I’d suggest getting rid of client side rendering and JavaScript. At some point web developers decided to try to emulate desktop app UIs and cram it into the browser. Websites used to be rendered on the server and the HTML was just sent to the client, which had to just parse and displayed natively. Is was really fast and efficient. This would also be a massive win for privacy and it would automatically eliminate all the spyware/adware client side JavaScript code.
Unpopular Opinion
Welcome to the Unpopular Opinion community!
How voting works:
Vote the opposite of the norm.
If you agree that the opinion is unpopular give it an arrow up. If it's something that's widely accepted, give it an arrow down.
Guidelines:
Tag your post, if possible (not required)
- If your post is a "General" unpopular opinion, start the subject with [GENERAL].
- If it is a Lemmy-specific unpopular opinion, start it with [LEMMY].
Rules:
1. NO POLITICS
Politics is everywhere. Let's make this about [general] and [lemmy] - specific topics, and keep politics out of it.
2. Be civil.
Disagreements happen, but that doesn’t provide the right to personally attack others. No racism/sexism/bigotry.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Shitposts and memes are allowed but...
Only until they prove to be a problem. They can and will be removed at moderator discretion.
5. No trolling.
This shouldn't need an explanation. If your post or comment is made just to get a rise with no real value, it will be removed. You do this too often, you will get a vacation to touch grass, away from this community for 1 or more days. Repeat offenses will result in a perma-ban.
Instance-wide rules always apply. https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/
Down vote because I agree.
But let me introduce you to luakit, vimb, and similar browsers, which do indeed try to minimize the browser footprint - and to varying degrees of success.
And then let me next introduce you to Gemini, which can truly claim to be The Web, light. There's quite a bit of content, but it has been slow to gain traction and could be claimed to have stalled. If Gemini has failed, it's because it was pared too far back; even the gmi markup language is primitive, bare-bones, and unnecessarily ugly. Great idea, not so great execution.
Past*
Your post has some merits, and I agree with some of it in spirit. But to me there are bigger issues at play. So many sites now perform horribly, not because of browser bloat, but because of crappy code on the server, relentless data harvesting, and targeted ads. And surfing the web without multiple layers of protection against bad actors is not a good idea. The whole thing is a shit show.
It feels like you're asking to go back to the late '90s. I clearly remember juggling plugins for Netscape Navigator and assigning MIME types to various apps. It was a mess. Modern integrated browsers are so much more predictable and user-friendly than the patchwork approach.
I am going to be lazy I hope you dont mind but someone said something very similar to what you have said and here is my response
Sadly I didn't have access to tech till 2015ish lol but I know of Netscape and I know software was a lot harder to master forsure, this evolved though.
I'm not harkening back to some rose tinted glasses version of early computing rather I see an issue where the bar to entry is set very high for both hardware and developers as the sheer amount of code, knowledge and hours to build a compatible modern web browser is mad. I dont think modulising the browser equates to harder to use as we made phone with operating systems that were once alien which have a very modular approach when I click a YouTube link in my phones browser it opens the YouTube client, if I click a PDF it opens the PDF client, if I click a phone number it opens the dialer. and so on.
Remember when Netscape Navigator was the dominant web browser? The early versions of Netscape were light. We had to use Flash Player for interactive media and RealPlayer for video streaming.
I don't know how to feel about your opinion. While I like applications (and websites) to be light and simple, the Netscape kind of integration was a mess. Microsoft used ActiveX which was a security nightmare.
Modern browsers allow feature-rich applications to be built without depending on external services, which provides a seamless experience to users, especially non-technical users.
What I would prefer is a more bare-bone browser, but with add-ons supporting features as needed. I really dislike how Firefox bundles Pocket when it should be an add-on instead.
Sadly I didn't have access to tech till 2015ish lol but I know of Netscape and I know software was a lot harder to master forsure, this evolved though.
I'm not harkening back to some rose tinted glasses version of early computing rather I see an issue where the bar to entry is set very high for both hardware and developers as the sheer amount of code, knowledge and hours to build a compatible modern web browser is mad. I dont think modulising the browser equates to harder to use as we made phone with operating systems that were once alien which have a very modular approach when I click a YouTube link in my phones browser it opens the YouTube client, if I click a PDF it opens the PDF client, if I click a phone number it opens the dialer. and so on.
2015
Get out of here. You’ve no idea how much better it is now.
I can understand you. It would also probably make sense for who uses older hardware.
I agreed in principal, but getting the software to where I click and it just works would be difficult. Plus an average person would have a harder time understanding what to do. Like if I want to watch a video it transparently open vlc and plays, what would happened if it fails. I know my mother would not understand she would have to close or restart vlc.
If I wanted to download arch linux torrent I can go to arch's download page, click the magnet icon and my torrent manager open and downloads the file. Now if browsers were stripped down tomorrow people had to relearn how to use chrome/Firefox then yea it would definitely be problematic.
Issue is: it's just too damn convenient!
Now, I'm a weirdo, so I actively avoid as many features as possible, but my life would be so much easier if I just kneeled down in front of chrome, and enjoyed the myriad integrated features. Or if I just found out what the F mozilla pocket is.
This is very true, maybe the quite comfort is the enemy of progress fits here.