Of course I meant a graphical browser. Lynx was always a stopgap for people without graphical displays. It's always showed a poor terminal equivalent of the web, but back in the 90s, not everybody had access to the internet via graphical browser.
Lynx was never meant to be an example of what the web was supposed to be.
> Lynx was never meant to be an example of what the web was supposed to be.
You're very bossy. Lynx was a perfectly functional browser, not just a 'stopgap'; nor is it 'poor.' With Lynx it was always possible to download a referenced image and print it or view it in a specialised image viewer.
Then there's something like ewww or emacs-w3m, both of which are graphical browsers, but do not support JavaScript.
Heck, if you want to talk about what the web's 'supposed to be,' JavaScript isn't it, since…there was no JavaScript for the first several years that the web existed.
JavaScript and dynamic web pages are a blight upon the web. They are the only widely-deployed, easy-to-start-with high-level dynamic-language graphical runtime around (the JVM, in comparison, is too low-level and doesn't solve the problem of distributing updates). That's great, but it does nothing for the web.
The web is about documents composed almost entirely of text (yes, with tags referring to images), linked to other documents composed entirely of text. When you break that, you break the web.
When you require me to execute untrusted code in order to read text you break the web, and my security.
There are some really neat things which can be done with JavaScript and single-page apps. But they are not the web.
You describe a whole bunch of mechanisms that don't work on a VT100 terminal. From the start the web was trying to make use of and display everything its original system could do (NeXT systems in this case).
Remember when the web only supported .aiff or .au or whatever sound files? I do, it was terrible. Remember the web before ajax, embedded video, eventing, javascript, etc? I do, it was terrible.
The web has existed longer with javascript than it did without. Things don't have to be stuck in some "well it was originally supposed to be..." rut. People improve things and aggregate features onto well-used favorite things.
What you and I suspect most of the parents here who keep annihilating my karma is what the Internet was before the web, gopher, ftp, etc. All of the things you guys want to do was already invented and working decades ago, and guess what, it still works.
You can still setup gopher and ftp and do all the wonderful non-javascript document reading and media transfer with external viewing things you folks want to do without degrading the web. The web is not what you folks want, you want these older things, or maybe something else that's not the modern web. Hell, you guys can all gang up and just make a network of "vt100 conformant websites" and setup a web ring and only navigate to each other's little niche in the web. The original html, non-embedded graphics, no-audio, no-flash, no-javascript, no-css web still works also. Heck, you should start a push to get the original browser WorldWideWeb ported to modern platforms so you can experience it as it was intended.
My original post way up still stands, nobody is going to take seriously a proposal to stop moving the web forward. You might not like it, but that's the world you live in. Fork your efforts off somewhere else instead of punching at ocean waves.
> The web has existed longer with javascript than it did without.
At least you admit that it existed before JavaScript.
> What you and I suspect most of the parents here who keep annihilating my karma is what the Internet was before the web, gopher, ftp, etc.
I want all that, and the web, the web that I grew up reading, the web that was composed of (wait for it) documents composed primarily of text, linking to other documents composed primarily of text. I want to read news articles which actually link to primary sources; I want to read personal blogs; I want the web.
> All of the things you guys want to do was already invented and working decades ago, and guess what, it still works.
It doesn't work when people like you continually pollute the web with single-page apps and JavaScript-requiring sites. It doesn't work when I have to allow every random advertiser, marketer and nation-state actor to execute random code on my computer in order to read some text.
> You can still setup gopher and ftp and do all the wonderful non-javascript document reading and media transfer with external viewing things you folks want to do without degrading the web.
It's people like you, who create single-page apps and other web sites that do not work without JavaScript who are degrading the web. I recently was looking for a company to ship me pre-boxed meal ingredients: every single site required JavaScript in order to show me pictures of food an text about food; every single site refused to accept a simple HTML form with my name, email addres & so forth. No, they had to use JavaScript to show me pictures of food; they had to use JavaScript to show me text about food; they had to use JavaScript to 'help' me fill out a form I'm perfectly capable of filling out on my own. They didn't use JavaScript to enhance their sites: their sites were nothing but shells to hold executable code.
> My original post way up still stands, nobody is going to take seriously a proposal to stop moving the web forward.
JavaScript-laden pages are not forward; forward would be hypertext, the Semantic Web, intelligent agents, REST and so forth. Forward would be a new, clean markup language; a new, clean programming language; a model which acknowledges the value of more than just the graphical browser (see CLIM for some interesting ideas along that line).
> Fork your efforts off somewhere else instead of punching at ocean waves.
Have you ever read any Norse mythology? They were convinced that they knew how the world would end, with the overthrow of the gods (representing order) by the giants (representing elemental chaos). And despite believing this, they stood with the gods: 'the gods are doomed, but I'm on their side.'
Well, the web is doomed, but I stand with the web. Better to fight for a good and beautiful idea than to live with mediocrity.
