i used to think web browsers were cool and now i hate them. whose fault is this? everybodys
@Lady I think we can make web browsers better and cooler by making them better at browsing, the web,
(I think some features that are not as he|pful for browsing the web, maybe we can skimp on.)
@gaditb the problem is that our conceptualization of “the web” has largely been created and directed by web browser manufacturers, who have had bad ideas about it
@gaditb well, i think there are two competing definitions here
there is a big “web”, which is anything which is arguably hypertext and which participates in the hypertext universe of the Internet
but there is also a smaller “web”, which is a set of social norms and conventions (including file formats and standards) for those hypertext documents
i don¦t buy the argument that the web should not have standards, but then the question remains as to what the scope of those standards should be? (which presumably is also the scope of web browsers)
@gaditb but, importantly, you can be a hypertext document connected to other hypertext documents with·out following standards, and that is probably still participating in the big web even if it is standing apart from the little one
@gaditb @Lady while i am not opposed to the most expansive definition in a general sense, i feel pretty strongly that expecting web browsers to implement viewing .doc files would make both browsers and .doc files worse and thus perhaps this is not a useful definition within the context of a discussion about web browsers
@Satsuma @Lady The common surface area is the actual webrequests and URL management (bookmarks, history, etc.).
... how much of "a web browser" could you still do of it were doing a lot of sitting between HTTP requests routed out from PDF viewers and .doc viewers (possibly those subordinated to the web browser in some way)? Does that just entirely ruin any coherent model of what a web browser might be anymore?
@Lady Hmm.
I don't know if this is what my opinion is, but what do we get if we take the most expansive possible view, that "yes, they unquestionably are" and also include PDFs, .doc/.ppt/etc. files, &c., that have hyperlinks in them and are served from a web server routed-to-by and acting-on a URL?
(... is that "&c." even usefully defineable? or alternatively is it usefully gesturable at?)