Not to sidetrack your topic of discussion, which I think is interesting, but I think it's an unfortunate misconception when people try to cast browsers as being intended to merely display documents. Hypermedia in general is a very old concept, dating back to the 60s, and it was never intended to be limited to merely documents. Audio/visual and interactive applications were inherent in the design of some of the earliest hypermedia systems which informed the design of the web.
The first websites on the WWW may have been just documents, mainly showing off basic hypertext concepts, but the basic elements for interactive applications were there. The web was just one system amongst a category of other examples of hypermedia which included more interactive and visual applications. NLS and Hypercard being great examples.
Not to say browsers couldn't be improved, or that new systems shouldn't strive to be better. But I disagree with the fundamental assertion that the web, and browsers, were ever intended to only display documents.
I didn't state that the document can't have audio or video or whatever. I am just sceptical when I see someone sending over the browser some wasm for singal processing or for rendering a video game. Don't get me wrong I think it's is useful but I am really worried that people are basically overcomplicate things with hacks on top of hacks instead of someone saying f#@k it we need a different approach.
My problem is that when I want to do some simple web app the industry standard is to have all these abstraction levels, this makes me think that maybe we are building on the wrong fundamentals. And people instead of refactoring the browser they make more abstractions/hacks on each other.
The industry standards are meant for businesses coordinating teams and building sites meant to scale to multiple millions of users. No one is putting a gun to your head and making you do any of that for a simple web app.
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Not to sidetrack your topic of discussion, which I think is interesting, but I think it's an unfortunate misconception when people try to cast browsers as being intended to merely display documents. Hypermedia in general is a very old concept, dating back to the 60s, and it was never intended to be limited to merely documents. Audio/visual and interactive applications were inherent in the design of some of the earliest hypermedia systems which informed the design of the web.
The first websites on the WWW may have been just documents, mainly showing off basic hypertext concepts, but the basic elements for interactive applications were there. The web was just one system amongst a category of other examples of hypermedia which included more interactive and visual applications. NLS and Hypercard being great examples.
Not to say browsers couldn't be improved, or that new systems shouldn't strive to be better. But I disagree with the fundamental assertion that the web, and browsers, were ever intended to only display documents.
I didn't state that the document can't have audio or video or whatever. I am just sceptical when I see someone sending over the browser some wasm for singal processing or for rendering a video game. Don't get me wrong I think it's is useful but I am really worried that people are basically overcomplicate things with hacks on top of hacks instead of someone saying f#@k it we need a different approach.
My problem is that when I want to do some simple web app the industry standard is to have all these abstraction levels, this makes me think that maybe we are building on the wrong fundamentals. And people instead of refactoring the browser they make more abstractions/hacks on each other.
The industry standards are meant for businesses coordinating teams and building sites meant to scale to multiple millions of users. No one is putting a gun to your head and making you do any of that for a simple web app.