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by unixbane 1376 days ago
>Why wouldn't we want to be able to [run interactive apps] web with our devices?

Because the web is for hypertext, which means static content. Images, text, video and audio clips, tables, code snippets, etc. Of course even that subset it does unimaginably bad, okay? Interactive web apps fucking suck, so that takes care of that 50%. For the other 50%, which is document viewing, why in the hell would I want pages to be able to move stuff around and create their own custom UIs and color schemes for every document I view? That use case is for magazines, a content-free medium. It's actually hilarious how people think hosting their library documentation on some stupid website like readthedocs.io, or publishing scientific journals behind IP blocklists (aka misconfigured bullshit from some charlatan sysadmin) is "progress".
1 comments
onion2k 1376 days ago
Because the web is for hypertext, which means static content.

Thats what hypertext meant originally but it's evolved and moved on. The spec is literally called "HTML The Living Standard". You don't get to claim it's fixed and can't change. It just isn't.

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hardnose 1376 days ago
The distinction is between growth and creep. Growth is when your spec matures to serve the original purpose even better than it used to. Creep is when your spec decides to achieve other, new purposes.

HTML has been a victim of ridiculous amounts of creep, to the detriment of growth. Creating static web content isn't really easier or cleaner now than it was in the 90s, but the protocol DOES now permit the remote end to interrogate your computer for almost as much info as the freakin' SysInternals suite.

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