rchandraonline's Journal: The rise and fall of the modern WWW

Color me less than amused by Web sites in general these days. Apparently, most have never heard of the KISS principle.

The Web started off as a wonderous place to share information. When one was writing about a topic of any sort, one could insert links for further reading, corroboration, or simply to move on to the next piece of related information. Then it grew up a little by allowing dynamically generated content by allowing form submission. Boy howdy, that really spurred on the Internet by having orders taken, giving birth to a whole new segment of our modern economy. Then it grew up a little more by allowing the clients to be software inside software, such as Java and JavaScript. That reduced the load on the poor lil ole servers by allowing validation of form content before submission and allowing the appearance to be changed, all without having to send information to and from the Web server. Macromedia further enhanced the Web by making a system for drastically reducing the bandwidth required for video and other media-rich content.

But then again, this was not without its cost. Sure as a bat can be used to play baseball, it can also surely be used to subdue people and break property. So it is the same with all these wonderful Web features.

Let's just start with what to me was the first offender, Flash. Web sites or their designers were no longer content with hyperlinking; they now "needed" elaborate moving pictures of Flash presentations even to move around from page to page (and I definitely use the term "need" VERY loosely). Gee, it looks like those numbskulls totally forgot a few things, chief among them that I would often like to keep my place in my Web experience by opening a link in a new window (and later as clients improved, in a new tab). And this is from the perspective of someone who sees and hears OK (not perfectly); it seems to me this is a big, big snub at those who are visually impaired. Apparently to the modern Web, noone but the Web designer matters, for all you v.i. people and those (like me) who want to surf in a different way (new windows, tabs, etc.) are just plain out of luck. This is not to mention the utter WASTE of time waiting for the images that show me where the buttons are actually appear, wipe in, fade up, or what have you. When a certain unremembered domain registrar felt they needed to switch from a simple link-based scheme to tedious, time-wasting Flash, I switched domain registrars. These Web wankers don't seem to understand people generally like their freedom: the freedom to get things done quickly, the freedom to visit a link in the same window, the same window but a different tab, or a new window, the freedom to have the text of links pronounced OR be visible...you name it. The Web began this tumble, and it was really only gentle at this point, but annoying nonetheless.

Next came the Web weenies (designers specifically) that decided to clamp their hands on each side of my head, put my wrists in chains, and take over my mouse by insisting that the page is going to be so many pixels wide, with type so many pixels high, with spacing of that type (line height) of so many pixles, and so on. The standards allow for user-configurable items for these things, like size="xlarge" or width="90%"...but no...the modern Web designer I guess would rather force me to take my mouse and expand or contract my browser window to conform to THEIR idea of what I should be doing! For shame that I would want my browser open to 500 pixels or so when you decided it needs to be 750. It's blasphemy on the designer! I also guess they think they know what's best in terms of video cards and monitors...why, everybody has a 19" monitor set to 1024x768, don't they? Noone ever sets their screen to 1600x1200 in a vain attempt to get more on the screen at once, and thus your 10px text is legible only to fleas. Apparently, it was worth pissing me off to try to get their message across EXACTLY as they thought it should be.

Next came the wankers who similarly thought I wasn't intelligent enough to know what to do with my right mouse button and the different menu that will pop up should I click it. They incessantly are taking away my freedom, my choice, indeed sucking the joy right out of surfing the Web by insisting on using window.open() among other functions. Again...I am perfectly capable of deciding whether I wanted to follow your hyperlink in the same window, another tab, or a new window!!!!!! I didn't need you to make a navigational mess of it by using that funtion/method! This is compounded by some Web weenies creating links referring to the same page, such as "example.com/#" because if one DOES use the new window or tab functionality, one is just greeted by the same page; no navigation has taken place, only a waste of time takes place. I'm a little surprised the designers don't come around trying to place devices under my eyelids to keep them open. If my eyes did close, I wouldn't be able to see their "magnificence." Sadly, the Web's downfall was accelerating.

Have you, gentle reader, ever stopped to ponder that practically the only venue where menus pop up without being clicked is within a Web browser? Just about any other software ever written does not automatically start spewing itself onto the screen in the form of pulldown menus UNTIL that ever-important mouse click. Yet Web designers think absolutely nothing of obscuring content, nay, even obscuring other hyperlinks, by having menus appear for just hovering around their top element. Have you NEVER placed your mouse somewhere above your browser for some reason, then moved your mouse to click on a link somewhere near the top of the page, only to be thwarted by a basically clueless Web designer because that link is now underneath this basically unsolicited menu???? These days, I'm mousing aroung my screen on eggshells, because if I wiggle out of line at the wrong time, all the sudden I can't even navigate on the page because a popup menu has now come up RIGHT on top of what I WOULD have clicked. The Web was rolling downhill to beat the band by now.

What's even worse on this last point is that I USED TO be able to click in trusty ole PrefBar to turn off JavaScript and thus most of these annoying effects. It's not so easy anymore. Now apparently there is markup which will do this which doesn't even rely on JavaScript to update the page dynamically. Sadly, even one of my most beloved sites, SourceForge, has given into this convoluted menuing system, thus making me ashamed (YES, ASHAMED) to have an OSS project up there. Boy, the Web was starting to attempt speed records for going downhill by now.

Shall we for a moment contemplate combinations of what's been mentioned so far? By and large, the links in these menus cannot be opened in a new tab or window, they will only navigate to the next page in the same window. Now that you've decided my menu items are going to be 10px high or whatever, did it ever occur to you that as a countermeasure I told Firefox not to render text any smaller than 16px, as a floor (specs under 16 get size 16)? Gee...now all your carefully "px laid out" menus and such are close to both illegible and unusable. The Web was actively requisitioning JATOs to get down the hill even faster.

What's worse, as with a lot of software, there seems to be a leapfrogging effect. At first, Web designers and site operators were sane, considerate people. Then they decided to make use of JavaScript to create the popup and popunder. Browser programmers countered with popup/under blockers, or by the users countering by turning off JavaScript. But then Web weenies decided to make it impossible to navigate their site without new windows, JavaScript and such. Browser designers then made options at least to keep this under a little bit of control by forcing calls to window.open() to do as advertised, to use a new tab, or to use the very same window. Other Web wankers then decided to start using the target attribute of anchors to create new windows. I've yet to see a countermeasure for this. For every browser feature, some group of designers have abused them, and have even made their sites virtually inaccessible without using these misfeatures.

The whole point is that this is SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO unnecessary!!!! For the most part, more judicious use of the features will net the same effect and be FAR less annoying. Simply using onclick instead of onmouseover makes menus sane again. Making hyperlinks real hyperlinks instead of just "#", optionally with an "onclick="window.open(...)"" if you're that inclined to open a new window for me, solves the problem of clicking on that link in such a way as to open a new tab or window (where it actually does something useful instead of just redisplaying the page in said new tab or window). Simply using relative amounts like 15% of the width or height instead of a specific number of pixels doesn't distort menu items or cause the GRE to start writing text on top of other text (thus making a visual mess of the page).

People, people, people...turn yourselves from Web weenies and wankers to extraordinarily useful artists and technicians by considering more than your highly controlled pixellated world......PLEASE!!!!!! Do your part to clean up the cesspool of the modern Web...I BEG YOU!!! PLEASE!!!!!!! I can't possibly be the only one driven slowly insane (and quickly frustrated).