What is missing from the web? We're asking for Google
- Reference: 1725021066
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2024/08/30/what_is_missing_from_web/
- Source link:
Although Google's whiteboard asked "what's missing from the web?" the ad giant's browser gang [1]was more interested in what engineers reckoned was missing from HTML and CSS.
After all, the original question might have prompted awkward answers such as "meaningful browser competition" or "a browsing experience free of snooping and ads."
[2]
Or even "a browser that doesn't need more memory than a small datacenter to display the words 'hello, world.'"
[3]
[4]
Topping the suggestion list is support for styling inputs followed by sorting out the visually hidden content hack once and for all. Additional input types and real random numbers were also in the list.
The Chrome team has supplied a [5]short form (sadly hidden away behind a request for permission) to gauge what its audience feels is missing. We suspect "more AI nonsense" won't be in there.
[6]W3C says Google's cookie climbdown 'undermines' a lot of work
[7]Google to kill off URL shortener once and for all
[8]In-app browsers are still a privacy, security, and choice problem
[9]CERN celebrates 30 years since releasing the web to the public domain
This got us thinking. The World Wide Web turned 35 this year and has come quite some way from its inception in 1989. Back then, Tim Berners-Lee imagined a system where information could be shared. He came up with a web server and a browser. He also devised a way of formatting pages, dubbed Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), and a few decades and plenty of tears and tantrums later, here we are.
Today's web is very different from that of the 1990s, with browsers an order of magnitude more complex than the likes of Mosaic.
[10]
But have things improved? And what remains to be done? What is still missing? Google has its own ideas, but here are some of ours:
Get rid of CSS and JavaScript – what was wrong with HTML and Notepad?
Bring back ActiveX so the younger generation can know what pain truly is.
An AI chatbot to judge your browser history as harshly as your mother.
An auto-reply to any perky "how can we help you?" pop-up that ensures an immediate transfer to a human (but not the authorities)
A CSS tag that makes any website almost unreadable thanks to a plethora of pop-ups and ads. Oh wait – we have that already.
Don't forget to add your own in the comments. ®
Get our [11]Tech Resources
[1] https://developer.chrome.com/blog/missing-from-css
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZtHspNqLnAGne7DdQ84gAAAAAAc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZtHspNqLnAGne7DdQ84gAAAAAAc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZtHspNqLnAGne7DdQ84gAAAAAAc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1WncEgQNG8j_TIyHkQl8gg7LzqzoT4KjmwXLYl3yk6Wo/edit?ts=66ad513a&resourcekey=0-bRWW9yfyRfrMm7Iy4wZeRQ
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2024/07/30/googles_cookie_w3c_criticism/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2024/07/19/google_to_kill_off_url_shortener/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/27/inapp_browsers/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2023/05/02/world_wide_web_30th_anniversary/
[10] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZtHspNqLnAGne7DdQ84gAAAAAAc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[11] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: My starter for 10
On the one hand Google probably knows more about me than I know myself and will sell it to anyone. On the other hand they do provide some very useful services. I'd be rather lost without their search, maps/street view/Sat nav directions & youtube!
Re: My starter for 10
>> an internet without Google Doubleclick.
Google actually did no evil back in the day. Its adquisition of Doubleclick[1] is the root of most, if not all, the current internet woes
[1] Or rather the parasitic takeover of Google by the mad men
A search engine that returns results that are relevant to the search terms, not random adverts, sponsored links to completely unconnected websites, and irrelevant guesswork mis-direction to unrelated terms.
In all seriousness: being able to style input fields "somewhat"* would be useful, it would do away with a huge plethora of CSS/JS tricks that developers are forced to deploy to appease the crayon wielders.
* There need to be limits and restrictions to prevent complete user-confusion.
(as a side note, why the hell are the "designers" always more senior in a web-dev agency than the coders??)
If you want to go there... I wouldn't start from here
Both advanced markup and interactivity are horrible hacks on top of a format that was designed to express content with predictable semantic meaning in a static and stateless manner.
So we have the basic problem that code, styling, layout and content are weirdly spread and unreliably synchronised between a bunch of files each of which is not quite designed for the task in hand.
It would be an interesting exercise to design something that isn't "the web", but provided the functionality that is kludged on top of the web, with full knowledge of where we want to get, rather than a complicated set of legacy concerns. Of course, in turn that would become legacy, but... well we don't miss MySpace do we?
It's the simple things
Ignoring the snooping / tracking "feck your cookies" dialogs, the thing I'd really like is for pages not to reposition items in the view as the page loads.
I want the button I'm about to click to stay the button I think it is, not shift layout so the mouse is now over the previous button 100ms before I press it.
More agency please (with any number of letters)
Following on from the suggested " 2. ActiveX, 3. AI chatbot, and 5. ads ", I'd say the web needs to become much more agentic, with deep access to connected machines, down to the lowest-level hardware for added convenience. Want to know if a "friend"'s at home? Just dial in remotely to their machine and take a peek, and a listen, with the built-in cam and microphones. Alexa and Siri already do this of course, but their lack of agentic olfactive sensors makes them yesterday's tech. After all, how else might one ascertain whether a "friend" is stuck in the lieu, pushing a hard one through, with the door closed?
But agency also means that the web should be constantly doing this on its own, of its own free will, and under its own initiative. Safekeeping the results in appropriate database caches, and analyzing them continuously, in real-time, for the convenience of fast commodity access, and to optimize the logistics of related dispatches, via drones and creepy crawlers, all transparently to the user. The web could then easily rewind the timeline of any sequence of events, pinpoint such critical landmarks as the expression of intent to ingest mutton vindaloo (for example), and pre-deploy the consequent countermeasures ahead of time, with surgical precision, for the preemptive administration of relief.
All-access AI-driven web agency is the future we all seek, in both free and totalitarian societies, to safeguard the joy of a convenient lifestyle, with an ever lesser need to ask oneself any question at all, especially What The Fuck?!, What Were They Thinking?! or, What Were They Smoking!?
A day without questioning (except by licensed professionals) is a day well spent. AIweb will help us all get there most efficiently, IMSO! (yes, the S is for Sarcastic ...)
A working search engine that returns pages related to the question rather than trying & failing to answer it.
BRING BACK LYCOS!
Same as all modern software
Less effing bloat!
My starter for 10
is an internet without Google.