7 ms·

“Some people will feel sad about it and nostalgic about it. But we have a better tool now. The Web site is continuously updated, it’s much more expansive and it

by starfox 15y ago

“Some people will feel sad about it and nostalgic about it. But we have a better tool now. The Web site is continuously updated, it’s much more expansive and it has multimedia.” The future is clearly http://www.britannica.com http://www.britannica.com

rwmj 15y ago
The future is so clearly not britannica.com. That site doesn't even work without javascript, and where the heck is the "Edit" button?
- zrail 15y ago
  Citable facts published by someone reputable are extremely important. Wikipedia is very much not that. britannica.com could very well be a citation for a wikipedia article but never the other way around.
  - rwmj 15y ago
    Fail at step 1 because I cannot even get to the site (and more importantly, neither can Google), because Britannica does not understand how the web works ... 11 years after the web ate their expensive lunch meetings, they still don't get the web.
    - Volpe 15y ago
      Interesting that we now think "The website is broken" because google can't index it... rather than "Google is broken" ? I remember reading somewhere google executes javascript as part of its crawling...
    - lonnyk 15y ago
      Google has parsed and indexed info thru JS for a while now. [1] [1] http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4159807.htm http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4159807.htm
    - Yaggo 15y ago
      http://www.google.com/search?q=site:britannica.com http://www.google.com/search?q=site:britannica.com gives about ~1.5M results. They have interesting robots.txt, though: http://www.britannica.com/robots.txt http://www.britannica.com/robots.txt I would recommend them to hire a web designer.
  - archangel_one 15y ago
    Ultimately that's not going to be as important as Wikipedia having stolen the mindshare - it is now the place people go to in order to look things up. It's all very well Britannica claiming to be more citable, but in practice Wikipedia wins because it has far more articles with more detail in them. If the fact you want to cite is not on britannica.com, you can't cite it from there.
  - cracell 15y ago
    I really don't think there is a place for traditional encyclopedias anymore, digital or hardcopy. Of course we still want and need curated collections of information. But I fail to see the value of large collections of information that say a tiny bit about everything. I think the real value comes from knowledgable experts curating information about their niche. Which in my experience is not at all what traditional encyclopedias were (I'm 24).
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
- AlisdairO 15y ago
  Not that I think the future is britannica.com is the future either, but not working without javascript is unlikely to be the thing that stops them (or any site, really) from succeeding.
- xxpor 15y ago
  I think it's ridiculous in this day and age for people to expect webpages to work without JS.
  - colanderman 15y ago
    Web applications, maybe. But content which is primarily text? I like my text not to be Turing-complete, thank you.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - drucken 15y ago
    Oh, really... In an age, * where the Internet can be seen on ever increasing number of diverse devices * where every day people discover that every additional layer of software complexity adds security vulnerabilities * where the default installation of even many existing heavily used browsers, for both personal and business, have everything except html and stylesheets disabled, especially for new sites * where some/many people may wish to choose to use your site in its most bare form possible, including command line users * etc. you choose to ignore all of these usage scenarios by not even having a graceful fallback for your site? Thankfully, most web administrators and developers are not as short-sighted as you, even most start-ups! One more thing: if a new site, even one that has been heavilty recommended to me, does not provide even basic information without scripting or has a horrible front-page with a default NoScript Firefox installation, I treat it as I would a spam site and I immediately desist from using the site and ignore the link. You will not waste my time with lack of basic Web competence and awareness.
    - xxpor 15y ago
      First of all, calm down. I think people disabling JS for security should be willing to accept the downfalls. "where the default installation of even many existing heavily used browsers, for both personal and business, have everything except html and stylesheets disabled, especially for new sites" I don't know what you're talking about here. I've never seen a default install of any browser (on a desktop) except IE in Windows server have JS off by default "where some/many people may wish to choose to use your site in its most bare form possible, including command line users" I will grant command line users should be accommodated where they will be expected to be a large proportion of your users (linux install instructions, for example) otherwise, give me a break. Why should I take my time working for .01% of users using a command line. Now, I don't think this means that people should be using JS when it's not necessary, like if your page is mostly text. But all of the use cases you cite are a small minority of the users of most sites.
- chc 15y ago
  I just tried it without JavaScript. It works. It's not pretty, but it's fully functional as far as I can tell. They basically have two different UIs — if you have JavaScript, you get a modern UI, and if you don't, you get a simpler UI that's optimized for a very primitive browser (e.g. those old phone browsers that could only do 32KB per page or whatever it was). Seems fair enough. If you really can't get on there, you might want to check your connection or something. But hypothetically, even if it were completely JavaScript-dependent, the trend is clearly toward sites that involve more JavaScript, not less, so I don't see why that would preclude being "the future."
- camiller 15y ago
  > ... and where the heck is the "Edit" button? Huh, I just pulled up five articles at random and they all had edit buttons. Granted, it doesn't let you edit the main article, but you can create your own version of one or send a suggestion/correction to the editor.

by starfox 15y ago

rwmj 15y ago

The future is so clearly not britannica.com. That site doesn't even work without javascript, and where the heck is the "Edit" button?

zrail 15y ago
Citable facts published by someone reputable are extremely important. Wikipedia is very much not that. britannica.com could very well be a citation for a wikipedia article but never the other way around.
- rwmj 15y ago
  Fail at step 1 because I cannot even get to the site (and more importantly, neither can Google), because Britannica does not understand how the web works ... 11 years after the web ate their expensive lunch meetings, they still don't get the web.
  - Volpe 15y ago
    Interesting that we now think "The website is broken" because google can't index it... rather than "Google is broken" ? I remember reading somewhere google executes javascript as part of its crawling...
  - lonnyk 15y ago
    Google has parsed and indexed info thru JS for a while now. [1] [1] http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4159807.htm http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4159807.htm
  - Yaggo 15y ago
    http://www.google.com/search?q=site:britannica.com http://www.google.com/search?q=site:britannica.com gives about ~1.5M results. They have interesting robots.txt, though: http://www.britannica.com/robots.txt http://www.britannica.com/robots.txt I would recommend them to hire a web designer.
- archangel_one 15y ago
  Ultimately that's not going to be as important as Wikipedia having stolen the mindshare - it is now the place people go to in order to look things up. It's all very well Britannica claiming to be more citable, but in practice Wikipedia wins because it has far more articles with more detail in them. If the fact you want to cite is not on britannica.com, you can't cite it from there.
- cracell 15y ago
  I really don't think there is a place for traditional encyclopedias anymore, digital or hardcopy. Of course we still want and need curated collections of information. But I fail to see the value of large collections of information that say a tiny bit about everything. I think the real value comes from knowledgable experts curating information about their niche. Which in my experience is not at all what traditional encyclopedias were (I'm 24).
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
AlisdairO 15y ago
Not that I think the future is britannica.com is the future either, but not working without javascript is unlikely to be the thing that stops them (or any site, really) from succeeding.
xxpor 15y ago
I think it's ridiculous in this day and age for people to expect webpages to work without JS.
- colanderman 15y ago
  Web applications, maybe. But content which is primarily text? I like my text not to be Turing-complete, thank you.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- drucken 15y ago
  Oh, really... In an age, * where the Internet can be seen on ever increasing number of diverse devices * where every day people discover that every additional layer of software complexity adds security vulnerabilities * where the default installation of even many existing heavily used browsers, for both personal and business, have everything except html and stylesheets disabled, especially for new sites * where some/many people may wish to choose to use your site in its most bare form possible, including command line users * etc. you choose to ignore all of these usage scenarios by not even having a graceful fallback for your site? Thankfully, most web administrators and developers are not as short-sighted as you, even most start-ups! One more thing: if a new site, even one that has been heavilty recommended to me, does not provide even basic information without scripting or has a horrible front-page with a default NoScript Firefox installation, I treat it as I would a spam site and I immediately desist from using the site and ignore the link. You will not waste my time with lack of basic Web competence and awareness.
  - xxpor 15y ago
    First of all, calm down. I think people disabling JS for security should be willing to accept the downfalls. "where the default installation of even many existing heavily used browsers, for both personal and business, have everything except html and stylesheets disabled, especially for new sites" I don't know what you're talking about here. I've never seen a default install of any browser (on a desktop) except IE in Windows server have JS off by default "where some/many people may wish to choose to use your site in its most bare form possible, including command line users" I will grant command line users should be accommodated where they will be expected to be a large proportion of your users (linux install instructions, for example) otherwise, give me a break. Why should I take my time working for .01% of users using a command line. Now, I don't think this means that people should be using JS when it's not necessary, like if your page is mostly text. But all of the use cases you cite are a small minority of the users of most sites.
chc 15y ago
I just tried it without JavaScript. It works. It's not pretty, but it's fully functional as far as I can tell. They basically have two different UIs — if you have JavaScript, you get a modern UI, and if you don't, you get a simpler UI that's optimized for a very primitive browser (e.g. those old phone browsers that could only do 32KB per page or whatever it was). Seems fair enough. If you really can't get on there, you might want to check your connection or something. But hypothetically, even if it were completely JavaScript-dependent, the trend is clearly toward sites that involve more JavaScript, not less, so I don't see why that would preclude being "the future."
camiller 15y ago
> ... and where the heck is the "Edit" button? Huh, I just pulled up five articles at random and they all had edit buttons. Granted, it doesn't let you edit the main article, but you can create your own version of one or send a suggestion/correction to the editor.