I really want to experience a happy medium between the barebones minimalism of Gemini and the insane free-for-all of the mainstream web. In my mind, there is no reason for every website to dictate its own layout and appearance when 99% of sites could be broken down into procedural elements that could be rendered however the client preferred.
I recently bought a Kobo ereader, and the gorgeous, text-focused, crisp design of the OS is what got me thinking in this direction.
The existence of Reader Mode in Firefox and Chrome points to a common understanding that, for articles anyway, most of the web fluff is totally unnecessary. Imagine Reader Mode, but maintaining navigation and slightly more complex layouts. There are plenty of extensions that allow you to theme specific sites, but I haven't found any that try to create a unified, pleasant experience from the current chaos.
As usual, the ad-based web can be blamed. The argument that it is of utmost importance to preserve the ability to make this button 5px bigger than the other, rounded, and blue, only makes sense if you're an ad-based company trying to manipulate people into specific behaviors. By leaving the design client-side we would enable experiences tailored to providing the best experience for the user.
I don't know if or how we could ever get there, but it seems to me that mass adoption of css and Javascript in the majority of websites was a mistake, when most sites could easily be built of a much simpler set of standard widgets. This need is currently filled by pages hosted with hostile third parties like Facebook, or middleware editors like squarespace.
This kind of framework would also give online privacy to all in one fell swoop. There is no reason browsers need to be finger-printable. The reason they still are is because the company for which this state of affairs is highly lucrative is also the company making the leading rendering engine.
Perhaps what I'm actually asking for is a splinter net, or maybe something like this is still achievable by just parsing html.
While I relate to OP's fed-uppness, building a browser seems to me like trying to play catch up to a system that will never have your interests at heart. Not that I think the project isn't worthwhile, it just triggered the above thoughts.
> I really want to experience a happy medium between the barebones minimalism of Gemini and the insane free-for-all of the mainstream web.
I agree. I often find that some formats are too simple and the rest are too complicated (for example, this is the case with the Ogg container format, and also with Gemini file format and Gemini protocol), and sometimes other problems.
> In my mind, there is no reason for every website to dictate its own layout and appearance when 99% of sites could be broken down into procedural elements that could be rendered however the client preferred.
I agree that too. Often I just disable CSS.
I think that ARIA might be able to help a bit, together with HTML. (This way, nonstandard form fields can still be displayed even if the styles are disabled, if those nonstandard form fields are using ARIA, which is something that I sometimes see.) (It would be better to just design it properly the first time, but that would be difficult when everyone else does not want to do it in a better way, although using a common accessibility feature such as ARIA seems more likely to me.) So, a client program can include a mode to display the document using HTML and ARIA instead of CSS.
Rendering just how the client preferred is also making it more portable across different screens, etc, and better accessibility, than using CSS and then having to make separate mobile version and those mess.
> it seems to me that mass adoption of css and Javascript in the majority of websites was a mistake,
I think you are right. I sometimes write web pages that do not use CSS and JavaScripts (although often I will just write plain text instead of HTML, anyways).
> building a browser seems to me like trying to play catch up to a system that will never have your interests at heart
There are some features that I would want to deliberately exclude (or implement in extensions instead of the core features), and some that may be helpful to be deliberately differently. (Actually, I would move many core features into extensions instead, and some features that would usually be implemented in extensions (such as request/response overriding) into core features. Flipping around many of these things might help a bit, too, I think, to allow more versatility for extensions, better security, and better user controls, etc.)
Yeah this is an underrated position at this point in the history of the web. Back a decade or two ago, people were experimenting with cool graphic design layouts and UI flows and new experiences were always popping up. Now everything is converging on a few CMS layouts and the entire web is just one big SEO grift. I think http has largely run its course.
As yet another would-be browser developer, thanks for this take. The thing that always puts me off is the insanity that comes with supporting all the ways to style content.
So throw that all away
A Reader Mode Browser with some small quality of life features seems like the perfect project. Thanks stranger
I recently bought a Kobo ereader, and the gorgeous, text-focused, crisp design of the OS is what got me thinking in this direction.
The existence of Reader Mode in Firefox and Chrome points to a common understanding that, for articles anyway, most of the web fluff is totally unnecessary. Imagine Reader Mode, but maintaining navigation and slightly more complex layouts. There are plenty of extensions that allow you to theme specific sites, but I haven't found any that try to create a unified, pleasant experience from the current chaos.
As usual, the ad-based web can be blamed. The argument that it is of utmost importance to preserve the ability to make this button 5px bigger than the other, rounded, and blue, only makes sense if you're an ad-based company trying to manipulate people into specific behaviors. By leaving the design client-side we would enable experiences tailored to providing the best experience for the user.
I don't know if or how we could ever get there, but it seems to me that mass adoption of css and Javascript in the majority of websites was a mistake, when most sites could easily be built of a much simpler set of standard widgets. This need is currently filled by pages hosted with hostile third parties like Facebook, or middleware editors like squarespace.
This kind of framework would also give online privacy to all in one fell swoop. There is no reason browsers need to be finger-printable. The reason they still are is because the company for which this state of affairs is highly lucrative is also the company making the leading rendering engine.
Perhaps what I'm actually asking for is a splinter net, or maybe something like this is still achievable by just parsing html.
While I relate to OP's fed-uppness, building a browser seems to me like trying to play catch up to a system that will never have your interests at heart. Not that I think the project isn't worthwhile, it just triggered the above thoughts.