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I wish for this new year we reboot the Web with a super light standard and accompanying ecosystem with - A small and efficient JS subset, HTML, CSS - A
by alcover 9mo ago
I wish for this new year we reboot the Web with a super light standard and accompanying ecosystem with
- A small and efficient JS subset, HTML, CSS
- A family of very simple browsers that do just that
- A new Web that adheres to the above
That would make my year.
- stronglikedan 9mo agoI mean, you can do all that now, so that's not the problem. The problem would be convincing millions of people to switch, when 99.99999% of them couldn't care less.
- alcover 9mo agoOh they would care if one shows them much snappier versions of services they use. They just don't know better.
- makapuf 9mo agoMaybe you dont need a big enough % to change but a sufficient absolute number, which given internet size might happen with the right 0.00001%
- vbezhenar 9mo agoMy idea is to use Markdown over HTTP(S). It's relatively easy to implement Markdown renderer, compared to HTML renderer. It's possible to browse that kind of website with HTML browser with very simple wrapper either on client or server side, so it's backwards compatible. It's rich enough for a lot of websites with actually useful content. Now I know that Markdown generally can include HTML tags, so probably it should be somewhat restricted. It could allow to implement second web in a compatible way with simple browsers.
- coryrc 9mo agoYou can just use HTML4 if you want, it's already supported and standardized. Markdown is very much not.
- vbezhenar 9mo agoHTML4 + CSS (2?) + JavaScript is already huge platform, very much not trivial to implement. Like you can already do something like that with niche browsers like links, but it's obviously not working, so something else is needed...
- coryrc 9mo agoMarkdown doesn't do the latter two, so that's not comparable in the slightest.
- sunshine-o 9mo agoI believe this is the way we might get out of this mess. With a markdown over HTTP browser I could already almost browse Github through the READMEs and probably other websites. Markdown is really a loved and now quite popular format. It is sad gemini created a separate closed format instead of just adopting it.
- billforsternz 9mo agoA few too many 9s there I think. You're estimating that only 1 person in every 10 million could care less. So less than 50 such people in the USA for example
- bArray 9mo agoAnd if you find you need more features than that - just build an app, don't make the web browser into some overly bloated app!
- mikepurvis 9mo agoBut most "apps" are just webviews running overcomplicated websites in them, many of which are using all the crazy features that the GP post wants to strip out.
- bogdan 9mo agoThen you have to deal with os compatibility. That's the main selling point of the Web, it works everywhere.
- thwarted 9mo agoExcept when it doesn't because of browser or platform differences/incompatibilities.
- ameliaquining 9mo agoThe portability of the Web is imperfect, but it's not even in the same galaxy as the portability of native app platforms; there's just no comparison.
- christophilus 9mo agoAnd, I don't have to run a binary to try your product. The web has a lot of flaws, but it's a good way to deliver properly sandboxed applications with low hassle on the part of the user. I've built my fair share of native vs web apps, and I vastly prefer working on web apps. As a user, I vastly prefer web apps for most things. Not all things, but most. No, I don't want to install your crappy app on my computer and risk you doing something irresponsible. I'll keep you sandboxed in a browser tab that I can easily "uninstall" by closing.
- zppln 9mo ago
- qweqwe14 9mo agoThis would never happen because there's zero incentive to do this. Browsers are complex because they solve a complex problem: running arbitrary applications in a secure manner across a wide range of platforms. So any "simple" browser you can come up with just won't work in the real world (yes, that means being compatible with websites that normal people use).
- alcover 9mo ago> that means being compatible with websites that normal people use No, new adhering websites would emerge and word of mouth would do the rest : normal people would see this fast nerd-web and want rid of their bloated day-to-day monster of a web life. One can still hope..
- dmd 9mo agoJust like all those normal people want rid of their bloated day-to-day monster of a web and therefore go and do something like, say, install an ad blocker? Oh right. 99% of people don't do even that, much less switch their life over to entirely new websites.
- lioeters 9mo ago> 99% of people In 2025, depending on the study, it is said that 31.5~42.7% of internet users now block ads. Nearly one-third of Americans (32.2%) use ad blockers, with desktop leading at 37%.
- mewse-hn 9mo agoI can't think of an instance of the web contracting like that. Maybe when Apple decided not to support Adobe Flash.
- fireflies_ 9mo agoArguably XSLT
- bdcravens 9mo agoIn the earlier days of the web, there were a lot more plugins you'd install to get around on most websites: not just Flash, but things like PDF viewers, Real Video, etc. You'd regularly have to install new codecs, etc. To say nothing of the days when there were some sites you'd have to use a different browser for. A movement towards more of a standards-driven web (in the sense of de facto, not academic, standards) is what made most of this possible.
- duped 9mo agoI think there needs to be a split between the web browser as a document renderer and link follower, and the web browser as a portable target for GUI applications. But frankly my biggest gripe is that you need HTML, JS, and CSS. Three distinct languages that are extremely dissimilar in syntax and semantics that you need all three of (or some bastard cross compiler for your JSX to convert from one format to them). Just make a decent scripting language and interface for the browser and you don't need that nonsense. I understand this has been tried before (flash, silverlight, etc). They weren't bad ideas, they were killed because of companies that were threatened by the browser as a standard target for applications.
- alcover 9mo agoI agree. Something componenty like Flash, yes. But it'd be easier to subset what already exists..
- foobarchu 9mo agoI think this is the ideal direction mainly because a lot of the webs current tech problems stem from websites that don't need app-level features using them. I was in web dev at the advent of SPA-style navigation and understand why everyone switched to it, but at the same time I feel like it's the source of many if not most bugs an performance issues that frustrate the average user.
- afavour 9mo agoSo you want 2026 to be the year of Google AMP?
- oefrha 9mo agoYou mean like the piece of crap that was WAP?
- speed_spread 9mo agoYou can already create websites to these standards. Then truncate large parts of webkit and create a new browser. Or base it on Servo.
- augustk 9mo agoAnd also bring back progressive enhancement. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_enhancement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_enhancement
- mromanuk 9mo agoWould be cool to create a MicroBrowser, just to browser stuff that's compatible.
- lioeters 9mo agoAnd Microsoftware running on the Micronet.
- dtj1123 9mo agoWhat about https://geminiprotocol.net/ https://geminiprotocol.net/
- dcminter 9mo agoWhile we're wishing, can we split CSS into two parts - styling and layout? Also, I'd like to fix the spelling on the "referer" header...
- pests 9mo agowhy does it need to be two languages? why not style.css and layout.css and you self-maintain the distinction
- hinkley 9mo agoYears ago I wrote a tiny xhtml-basic browser for a job. It was great. Some of my best work. But then the iPhone came out and xhtml-basic died practically overnight.
- born-jre 9mo agoThere could be a way: This HTML-lite spec would be subset of current standard so that if you open this HTML lite page in normal browser it would still work. but HTML-lite browser would only open HTML-lite sites, apart from tech itch it could be used in someplace where not full browser is needed, especially if you are control content generation. - TV screens UI - some game engines embed chrome embed thing ( steam store page kind) - some electron apps / lighter cross platform engine - less sucky QML - i think weechat or sth has own xml bashed app froamework thing (so could be useful to people wanting to build everything app app platform - much richer markdown format ?
- zero_bias 9mo agoIt’s called WML/WAP
- AtlasBarfed 9mo agoI think we can do better than a 15x15 text window
- exasperaited 9mo agoWML/WAP got a bad rap I think, largely because of the way it was developed and imposed/introduced. But it was not insane, and it represented a clarity of thought that then went missing for decades. Several things that were in WML are quite reminiscent of interactions designed in web components today.
- anthk 9mo agoGopher today (and even more Gemini) can do almost anything Wap did but without being a dead platform.
- exasperaited 9mo agoHave you read the WML 1.x spec? Let alone WML 2.x which never really happened. It had much more interesting scope than Gemini does. Gemini is not a good or sensible design. It's reactionary more than it is informed.
- keepamovin 9mo agoDo it, man. Call it "MicroWeb" or whatever. Write an agent, make it "viewable with regular browsers". I think this could be cool.
- cosmic_cheese 9mo agoLots of comments talking about how existing browsers can already do this, but the big benefit that current browsers can't give you is the sheer level of speed and efficiency that a highly restricted "lite web" browser could achieve, especially if the restrictions are made with efficiency in mind. The embedded use case is obvious, but it'd also be excellent for things like documentation — with such a browser you could probably have a dozen+ doc pages open with resource usage below that of a single regular browser tab. Perfect for things that you have sitting open for long periods of time.
- alcover 9mo agoThat's it. Plus they would work neatly on old computers/phones.
- zem 9mo agosomeone should embed it into dillo!
- anthk 9mo agoBetter not. It already exists former QuickJS and QuickJS-NG, and parsing JS is a no light task by any means. Even Edbrowse https://github.com/cmb/edbrowse https://github.com/cmb/edbrowse can grind down to a halt an n270 netbook becaus of some sites with JS (both with qjs and qjs-ng). So Dillo would be no better. Also, legacy machines couldn't run it as fast as they could.
- morshu9001 9mo agoIs MQJS faster or lighter than other engines though? It says the engine itself takes very little memory, but that doesn't say how it performs running all that bloated JS out there. Well also has "quick" in the name.
- cosmic_cheese 9mo agoHow it performs with existing JS doesn’t really matter in the context of my post, though. For a “lite web” browser that’s built for a thin, select slice of the web stack (HTML/CSS/JS), dragging around the heft of a full fat JS engine like V8 is extreme overkill, because it’s not going to be running things like React but instead enabling moderate use of light enhancing scripts — something like a circa-2002 website would skew toward the heavy side of what one might expect for a “lite web” site. The JS engine for such a browser could be trimmed down and aggressively optimized, likely even beyond what has been achieved with MQJS and similar engines, especially if one is willing to toss out legacy compatibility and not keep themselves beholden to every design decision of standard JS.
- aziis98 9mo agoI would actually merge html and js in a single language and bring the layout part of css too (something like having grid and flexbox be elements themselves instead of display styles, more typst kind of showed this is possible in a nice way) and keep css only for the styling part. Or maybe just make it all a single lispy language
- 1313ed01 9mo agoNot likely to happen. There is geminiprotocol with gemtext though for those of us that are fine with that level of simplicity. Work towards an eventual feature freeze and final standardisation of the web would be fantastic though, and a huge benefit to pretty much everyone other than maybe the Chrome developers.
- fud101 9mo agoIt needs a good standard library yeah? i don't see that in your list.
- GaryBluto 9mo agoBe the change you want to see in the world. If you want to use a specific subset of HTML, CSS and JS, go ahead, make a website using it and offer a browser for similar-spec sites.