If you've ever found yourself missing the "good old days" of the #web, what is it that you miss? (Interpret "it" broadly: specific websites? types of activities? feelings? etc.) And approximately when were those good old days?
No wrong answers — I'm working on an article and wanted to get some outside thoughts.
In an age of LLMs, is it time to reconsider human-edited web directories?
Back in the early-to-mid '90s, one of the main ways of finding anything on the web was to browse through a web directory.
These directories generally had a list of categories on their front page. News/Sport/Entertainment/Arts/Technology/Fashion/etc.
Each of those categories had subcategories, and sub-subcategories that you clicked through until you got to a list of websites. These lists were maintained by actual humans.
Typically, these directories also had a limited web search that would crawl through the pages of websites listed in the directory.
Lycos, Excite, and of course Yahoo all offered web directories of this sort.
(EDIT: I initially also mentioned AltaVista. It did offer a web directory by the late '90s, but this was something it tacked on much later.)
By the late '90s, the standard narrative goes, the web got too big to index websites manually.
Google promised the world its algorithms would weed out the spam automatically.
And for a time, it worked.
But then SEO and SEM became a multi-billion-dollar industry. The spambots proliferated. Google itself began promoting its own content and advertisers above search results.
And now with LLMs, the industrial-scale spamming of the web is likely to grow exponentially.
My question is, if a lot of the web is turning to crap, do we even want to search the entire web anymore?
Do we really want to search every single website on the web?
Or just those that aren't filled with LLM-generated SEO spam?
Or just those that don't feature 200 tracking scripts, and passive-aggressive privacy warnings, and paywalls, and popovers, and newsletters, and increasingly obnoxious banner ads, and dark patterns to prevent you cancelling your "free trial" subscription?
At some point, does it become more desirable to go back to search engines that only crawl pages on human-curated lists of trustworthy, quality websites?
And is it time to begin considering what a modern version of those early web directories might look like?
“Would you like to use the browser by Company X, or the browser by the company that survives on half-a-billion dollars a year from Company X, or the browser by the company that gets paid an estimated $20 billion a year by Company X even though it can survive without it?”
We desperately need a web browser by an independent organisation funded by EU taxpayer money and maintained for the common good.
⭐ What programming language do you use most of your life? Why exactly?
Most of my time I worked with almost the entire .Net stack, and in recent years it's Unity, so my language is C#
There were episodes in my life with mobile, many web stuff, java, c++, databases, etc.
If there was an #HTML element that changes it's content when users interact with other elements on the page, what name would it have?
PLEASE NOTE: I am not suggesting that this element needs to exist; I am only asking what it would be called. I'm building a CustomElement, I just want it to have a name that makes sense.
Vote and suggest others in replies. Please boost for reach!
Wer von euch NICHT ITler:Innen oder Webdesigner:Innen schreibt und notiert Texte in Markdown Format? (egal für oder/und auf was)
Ich nutze es so gut wie immer, auch für Notitzen. Doch einige beschweren sich, dass dies zu umständlich und schwer sei. Ich sei ITler deswegen sei es nichts für sie ect. Deren ausreden verstehe ich nicht aber kann mir wer diese erklären? (nope Weblinks wird nicht von denen angenommen)
Recently I found this developer who has published dozens of small, useful extensions for firefox. Nothing groundbreaking that I know of but everything looks to have been made with care to efficiency and minimal permissions to do one thing well. Each has its own github repo where the developer responds to issues....
"... the website loads in a special browser built into the app, rather than your phone’s default browser. In 2022, privacy researcher Felix Krause found that Meta injects special “keylogging” JavaScript onto the website you’re visiting that allows the company to monitor everything you type and tap on, including passwords. Other apps including TikTok do the same thing."
What are your top #CSS features you played with, got excited over as they were supported in one browser... then years passed & support hasn't improved?
Mine:
✨@property Chrome-only for half a decade
✨filter() Safari-only since 2015
✨element() Firefox-only since forever
Now that Safari 17.4 is available, what other new web technology — HTML, CSS, JS, Web API, media support, etc — would you like to see supported in Safari next?
What’s most needed?
What will you use it for?
Or how will it help your team serve your users?
Tell me a story…
If people are smart, it's time to archive the Archive right now. In other words, fork it and turn it unto a decentralized platform. I hope someone out there is working on that.
Plus you have to think libraries need some decentralization as well as this lawsuit could kill libraries as we know them.
I regularly use and love #Typescript. I used to use #Python the most – it’s what I learned in and I am more interested in backends than frontends. I also am regularly using and really enjoying #Kotlin (so much better than #Java). But truly Typescript is bae.
#Julia is a joy to work with. Very much like Python but more powerful. If it had the library support Python or #JVM has I would probably prefer to use Julia for backends.
But Typescript really changed the game and now that’s probably my favorite language not just because of the language itself but because it has web dominance. Until I can write #WASM with Python or Kotlin or Rust, and I’m building #web applications, TS is my lingua franca.
Many yearn for the "good old days" of the web. We could have those good old days back — or something even better — and if anything, it would be easier now than it ever was.
If you use firefox, check out these 55 single-function addons to improve life (all same dev; not me)
Recently I found this developer who has published dozens of small, useful extensions for firefox. Nothing groundbreaking that I know of but everything looks to have been made with care to efficiency and minimal permissions to do one thing well. Each has its own github repo where the developer responds to issues....