Few other "browsers" beat links (or links2 nogui), and they are not even "browsers": e.g., the original netcat, tcpclient and BSD's ftp with http support. No, curl is not on the list. It's dog slow.
No one needs to cater to my attention. Apparently I'm not today's end user. I'm for all intents and purposes a blind user. The web is not for me. I don't even start X11 if it's not necessary. I work with text. Graphics and multimedia are for recreation.
One of my favorite recent HN comments/stories was from Diego Basch. He described what happened at Inktomi, an early search engine that eventually was made all but obsolescent by Google.
In his story, he stated what he saw as one of the sure signs that Inktomi was being overtaken by Google. He said he saw that Inktomi engineers did not use Inktomi's search. They used Google.
Are complex browsers the way of the future? I find it easier to work on _operating systems_ than I do to work on today's "modern browsers". That is how complex (and therby insecure) the code has gotten. I would rather try to understand the code for ffmpeg or mplayer than I would for Chrome or Mozilla. But as I said, I'm not the "end user" to focus on.
Developers/engineers gotta eat. Do what works today. Focus on what you think "end users" are doing. Try to anticpate what they "want".
When I'm pondering "the next big thing" and what may work tomorrow to pay the bills, I will always remember Diego's story of the Inktomi engineers.
This is just more evidence that we should strive to do everything in a browser. Or an app that functions like one. It is more secure. Details should not be exposed to the user.
Remember there is no file system. In fact, there are no files.
We hid them so they do not exist. Out of sight, out of mind.
There's no such thing as binary. That only existed when you were younger. Now it no longer exists. The numbers are gone. They do not exist.
What's really important is how good fonts look. The javascript, the CSS, the browser!
No user cares about content like text, audio and video, they care about window dressing: html and browsers. They care about what you can do with javascript. What can you do? Show me some tricks.
Content alone is not enough. Who wants to read a story or download a video clip? You have to present it; you must entertain and you must persuade, by trickery if necessary. It's not the content, silly. It's the webpage. No javascript, no dice. Don't just deliver the content, entertain me for a few minutes first. Tell me about something else.
No one cares about TV programming. They care about the TV's setup screens and onscreen channel guide. They want these menus to come to life. They want their TV's to become "intelligent".
A webpage without javascript is like a lifeless onscreen TV channel guide that does not track what you watch and report it to marketers, or make automatic suggestions on what you should watch, or display animations while you sit and wait for seconds while the TV's software is "Loading..." in response to your last button push. Boring.
Users want books, newspapers, radios and TV's that have "artificial intelligence". They want others to know what they are reading and watching and they want advertisers to address them by name. Let's get with it. Bring us the future.
No one needs to cater to my attention. Apparently I'm not today's end user. I'm for all intents and purposes a blind user. The web is not for me. I don't even start X11 if it's not necessary. I work with text. Graphics and multimedia are for recreation.
One of my favorite recent HN comments/stories was from Diego Basch. He described what happened at Inktomi, an early search engine that eventually was made all but obsolescent by Google.
In his story, he stated what he saw as one of the sure signs that Inktomi was being overtaken by Google. He said he saw that Inktomi engineers did not use Inktomi's search. They used Google.
Are complex browsers the way of the future? I find it easier to work on _operating systems_ than I do to work on today's "modern browsers". That is how complex (and therby insecure) the code has gotten. I would rather try to understand the code for ffmpeg or mplayer than I would for Chrome or Mozilla. But as I said, I'm not the "end user" to focus on.
Developers/engineers gotta eat. Do what works today. Focus on what you think "end users" are doing. Try to anticpate what they "want".
When I'm pondering "the next big thing" and what may work tomorrow to pay the bills, I will always remember Diego's story of the Inktomi engineers.