> The specification must contain a non-ambiguous formal grammar that can be parsed easily. A page can then be tested against the standard and reject or accept as compliant. Pages that don't conform with the specification won't be rendered. It is explicitly forbidden for clients to accept any page that doesn't conform with the specification.
This is what XHTML was, and it was a complete disaster. There's a reason almost nobody serves XHTML with the application/xhtml+xml MIME type, and that reason is that getting a “parser error” (this is what browsers still do! try it!) is always worse than getting a page that 99% works.[0] I strongly believe that rejecting the robustness principle is a fatal mistake for a web-replacement project. The fact that horribly broken old sites can stay online and stay readable is a huge part of the web's value. Without that, it's not really “the web”, spiritually or otherwise.
[0] It's particularly “cool” how they simply do not work in the Internet Archive's Wayback machine. The page can be retrieved, but nobody can read it.
> A page can then be tested against the standard and reject or accept as compliant. Pages that don't conform with the specification won't be rendered. It is explicitly forbidden for clients to accept any page that doesn't conform with the specification.
it's as if nothing was learned from the XHTML debacle
Can't say I hate the HTML 5 spec. It resolves the ambiguities that made previous HTML specs insufficient to make a working web browser.
The standards that make my life miserable at times are the secondary standards like GDPR and WCAG as well as the de facto "standard" systems we are forced to participate in such as Cloudflare, the advertising economy, etc.
It's easy to say "WebUSB is bloat" and I'd certainly say PWA is something that could only come out of the mind that brought us Kubernetes, but lately I've been building biosignals applications and what should my choice be: write fragile GUI applications for the desktop that look like they came out of a lab and crash from memory leaks or spend 1/5 the time to make web applications that look like they belong in the cockpit of a Gundam and "just work"?
Seems like somebody is not accepting that every successful project will grow and become unwieldy like this. This is all legacy backwards compatibility of all iterated ideas that now you have to support.
Ah yes, another "If I Were King" blog post. For an example of how it will turn out, look at how many JavaScript frameworks have been built to replace an overly complicated, unwieldy previous one.
Forking the Web
(dillo-browser.org)27 points by wrxd 1 hour ago | 19 comments
Comments
This is what XHTML was, and it was a complete disaster. There's a reason almost nobody serves XHTML with the application/xhtml+xml MIME type, and that reason is that getting a “parser error” (this is what browsers still do! try it!) is always worse than getting a page that 99% works.[0] I strongly believe that rejecting the robustness principle is a fatal mistake for a web-replacement project. The fact that horribly broken old sites can stay online and stay readable is a huge part of the web's value. Without that, it's not really “the web”, spiritually or otherwise.
[0] It's particularly “cool” how they simply do not work in the Internet Archive's Wayback machine. The page can be retrieved, but nobody can read it.
it's as if nothing was learned from the XHTML debacle
The standards that make my life miserable at times are the secondary standards like GDPR and WCAG as well as the de facto "standard" systems we are forced to participate in such as Cloudflare, the advertising economy, etc.
It's easy to say "WebUSB is bloat" and I'd certainly say PWA is something that could only come out of the mind that brought us Kubernetes, but lately I've been building biosignals applications and what should my choice be: write fragile GUI applications for the desktop that look like they came out of a lab and crash from memory leaks or spend 1/5 the time to make web applications that look like they belong in the cockpit of a Gundam and "just work"?
Gemini protocol?
You can certainly make something with it, but I can't imagine most people finding a use for it.
oh and also https://xkcd.com/927/