I'm not a typical user [0] but am very mindful of the typical user.
Maybe I'd not realised how much the browser space has shrunk and that
the experience of "browsing", the abstract task, now breaks down
into more specialised tasks.
I'm thinking lately the myth of the "browser" and "web" as coherent
data spaces is something even Sir Tim gave up on, right? If the
centre cannot hold constellations of specialised clients (which are
already "apps" in a sense) look like enduring in the near future at
the expense of interoperability and standards. The "best browser" will
be the one that strikes the most deals with the parts of the network
people want to connect to. It's just like the best "game console".
That seems really bleak for the Internet qua people's network.
No doubt http/s and the worlds of port 80/443 will endure eternal, but
the "Universal" search and information space the pioneers and then
proto-Google aspired to now seems so remote that the idea of a
"browser" is itself a little ridiculous to beards like me. I think
today the "browser" has become a clique of PKI suites and CAs, at the
behest of banking and retail, backed by broken but well meaning
regulation, and unwittingly creating this monster we still call "The
Browser". anyway, peace.
[0] I use w3m for 99% of my daily drive and a sandboxed degoogled chromium
for any of the "messy stuff"
I'm thinking lately the myth of the "browser" and "web" as coherent data spaces is something even Sir Tim gave up on, right? If the centre cannot hold constellations of specialised clients (which are already "apps" in a sense) look like enduring in the near future at the expense of interoperability and standards. The "best browser" will be the one that strikes the most deals with the parts of the network people want to connect to. It's just like the best "game console".
That seems really bleak for the Internet qua people's network.
No doubt http/s and the worlds of port 80/443 will endure eternal, but the "Universal" search and information space the pioneers and then proto-Google aspired to now seems so remote that the idea of a "browser" is itself a little ridiculous to beards like me. I think today the "browser" has become a clique of PKI suites and CAs, at the behest of banking and retail, backed by broken but well meaning regulation, and unwittingly creating this monster we still call "The Browser". anyway, peace.
[0] I use w3m for 99% of my daily drive and a sandboxed degoogled chromium for any of the "messy stuff"