That's like saying "turn off the ability to execute programs on your computer". Nobody's going to seriously start gearing web-dev towards a no-javascript world.
Have a look at http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/html-spec/html-spec_toc.html. It describes a nearly ideal language for technical documentation, and it's fully usable on any web browser ever created. That's how the web worked when authors were competent and not beholden to marketers; before the industry dismantled an outstanding hypertext platform and replaced it with an embarrassingly half-assed application platform.
technical documentation includes information that can't be displayed on VT100 terminals and pretending like that's all the web is is clearly and obviously incorrect
How is it even possible to come to that conclusion? The web was about document and hyperlinks and nothing else when it began. There was no scripting. Tables and inline images were later additions. Some of us were actually using and creating content for the web in '93; you can't ret-con us out of the picture.
some of us like me, and the goal was always to get beyond "a document". If you want to just exchange documents, go back to transferring .txt files via ftp.
Hypertext links was simply the first step, but those existed for us for years before the web: gopher, specialty systems, etc.
A desire to move beyond those systems was part of what made the web work, and the first step was moving the web to graphical systems capable of displaying more than formatted fixed-width text on a VT100 terminal like some of the parents above think it was about. That's what gopher was for, that's not what the web was for.
It's both important and unimportant about what the web originally was, because just like I said earlier, the web is about documents as much as cars are about horses. The web has had javascript longer than the web only supported text and links. Think about that.
> and the goal was always to get beyond "a document".
No it wasn't. The goal was to get documents that could be read by users no matter what software or computer they were using.
In this thread we're talking about a text document with some images. Javascript contributes nothing to the content. All Javascript is used for in this example is to put a fucking huge ad over the content before the content has loaded, and add some social media widgets. These detract from the content, and make the page harder to use.
> read by users no matter what software or computer they were using.
again, where is this notion coming from? even if we scope to just text and no images, we already broken on this idea once we move beyond non-latin scripts and unicode.
But that's not the web, the web is not intended for lynx, it's intended for a browser, and all the foibles that browsers bring along with them.
Go rethink your position a bit, because maybe I'm old, but I remember the way the internet worked before the web and after the web, and "displaying documents suitable for a vt100 terminal" was not what the web was ever about.
From W3C and the like. I dunno, they built WWW, I guess they have some idea what their intentions were.
> even if we scope to just text and no images, we already broken on this idea once we move beyond non-latin scripts and unicode.
Just so we're clear about what my claims are: you don't need javascript for a simple text article with a few images. The submitted article is a simple text article, with a few images. Javascript is used only to make the experience worse.
You're wrong about images and about unicode - neither of those need javascript. I don't know why you mention vt100 terminals (why so redundant?) - that's not a point I'm making.
But since you brought it up a web dev has to be some kind of clueless cunt if they can't display a bit of text with image placeholders on a text mode display.
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.
> The project is based on the philosophy that much academic information should be freely available to anyone. It aims to allow information sharing within internationally dispersed teams, and the dissemination of information by support groups.
> The web was never about interchange of documents
See also http://www.anybrowser.org/campaign/, your perception of what is and isn't viewable in a terminal, and what should be, is strange for somebody who claims to know the web's history.
Nope, it doesn't. TBL wrote WorldWideWeb along with the rest of the early web stack at CERN, and from the start it included a graphical browser which used the NeXT textclass (a richtext class), which could open anything the NeXT systems could open, which included styles, movies, postscript and sounds.
The Web has literallynever been about VT100 text document displays. I'm not sure why this is hard to understand. That was gopher.
I'm really serious. I swear you young people sometimes.
