Web 2.0 sucks sharp pebbles and canal water through a dirty straw(stormrider.io)
stormrider.io
Web 2.0 sucks sharp pebbles and canal water through a dirty straw
https://stormrider.io/blog/20220424.html
57 comments
BTW, there's no way to navigate your blog now ? That's good design ?
Perhaps if browsers had a 'go up one folder' button like file explorers, this might be reasonable, but it's pretty disingenuous to expect users to edit the URL bar for navigation. Even the simplest Web 1.0 sites still have basic navigation.
Craigslist.com is a masterpiece of usable information architecture in the Web 1.0/1.5 era. They had very minimal styling, close to browser default, and descriptive categories with all related sub-categories appearing underneath it.
Manually editing the browser search bar isn't something a user should ever need to do.
Yet I'm constantly doing this on some of the most popular websites (eg. Amazon) to remove tracking portions and other unwanted cruft when sharing or archiving links.
You should know there are both Chrome extensions and Tampermonkey scripts for that.
Thanks! Which is your favorite?
I used to use TamperMonkey (even wrote a somewhat popular script a long time ago) and more plugins, but tired of the cognitive overhead maintaining the setup eg. every time I format/migrate, or when my browser decided to break backward compatibility, or when sites changed and the mod was no longer being updated, or when my browser got slow and I had to try and isolate which one(s) were at fault.
I'm sure the plugins are great, I just personally find it easier now to remove by hand (and other sledgehammers like disabling JavaScript altogether for the most aggregiously annoying sites).
I used to use TamperMonkey (even wrote a somewhat popular script a long time ago) and more plugins, but tired of the cognitive overhead maintaining the setup eg. every time I format/migrate, or when my browser decided to break backward compatibility, or when sites changed and the mod was no longer being updated, or when my browser got slow and I had to try and isolate which one(s) were at fault.
I'm sure the plugins are great, I just personally find it easier now to remove by hand (and other sledgehammers like disabling JavaScript altogether for the most aggregiously annoying sites).
You're right that it's annoying. I use Edge, and I think it syncs extensions now, so I haven't really had to set it up for a while, though.
I think the best one to install and forget is Tracking Token Stripper (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tracking-token-str...), but obviously it's not going to get all of them. Like, it's not continuously updated AFAIK. If you want to input the parameters it strips, then you have to use Query Stripper (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/query-stripper/cce...).
I wish its dev would create a crowdsourced list, though.
I think the best one to install and forget is Tracking Token Stripper (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tracking-token-str...), but obviously it's not going to get all of them. Like, it's not continuously updated AFAIK. If you want to input the parameters it strips, then you have to use Query Stripper (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/query-stripper/cce...).
I wish its dev would create a crowdsourced list, though.
Also,
<title>‎</title>Sounds like an amazing experience on mobile
> Have you seriously not heard about using different browsers for different accounts on the same site ? Many Androids will even let you install the same app twice to use different credentials.
If you need to pay the bills in person for the two different households, do you exit the building and re-enter before paying for the second one?
If you need to do both things in the toilet, do you do the one thing then leave and re-enter to do the other?
Last time I heard the technology should help people, not the other way.
If you need to pay the bills in person for the two different households, do you exit the building and re-enter before paying for the second one?
If you need to do both things in the toilet, do you do the one thing then leave and re-enter to do the other?
Last time I heard the technology should help people, not the other way.
Endless scrolling, plus the demise of forums and personal sites, is the main canal water I can think of in web 2.0.
Modern password sync stuff is either E2E encrypted or maintained by Google. Probably won't be hacked. If you don't own crypto you can probably fix it in the unlikely event it does.
Even if it does get hacked, they'd have to hack your phone or network to get past the 2FA on most important sites.
Making a payment online is insanely easy compared to analog methods. Hard to complain too much when you compare it to cash and checks. People used to literally balance checkbooks and some still call it a life skill. Online payments are like having a personal butler level of luxury.
Web1.0 aesthetics were pretty cool though, and the content was great.
Modern password sync stuff is either E2E encrypted or maintained by Google. Probably won't be hacked. If you don't own crypto you can probably fix it in the unlikely event it does.
Even if it does get hacked, they'd have to hack your phone or network to get past the 2FA on most important sites.
Making a payment online is insanely easy compared to analog methods. Hard to complain too much when you compare it to cash and checks. People used to literally balance checkbooks and some still call it a life skill. Online payments are like having a personal butler level of luxury.
Web1.0 aesthetics were pretty cool though, and the content was great.
You know, there's an article about 2022 UI design trends on Medium and web 1.0 aesthetics coming back is one of them.
https://medium.com/codeart-mk/ux-ui-trends-2022-31023ae36fa
https://medium.com/codeart-mk/ux-ui-trends-2022-31023ae36fa
Unfortunately, people don't make websites anymore, corporations do.
They're never going to go Web 1.0 unless it's a special landing page for some marketing effort they're doing, and will be replaced with the bland corporate design as soon as the campaign is over.
They're never going to go Web 1.0 unless it's a special landing page for some marketing effort they're doing, and will be replaced with the bland corporate design as soon as the campaign is over.
By the way, you're completely right about password managers. E2E + 2FA and you're done. I wonder what their solution for "single point of failure" is, because there isn't a single one that's not flawed.
> E2E + 2FA and you're done
Right until you lose your 2FA token, which in Google's case is your phone. And at this point YOU'RE DONE.
Right until you lose your 2FA token, which in Google's case is your phone. And at this point YOU'RE DONE.
Google's Advanced Protection Program [1] meant for high risk users (journalists, activists, etc) requires you to enroll at least one hardware token, so they do recognize that as a risk.
https://landing.google.com/advancedprotection/
https://landing.google.com/advancedprotection/
It is good what they this program, but I'm just another Average Joe.
I have everything on my phone, I have 2FA on my phone, so if I lose it AND I can't restore my SIM/phone number - even knowing a prroper password for the account I can't do anything to restore the access.
And I really, really don't want to provide my government/country ID to some American company beforehand.
I have everything on my phone, I have 2FA on my phone, so if I lose it AND I can't restore my SIM/phone number - even knowing a prroper password for the account I can't do anything to restore the access.
And I really, really don't want to provide my government/country ID to some American company beforehand.
You just print a few recovery codes
Helps you much if you are on the other side of the country. Even better if you in another country. Do you know the phone number of any of your family/relative? Would they believe what the request for some money because you lost everything from [email protected]?
> Now, I just link everything off of the homepage, in a nice bulleted list, and just let the user go "back". That's what the back button is for, anyway.
That falls apart neatly in this example where the internal page is deeplinked to and the back button brings me to this comment thread rather than the homepage.
That falls apart neatly in this example where the internal page is deeplinked to and the back button brings me to this comment thread rather than the homepage.
Yeah, it still needs a 'back to home' link somewhere
Hell, it could literally be a blog post hyperlinked anywhere or even one that the user bookmarks.
Slightly tangential, but the "Web + number" numeration commonly used these days is off by one. The Web 2.0 has ended on July 1st 2013†. The corporate-capture app-centric surveillance adtech dystopia we have now is something else.
We've had open Web APIs. We've had OpenID. We've had ambitions for semantic web and microformats. We've had API mash-ups. All of this has been closed, abandoned, or morphed into a locked-in monetized hell when VCs demanded their money back.
†) it's symbolic of course, but that's when shutdown of Google Reader deflated enthusiasm about syndication. About that time Google dropped their "don't be evil" motto, and wrote a spec for launching secret DRM APIs from HTML5.
We've had open Web APIs. We've had OpenID. We've had ambitions for semantic web and microformats. We've had API mash-ups. All of this has been closed, abandoned, or morphed into a locked-in monetized hell when VCs demanded their money back.
†) it's symbolic of course, but that's when shutdown of Google Reader deflated enthusiasm about syndication. About that time Google dropped their "don't be evil" motto, and wrote a spec for launching secret DRM APIs from HTML5.
This is effectively the "No True Scotsman" fallacy. From a detached perspective it was quite clear that "web 2.0", with its reliance on centralized servers and centralized naming, was inevitably going to devolve into this corporate surveillance hellhole. The incentives and power holders made for a poor foundation, despite the temporary flourishing of a vibrant grassroots community that ignored this while the investors hadn't yet called in their chips.
Having said that, "web 3.0" as recently coined is the same type of middlemen-led openwashing. The real revolutionary technologies won't be hyped as some unified trend, because actual elimination of middlemen leaves no outsized investment money to pay for such hype. As always, the revolution will not be televised.
Having said that, "web 3.0" as recently coined is the same type of middlemen-led openwashing. The real revolutionary technologies won't be hyped as some unified trend, because actual elimination of middlemen leaves no outsized investment money to pay for such hype. As always, the revolution will not be televised.
On a technical level it was pretty decentralized. RSS and OpenID specifically did not rely on any particular server. XML namespaces, RDF, "folksonomies" were about open distributed permissionless participation. XMPP was federated. People got too excited with the Twitter API, but even the social services were in principle meant to be replaceable with rel=me (people were supposed to be identified by their URLs, hosted wherever, not by an account on a platform).
I do agree that Web 2.0 was naive in thinking that merely having open decentralized protocols was enough to ensure services built on top of them will be open and decentralized. The commercialized centralization happened despite the decentralized/open tech — on a layer above. Megacorps figured out that open protocols are merely a fertile ground for building walled gardens on.
I do agree that Web 2.0 was naive in thinking that merely having open decentralized protocols was enough to ensure services built on top of them will be open and decentralized. The commercialized centralization happened despite the decentralized/open tech — on a layer above. Megacorps figured out that open protocols are merely a fertile ground for building walled gardens on.
Not tangential. It's pretty important, because although they're obviously symbolic, there have been huge changes to how websites work.
Web 2.0 had a lot of user customization, for example. Web 3.0 has much less, though dark modes became prevalent.
sigh, I miss google reader...
I'm too young to have used Google Reader, but I have a selection of ATOM/RSS feeds I follow. Is that not comparable?
Reader also had a really good discover quality where I could see stories that were not in my subscribed feeds and because it had a such a large user base, the algorithms got pretty good at showing me stuff I wanted to see. I visit HN for a similar reason, so be exposed to stuff outside of my normal sources. Google reader did this too but with broader scope.
edit: I'll note that if google reader were still around today, its likely the discover algorithm would have been corrupted by bots and trolls and growth seeking managers at google. But back then this hadn't happened yet so it all worked pretty good.
edit: I'll note that if google reader were still around today, its likely the discover algorithm would have been corrupted by bots and trolls and growth seeking managers at google. But back then this hadn't happened yet so it all worked pretty good.
Inoreader and Newsblur have features like that. I can't really compare between those and Google Reader since I was nine when it shut down and I didn't use it, but there are readers that have similar features.
it is comparable, but if I recall, not only was Google Reader's interface slick and had nice features for filtering / automating your feed, but there were pleasant social and discovery features, as well as, I think, the ability to subscribe to websites that didn't even offer RSS feeds. The web felt different when Reader was killed.
It wasn't just the Reader itself (there were arguably many better RSS readers), but the fact that it was a mainstream product from a high-profile well-respected company. There being a Google Reader elevated credibility of RSS from a nerdy XML protocol into a fashionable feature you could recommend to "normal" users.
Similar thing happened with XMPP and Google Talk. There was a brief moment in time when you could use any instant messenger with any client of your choice (talk to both Facebook Messenger and Google Talk users via your own server). That also been killed off in favor of proprietary apps.
I'm trying to think of a current-day equivalent of what a shock and disappointment that was, but I'm afraid proprietary protocols and non-interoperable app silos became such a norm that nobody even expects things to work together. I expect GMail to drop IMAP support any day now.
Similar thing happened with XMPP and Google Talk. There was a brief moment in time when you could use any instant messenger with any client of your choice (talk to both Facebook Messenger and Google Talk users via your own server). That also been killed off in favor of proprietary apps.
I'm trying to think of a current-day equivalent of what a shock and disappointment that was, but I'm afraid proprietary protocols and non-interoperable app silos became such a norm that nobody even expects things to work together. I expect GMail to drop IMAP support any day now.
Great point that I was having a hard time articulating. This is a massive part of why "web felt different" after its death.
Hey, I'm in the same boat! Usually when I hear people talk about RSS it's always people who used it before Google Reader's shutdown, but I was too young to have been interested in that (I was almost nine when Reader shut down). I started using RSS out of curiosity a few months ago and I really like it!
I've been using Inoreader on my ipad, and it definitely hits the spot for RSS reader.
Is it too Web 2.0 of me to wish that the writer had added some before and after images?
It's punishing to have to reading through a post where the text spans the viewport width. It's like he took motherfuckingwebsite.com to heart, instead of the bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com which actually prioritized readability.
It's punishing to have to reading through a post where the text spans the viewport width. It's like he took motherfuckingwebsite.com to heart, instead of the bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com which actually prioritized readability.
already too much boilerplate for content, and please dispense with the div tag.
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
<title></title>
</head>
<body>
</body>
</html>whoooow ! problem of current web is exact opposite - there is too LITTLE information about content, i would love to have some additional tags,
bring some LATEX into web!
so we can have UI "skins"/ themes for all pages exactly same, because it will be client side software responsibility to render it and user chooses theme as user wants / needs i.e disabilities, machine reading so i can actaully use my 4000 dollar gpu with 4gb vram to read text for me. and because of STANDARDIZATION those themes will be universaly working, not i can choose drakoola on reddit but i have to choose monokai on gogole news because those are most similar themes to each other, which i get dictated to use by corporation. corporation dictates how ti should look. i want t oit to look exactly same. it will be easier to consume, less traffic will be needed becasue les page loads, content can be dynamically added i.e. new reddit comment etc
do not use BOLD, use EMPHASIS, do tell me what content of picture is by inserting WORDS INTO DESCRIPTION so i can choose if i need to load it or it is just some placeholder /ad which i dont have to see
and most people forgets that HTML is NOT meant to be read by people but read by MACHINES.
HTML is as bad implementation of latex as RSS is bad implementation of USENET
same primitive s... as with current AI, it can tell you if there is dog in picture but it cannot tell you more about that picture, what exactly is meaning/essence of picture of that dog in there.
im not trolling , im not joking.
web 1 was awesome because i can literaly PUT FREAKING links to content directly, web 2.0. YOU CANT. this should be made mandatory, make dark web 10 % of web !
i was flabbergasted when i think google? announced that you can now create a hyperlink to a specific location in another Web page like WHAT ? you mean i can actually use thing i used in freaking firefox 2.0 or in netscape navigator ? you cant be serious ! XD
but this is state of thing. try to link some FAANG forum page from 2013. you cant because hierarchy of whole "forum" changed and you have to manualy search for answer
and not even start about twitter which dont let you browse without logging in. i dont mind logging in if logging is NOT paired with my number etc.
now imagine having this in your emacs / lynks (webbrowser) window wouldnt be that freaking crazy nice? you can choose which users comment will be highlighted ( friend, replying to you, contains some word...) CLIENT SIDE so there will be less bandwidth and resources wasted fro coprporation.
so we can have UI "skins"/ themes for all pages exactly same, because it will be client side software responsibility to render it and user chooses theme as user wants / needs i.e disabilities, machine reading so i can actaully use my 4000 dollar gpu with 4gb vram to read text for me. and because of STANDARDIZATION those themes will be universaly working, not i can choose drakoola on reddit but i have to choose monokai on gogole news because those are most similar themes to each other, which i get dictated to use by corporation. corporation dictates how ti should look. i want t oit to look exactly same. it will be easier to consume, less traffic will be needed becasue les page loads, content can be dynamically added i.e. new reddit comment etc
do not use BOLD, use EMPHASIS, do tell me what content of picture is by inserting WORDS INTO DESCRIPTION so i can choose if i need to load it or it is just some placeholder /ad which i dont have to see
and most people forgets that HTML is NOT meant to be read by people but read by MACHINES.
HTML is as bad implementation of latex as RSS is bad implementation of USENET
same primitive s... as with current AI, it can tell you if there is dog in picture but it cannot tell you more about that picture, what exactly is meaning/essence of picture of that dog in there.
im not trolling , im not joking.
web 1 was awesome because i can literaly PUT FREAKING links to content directly, web 2.0. YOU CANT. this should be made mandatory, make dark web 10 % of web !
i was flabbergasted when i think google? announced that you can now create a hyperlink to a specific location in another Web page like WHAT ? you mean i can actually use thing i used in freaking firefox 2.0 or in netscape navigator ? you cant be serious ! XD
but this is state of thing. try to link some FAANG forum page from 2013. you cant because hierarchy of whole "forum" changed and you have to manualy search for answer
and not even start about twitter which dont let you browse without logging in. i dont mind logging in if logging is NOT paired with my number etc.
now imagine having this in your emacs / lynks (webbrowser) window wouldnt be that freaking crazy nice? you can choose which users comment will be highlighted ( friend, replying to you, contains some word...) CLIENT SIDE so there will be less bandwidth and resources wasted fro coprporation.
I think you've gone overboard and you're wrong about so much, but I agree that it should be easier to use your own themes. I mean, I hope you've heard of Stylish, Dark Reader and Tampermonkey. They help tremendously. But it's not the same as having shit done right.
<!doctype html>
<meta charset="utf-8">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
Content.
<meta charset="utf-8">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
Content.
You need a <title> for it to be spec compliant.
And for it to show up in a search engine's results page without looking like a strange URL you'd associate with a file in a CMS media library (s3.aws.com, or wp-content/2022/04/01/image.jpg)
Only on XHTML, actually.
Source? Seems to be required based on https://validator.w3.org/nu/ which is also linked as the validator to use for WHATWG from https://whatwg.org/validator/
Whatever the hell happened to XHTML? Stop being lazy.
Why open a second html tag right before the body?
Just set your bills to auto pay no?
As to the passwords issue, I use both 1password and apple's keychain password manager. I've never had a problem with either. 1Password I believe lets you specify symbols, numbers, capital letters etc when generating a password. LastPass does too.
None of these issues are really Web 2.0 related, just poor implementations and designs. Plenty of counter examples to how great Web 2.0 is.
As to the passwords issue, I use both 1password and apple's keychain password manager. I've never had a problem with either. 1Password I believe lets you specify symbols, numbers, capital letters etc when generating a password. LastPass does too.
None of these issues are really Web 2.0 related, just poor implementations and designs. Plenty of counter examples to how great Web 2.0 is.
Bad UI is bad UI. Could be web 2.0, could be an app, could be web 3.
Have you seriously not heard about using different browsers for different accounts on the same site ? Many Androids will even let you install the same app twice to use different credentials.
So basically, a lot of software is badly designed, coded, and unsafe. Yep. And apparently people are trying to blame "the web" for that ?
BTW, there's no way to navigate your blog now ? That's good design ?