461
(a copy of a chunk from http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/?curid=50515 )
http://nanochess.org/ http://t3x.org/t3x/ http://pygmy.utoh.org/
>> More importantly, am /I/ part of your target audience?
> I think that's a false premise. Why should I be trying to limit my
> audience to some "target" subset? If I have tabular data, for example,
> I want as many people as possible to use it however they wish.
I apologize if the term is misleading, but it's the best I was
able to come up with. My point is, intentionally or not, you
/do/ limit your audience. Can someone who can only read
Armenian make use of your websites? How about a five year old?
(Can /you/ read http://sw.wikipedia.org/ ? If so, please kindly
share pointers to your reference materials, as I'd like to be
part of their target audience, too.)
The way I understand it, "target audience" is about making sure
certain people /will be able/ to make use of your resources.
(Rather than making sure some won't be.)
It may take effort to "limit" your audience, but it sure takes
some to "unlimit" it as well.
Which is perhaps why you seem to be opposed to Lynx: including
Lynx users in your target audience means extra work, no?
>> If your website requires anything besides that (CSS, JS, WebRTC, -
>> whatever) to be usable, I might complain.
> How quickly the "different people" sentiment evaporates. :-)
Does it, though? Wouldn't the notion of "different people"
include those who can't walk, and those who can't talk? those
who only read Danish, and those who only read Spanish? those
who read web with Chromium, /and/ those who read web with Lynx?
By the by, I'd like to stress it out that /not requiring/ some
feature provided by the Big 3 browsers is not the same as
/not using/ that same feature. I do not mind reading webpages
that use JS (or whatever, except for actual, honest to goodness
DRM / W3C EME) so long as they are still readable /without/ it.
>> If I'm /not/ part of your target audience, why bother?
> If you can conclude you're not part of someone's "target audience",
> why complain?
Exactly! When I have an issue with a website, I try to
complain to its operator directly. If I haven't complained
to you, it likely means one of the following:
* I'm not aware of your website;
* I do not find your website useful right now;
* I've found that for my uses, it works adequately as is;
* I've figured out how to fetch the data I need from it with
curl(1), without needing /any/ browser.
Most of the time, my problem is not with the site proper, but
rather with a certain widely used service, that, as part of its
"DDoS protection," requires solving a (JS-based) captcha before
letting you obtain "protected" content. Reading a copy of the
resource at Wayback Machine usually suffices as a workaround.
> I'm quite happy to serve up a YAML file from my server that contains
> all the data you need about a product, but there isn't a web browser
> I know of that'll render it to *your* liking, so I'm forced to also
> render it in HTML to *my* liking.
How would you know the capabilities of the software I use?
Sure, I /do/ use Lynx; but I use a plenty of programs besides.
I get my weather forecasts from OPeNDAP endpoints under
http://nomads.ncep.noaa.gov/dods/gfs_0p25_1hr/ , for example.
The end result looks like:
## sqrt (vgrd10m * vgrd10m + ugrd10m * ugrd10m)
0d00 7.2 6.5 5.1 4.6 4.7 4.8 3.5 3.6
0d08 3.9 2.7 2.0 1.2 1.0 0.3 0.8 1.1
0d16 1.8 2.2 1.5 2.1 3.0 2.2 1.8 1.9
1d00 2.1 2.4 2.0 3.2 3.9 4.5 4.6 3.9
I /think/ no HTML is involved anywhere in the process.
Granted, I do dislike languages (whether code or data) that
count whitespace as part of their syntax, so I'd certainly prefer
XML or JSON to YAML. And HTML /is/ data, so when needed, I
typically /can/ extract what I need even from a bunch of HTMLs.
So, I suppose what I'm trying to say is: my interest in your
data does /not/ necessarily imply interest in running your
application(s) on my computer(s). Javascript is an application
programming language; from where I stand, providing access to
your data from your application is no substitute to publicly
documenting your formats and data request protocols. Providing
readily readable HTML is appreciated, but not compulsory.
Back to comp.infosystems.www.misc | Previous | Next — Previous in thread | Next in thread | Find similar
non-mainstream web (browsers) Ivan Shmakov <ivan@siamics.netREMOVE.invalid> - 2025-08-09 14:05 +0000
Re: non-mainstream web (browsers) Doc O'Leary , <droleary.usenet@2023.impossiblystupid.com> - 2025-08-09 19:53 +0000
Re: non-mainstream web (browsers) Ivan Shmakov <ivan@siamics.netREMOVE.invalid> - 2025-08-10 08:15 +0000
Re: non-mainstream web (browsers) Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-08-11 00:47 +0000
Re: non-mainstream web (browsers) Ivan Shmakov <ivan@siamics.netREMOVE.invalid> - 2025-08-15 15:55 +0000
Re: non-mainstream web (browsers) Doc O'Leary , <droleary.usenet@2023.impossiblystupid.com> - 2025-08-11 23:00 +0000
Re: non-mainstream web (browsers) not@telling.you.invalid (Computer Nerd Kev) - 2025-08-13 10:21 +1000
Re: non-mainstream web (browsers) Doc O'Leary , <droleary.usenet@2023.impossiblystupid.com> - 2025-08-13 19:18 +0000
[OT] appreciating things old and old-fashioned Ivan Shmakov <ivan@siamics.netREMOVE.invalid> - 2025-08-14 12:55 +0000
Re: [OT] appreciating things old and old-fashioned Doc O'Leary , <droleary.usenet@2023.impossiblystupid.com> - 2025-08-15 16:42 +0000
Re: [OT] appreciating things old and old-fashioned Ivan Shmakov <ivan@siamics.netREMOVE.invalid> - 2025-08-15 21:25 +0000
Re: [OT] appreciating things old and old-fashioned Doc O'Leary , <droleary.usenet@2023.impossiblystupid.com> - 2025-08-17 02:07 +0000
Re: [OT] appreciating things old and old-fashioned Ivan Shmakov <ivan@siamics.netREMOVE.invalid> - 2025-08-17 22:47 +0000
Re: [OT] appreciating things old and old-fashioned Doc O'Leary , <droleary.usenet@2023.impossiblystupid.com> - 2025-08-19 21:02 +0000
Re: [OT] appreciating things old and old-fashioned Ivan Shmakov <ivan@siamics.netREMOVE.invalid> - 2025-08-22 18:39 +0000
I complain! Ivan Shmakov <ivan@siamics.netREMOVE.invalid> - 2025-08-17 22:55 +0000
non-mainstream web Ivan Shmakov <ivan@siamics.netREMOVE.invalid> - 2025-08-15 15:05 +0000
Re: non-mainstream web Doc O'Leary , <droleary.usenet@2023.impossiblystupid.com> - 2025-08-16 21:42 +0000
Re: non-mainstream web Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-08-17 07:12 +0000
(non-)mainstream web and its costs Ivan Shmakov <ivan@siamics.netREMOVE.invalid> - 2025-09-13 19:00 +0000
Re: non-mainstream web Ivan Shmakov <ivan@siamics.netREMOVE.invalid> - 2025-09-13 19:17 +0000
non-mainstream web browsers Ivan Shmakov <ivan@siamics.netREMOVE.invalid> - 2025-08-15 15:55 +0000
Re: non-mainstream web browsers Doc O'Leary , <droleary.usenet@2023.impossiblystupid.com> - 2025-08-16 22:46 +0000
Re: non-mainstream web browsers Ivan Shmakov <ivan@siamics.netREMOVE.invalid> - 2025-09-13 19:13 +0000
Re: non-mainstream web browsers Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-09-13 23:02 +0000
Re: non-mainstream web (browsers) John Ames <commodorejohn@gmail.com> - 2025-08-11 08:53 -0700
Re: non-mainstream web (browsers) Doc O'Leary , <droleary.usenet@2023.impossiblystupid.com> - 2025-08-11 21:51 +0000
Re: non-mainstream web (browsers) John Ames <commodorejohn@gmail.com> - 2025-08-11 14:57 -0700
Re: non-mainstream web (browsers) Doc O'Leary , <droleary.usenet@2023.impossiblystupid.com> - 2025-08-13 18:43 +0000
Re: non-mainstream web (browsers) John Ames <commodorejohn@gmail.com> - 2025-08-13 12:14 -0700
Re: non-mainstream web (browsers) Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2025-08-13 12:48 -0700
Re: non-mainstream web (browsers) Doc O'Leary , <droleary.usenet@2023.impossiblystupid.com> - 2025-08-15 15:14 +0000
Re: non-mainstream web (browsers) John Ames <commodorejohn@gmail.com> - 2025-08-15 09:03 -0700
Re: non-mainstream web (browsers) Doc O'Leary , <droleary.usenet@2023.impossiblystupid.com> - 2025-08-16 23:36 +0000
Re: non-mainstream web (browsers) Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-08-17 07:09 +0000
Re: non-mainstream web (browsers) John Ames <commodorejohn@gmail.com> - 2025-08-18 10:45 -0700
Re: non-mainstream web (browsers) Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-08-18 23:25 +0000
Re: non-mainstream web (browsers) John Ames <commodorejohn@gmail.com> - 2025-08-19 08:14 -0700
Re: non-mainstream web (browsers) Doc O'Leary , <droleary.usenet@2023.impossiblystupid.com> - 2025-08-19 21:58 +0000
Re: non-mainstream web (browsers) Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-08-20 00:39 +0000
Re: non-mainstream web (browsers) Doc O'Leary , <droleary.usenet@2023.impossiblystupid.com> - 2025-08-25 03:24 +0000
Re: non-mainstream web (browsers) "B. Pym" <Nobody447095@here-nor-there.org> - 2025-08-24 14:42 +0000
Re: non-mainstream web (browsers) albert@spenarnc.xs4all.nl - 2025-08-24 19:41 +0200
csiph-web