The Web is dead... long live netnews!
Jorn Barger
mine selling out to popup ads, or starting to charge subscriber-fees, or
laying off its creative staff, or just shutting up shop altogether...
But I try to keep reminding myself that us netnews-veterans all foresaw
this outcome, however hazily, way back in 1993-- trn was then ***and is
still*** the near-optimal format for Internet communication, and
Netscape was always much closer to AOL or WebTV...
For almost a decade there was an absolutely paradoxical inversion of
good business sense, with dotcoms literally competing to see who could
waste the most bandwidth, peaking around 1998 with professionally
produced streaming video from ridiculously overfinanced loonie-bins like
Digital Entertainment Network...
But from the earliest days it was clear that the Web was _inherently_
slower and dumber and less interactive and less democratic, and though
we may have forgotten as the years passed, in those early days I think
most of us still hoped that the media would catch on, and that a new
generation of newsreader might even synthesize the best of both worlds.
(Instead, I think web-browsers achieved design-paralysis thru
code-bloat.)
But maybe that new generation of newsreaders can still happen-- and in
fact, it's probably much more likely to happen now that the distraction
of infinite flashy freebies is gone.
--
http://www.robotwisdom.com/ "Relentlessly intelligent
yet playful, polymathic in scope of interests, minimalist
but user-friendly design." --Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel
ackme
> Hardly a week goes by anymore without some longtime-favorite website of
> mine selling out to popup ads, or starting to charge subscriber-fees, or
> laying off its creative staff, or just shutting up shop altogether...
>
> But I try to keep reminding myself that us netnews-veterans all foresaw
> this outcome, however hazily, way back in 1993-- trn was then ***and is
> still*** the near-optimal format for Internet communication, and
> Netscape was always much closer to AOL or WebTV...
Of course, here I am posting this with gooja, since I came to it from
your...website. Nevermind. I think you are close, but the problem is
and always was the "ice sculpture" quality of Usenet. Depending on
where you get your feed, it might last a day, it might last two weeks,
but news fades.
When "Lynx" first showed up, it was a cool browser. Let's face it,
hyperlinking text does have its place in the universe of information
storage and retrieval. And it is fun and chaotic, sort of like a
museyroom!
But for my money, the best all around static information repository,
both for searching and retrieving, was Gopher. Simple, hierarchal,
flat file folders full of wonderful things! I remember finding a
gopher server with bird songs in it. And the first image files I
downloaded, well, that was after Usenet, now that I think of it.
After a year or two of being hypnotized by all the goofy www crap,
going back and looking for the good old Gopher sites of yore and
finding the place in ruins. A few years later and it is all gone.
Even a search of the University of Minnesota web site for "gopher"
just returns a bunch of sporting events. Who knew it was their
mascot? Who cared? We could get Grateful Dead setlists! Weather
maps! Dewey Decimals!
Bring back the gopher (and Veronica!) and all will be well again.
Jorn Barger
> a new generation of newsreader might even synthesize the best of both
EG:
- 'subscribing' to websites like newsgroups, with auto-scan for new
content
- changed pages are downloaded in background, and you can page thru them
by hitting the spacebar
- regex killfile for topics you don't care about
more: http://www.robotwisdom.com/web/parsing.html
David DeLaney
>After a year or two of being hypnotized by all the goofy www crap,
>going back and looking for the good old Gopher sites of yore and
>finding the place in ruins. A few years later and it is all gone.
>Even a search of the University of Minnesota web site for "gopher"
>just returns a bunch of sporting events. Who knew it was their
>mascot? Who cared? We could get Grateful Dead setlists! Weather
>maps! Dewey Decimals!
Hmmmm.
Internet Gopher Information Client 2.0 pl11
Root gopher server: gopher2.tc.umn.edu
--> 1. Information About Gopher/
2. Computer Information/
3. Discussion Groups/
4. Fun & Games/
5. Internet file server (ftp) sites/
6. Libraries/
7. News/
8. Other Gopher and Information Servers/
9. Phone Books/
10. Search Gopherspace with Veronica-2 /
11. Search lots of places at the University of Minnesota <?>
12. University of Minnesota Campus Information/
I think you just have to find a Unix box that still has gopher installed on
it, is all.
>Bring back the gopher (and Veronica!) and all will be well again.
They're still there, but you'd have to find gopher=for=Windows for it to
become Popular again.
Dave
--
\/David DeLaney posting from d...@vic.com "It's not the pot that grows the flower
It's not the clock that slows the hour The definition's plain for anyone to see
Love is all it takes to make a family" - R&P. VISUALIZE HAPPYNET VRbeable<BLINK>
http://panacea.phys.utk.edu/~dbd/ - net.legends FAQ/ I WUV you in all CAPS! --K.
Matt McIrvin
d...@gatekeeper.vic.com (David DeLaney) wrote:
> I think you just have to find a Unix box that still has gopher installed on
> it, is all.
Maybe what we really need is to put appropriate TITLE attributes
on every link on every Web page. Then you could just fire up Lynx,
and hit the L key, and the Web would magically be transformed into
Gopher.
--
Matt McIrvin
Brian Palmer
Coolness! Something actually uses that attribute. I got tired of doing
all those things that nothing paid attention to (also, the LINK for anything
but stylesheets)
-brian
Matt McIrvin
Brian Palmer <bpa...@stanford.edu> wrote:
> Matt McIrvin <mmci...@world.std.com> writes:
> >
> > Maybe what we really need is to put appropriate TITLE attributes
> > on every link on every Web page. Then you could just fire up Lynx,
> > and hit the L key, and the Web would magically be transformed into
> > Gopher.
>
> Coolness! Something actually uses that attribute.
Actually, TITLE's days of obscurity are over; it's become a superstar.
The only really commonly used browser that ignores it is Netscape 4.x
(unless you count OmniWeb). Internet Explorer displays TITLE as
a pop-up "tooltip", for instance.
> I got tired of doing
> all those things that nothing paid attention to (also, the LINK for anything
> but stylesheets)
Lynx and iCab both actually do stuff with the LINKs.
Nothing else does, as far as I know. It bugs me too.
--
Matt McIrvin
Matthias Gutfeldt
William Clifford
now.
--
| William Clifford | wo...@yahoo.com | http://wobh.home.mindspring.com |
|"Stick to what you know is good advice for a writing seminar, but it |
| will never get you in the ring with Homer." |
| --Joel Stein on Thomas Pynchon, Time, 7.9.01 |
Matt McIrvin
wo...@thark.barsoom.invalid (William Clifford) wrote:
> In <mmcirvin-D67B9C.22100420082001@[192.168.123.1]>,
> Matt McIrvin <mmci...@world.std.com> wrote:
> >
> > Maybe what we really need is to put appropriate TITLE attributes
> > on every link on every Web page. Then you could just fire up Lynx,
> > and hit the L key, and the Web would magically be transformed into
> > Gopher.
>
> What attributes are these? I will remake all my webbages use these right
> now.
Here's an <a href="http://world.std.com/~mmcirvin" title="Matt
McIrvin's home page">example of this kind of link</a>, if I got it
right. In Internet Explorer and Netscape 6/Mozilla, the title shows up
in a pop-up tooltip; in Opera and iCab it appears in some status
bar-like location; in Lynx, it replaces the URL in the "page links"
list.
The TITLE attribute has been a W3C standard for a long time but only in
the past few years has it gotten much attention. It's a fine way to
provide supplementary information about where a link goes (though a
page shouldn't be designed to rely on it showing up, because there are
browsers that don't support it). I don't use it everywhere, but I do
use it when I want to give some more detail about a link and it won't
fit gracefully into the flow of the surrounding prose-- the kind of
thing that people used to do with JavaScript status bar rollovers.
In Netscape 4, ALT text in IMG tags popped up in tooltips. This is bad
dirty bad wrong bad; ALT text is supposed to be a *replacement* for the
image when it cannot be displayed, not a supplement for when it *is*
displayed. Unfortunately Netscape 4's behavior led to people writing
ALT text with the understanding that it would pop up. TITLE is the
right place for that.
Theoretically any element on a page can have a TITLE attribute, but in
practice most browsers only do things with it when it appears in a
link.
--
Matt McIrvin
William Clifford
the other I'm Allowed.
In <mmcirvin-C74727.19405124082001@[192.168.123.1]>,
Thanks! So what happens if you have both a ALT and a TITLE? Does TITLE
have pop-up precedence? And what exactly is the advantage of the header
links you mentioned elsewhere? I'm going to be working on my website
again and I'd like to add some non-flashy sort of coolness to it.
Matt McIrvin
wo...@thark.barsoom.invalid (William Clifford) wrote:
> Thanks! So what happens if you have both a ALT and a TITLE? Does TITLE
> have pop-up precedence?
Netscape 4 ignores TITLE entirely, and better browsers don't
pop up ALT under any circumstances. So if you have a link with a
TITLE containing an IMG with an ALT attribute, then the TITLE will
pop up on Internet Explorer and the ALT will pop up on Netscape 4.
It's kind of frustrating.
> And what exactly is the advantage of the header
> links you mentioned elsewhere?
On a couple of relatively obscure browsers, there's a standard
interface for site navigation that uses them. Mostly, you just get
to look like a Web-weenie smartypants to anyone who views source.
--
Matt McIrvin
Claudine
> Here's an <a href="http://world.std.com/~mmcirvin" title="Matt
> McIrvin's home page">example of this kind of link</a>, if I got it
> right. In Internet Explorer and Netscape 6/Mozilla, the title shows up
> in a pop-up tooltip; in Opera and iCab it appears in some status
> bar-like location; in Lynx, it replaces the URL in the "page links"
> list.
This didn't work when I read the article in Lynx, but that's probably
because the <a> tag is split over two lines in this example.
Thanks for reminding me about these 'other' attributes, though.
It's prompted me to go back to the Lynx documentation and O'Reilly's
Koala Book to revise my HTML.
Claudine
--
Claudine, geek historian! - Melbourne, AU - http://www.nullpage.org/
The truth isn't easily pinned to a page. In the bathtub of history
the truth is harder to hold than the soap, and much more difficult to find.
-- Terry Pratchett