[GTALUG] [browser bitching] Re: Programming languages (in comparison?) - -was Learn Swift for Apple/iOS. Learn ??? for Google/Android.

[Steve Petrie, P.Eng.]

Please see my comments below.

With apologies for wordiness ...

Steve

>>> ----- Original Message ----- 
>>> From: o1bigtenor via talk
>>> To: Alvin Starr ; GTALUG Talk
>>> Sent: Tuesday, December 12, 2017 8:22 AM
>>> Subject: Re: [GTALUG] Programming languages (in comparison?) - -was 
>>> Learn Swift for Apple/iOS. Learn ??? for Google/Android.
>>>
>>> On Mon, Dec 11, 2017 at 7:32 AM, Alvin Starr via talk 
>>> <talk at gtalug.org> wrote:
>>>
>>> On 12/11/2017 12:29 AM, Stewart C. Russell via talk wrote:
>>>
>>> On 2017-12-10 09:50 PM, o1bigtenor via talk wrote:
>>>
>>> <snip>
>>>
>>> FF57 is much cleaner than before, and is at least as fast as Chrome. 
>>> You
>>> can quit FF, then have it restart with all your windows and tabs 
>>> open.
>>> The clever part is, it'll only render that tab when it gets focus, 
>>> so
>>> you could have hundreds of tabs open yet only a few loaded. So while 
>>> I'm
>>> pretty sure it won't fit your needs of an entire Starbucks-load of 
>>> pages
>>> in the one browser, it might get a little closer than FF <57.
>>>
>>> The trouble is that more and more services, systems and applications 
>>> are using HTML as the interface.
>>> So you will find yourself with pages(tabs) open in your browser 
>>> instead of applications open on your desktop.
>>>
>>> <snip>
>>>
>>> It sounds like I'm not the only one who has issues with 
>>> browsers - - - thank you!
>>>
>>> Perhaps it is time that browsers were split into parts that do 
>>> separate things,
>>> and things that could be managed by the USERS of those browsers 
>>> rather
>>> than by the advertising  (I'll use the word people although I would 
>>> much rather
>>> not include them as such) people that think they do own my desktop.
>>>
>>> If the browser coders were actually listening to their users this 
>>> would have
>>> already been happening!
>>>
>>>

It seems to me that there's a clue in the above proposal by Dee, quoted 
here:: "Perhaps it is time that browsers were split into parts that do 
separate things, and things that could be managed by the USERS of those 
browsers rather than by the advertising".

Dee complains when current browser technology is unable to cope 
gracefully with his huge web page workload.

I also suffer a browser resource contraint problem, but mine is due to 
my outdated PC and Internet hookup. 1. use an extremely amcient 
operating system (Win XP SP3 until I get moved to a new PC with debian 
Linux.), and 2. the low bandwidth of my current Internet connection 
(approx. 46 Kbps over landline telephone dial-up modem).

My survivalist approach to using current browsers (FF and Comodo Dragon) 
is to start the desired page (or maybe two or three pages, max.) 
loading, and then I turn my attention to some other task, checking 
occasionally to see if the page(s) has(ve) finished loading the vast 
quantities of: useless eye-candy "rich" content, unwanted adware, great 
gobs of JavaScript crud, a zillion videos I don't care to see, etc., 
etc.

* * *
* * *

It seems to me that the clue in Dee's pronouncement that I quoted, is to 
take back control of the page load / display experience from the 
PROVIDER of the page (often an arrogant rich titanic-scale oligarchic 
zillionaire e.g amazon, google) , and give that control back to the 
CONSUMER of the page.

To my way of thinking, regaining browsing control and freedom, begins 
with getting rid of the idea that the web browser is a monolithic opaque 
black box that LOADS AND RENDERS A COMPLETE WEB PAGE AT A TIME. 
Currently, the browser user is faced with an all-or-nothing choice. 
Either start a page loading and wait until the browser has finished 
loading the entire page, or don't try to view that page at all.

I know that browsers do begin to render and display a page in parts, 
before it has all been loaded and rendered internally by the browser. 
But the designer of the browser controls the order of this progressive 
rendering. And the order doesn't usually seem very helpful to me.

* * *
* * *

If we take Dee's idea: "it is time that browsers were split into parts 
that do separate things, and things that could be managed by the USERS" 
as a guiding principle, what can a browser developer do, to give more 
control and power back to the user of the browser, and prevent the 
provider of th page from dominating the page view esperience ??

WHAT I WOULD LIKE, IS TO BE ABLE TO CONTROL THE WEB BROWSER AT THE LEVEL 
OF INDIVIDUAL ELEMENTS OF HTML ITSELF. I WOULD LIKE THE BROWSER START A 
PAGE LOAD, BY PRESENTING TO ME, A COMPACT AND EASILY-NAVIGABLE 
TREE-STRUCTURED LARGELY TEXTUAL REPRESENTATION OF THE WEB PAGE'S HTML 
STRUCTURE.

Then, I can scroll around to inspect all that nicely formatted and 
coloured HTML textual rep, pick the parts of the page that I think would 
be worthwhile actually loading and rendering, and set the browser 
loading only my chosen few page parts. And I can ask for thumbprints of 
graphic elemesnts that might seem interesting to me, And I can see still 
shots from a huge video / movie, without loading/ playing the whole 
thing. And I can hear sample audio clips.

An even more advanced p'n'c browser, could synthesize "subversive" 
versions of the original web page, guided by the browser user, The 
"subversive": page would load the valuable nuggets, and leave behind 
untouched all the useless intrusive BS that the tech titans like to 
think is twisting our souls into consumerist puppets.

A "subversive" p'n'c-generated web page, would be like the grumpy nasty 
bitchy smelly customer with the bulging shopping buggy, who barges up to 
the counter of the fast food outlet, and demands an X-large Diet Coke 
WITH NO ICE. In other words, I will take the good stuff ONLY, and leave 
all the BS to the next (and more conformist / compliant / wimpsterist) 
customer.

* * *
* * *

No doubt, the "dream" of a navigable tree-structured pick'n'choose 
(p'n'c) list rep of an HTML page would be complicated to implement.

And it would need to provide plernty of of hints and help so naive users 
would be able to understand the HTML in simplistic terms.

Some regexp-driven highlighting could help the user in their 
pick'n'choose navigation, too. And the p'n'c browser would come 
pre-loaded with regexps that isolate and exclude lots of recognizeable 
adware / snoopware crap and junk. Google and Amazon, etc. will 
ABSOLUTELY LOATHE the p'n'c browser and that will be a VERY GOOD THING 
:)

* * *
* * *

There are text-mode web browsers out there that actually have no GUI, 
they work at a command line prompt. But I decided I couldn't use them 
because: either they offer no Win XP-compatible version, or they are not 
up to date with current HTML technology.

But no doubt, most of the basic building blocks of a p'n'c browser are 
already available in open source libraries. So, the task of building the 
p'n'c browser would be more of an integration challenge than a 
greenfield coding challenge.

An interesting axample of the kind of technololgy that could be 
harnessed in a p'n'c browser, crossed my eyes today:
===
Headless Chrome and the Puppeteer Library for Scraping and Testing the 
Web   Wednesday 29 November
http://www.i-programmer.info/news/87/11344.html

With the advent of Single Page Applications, scraping pages for 
information as well as running automated user interaction tests has 
become much harder due to its highly dynamic nature. The solution? 
Headless Chrome and the Puppeteer library.
...
There's just one caveat. Since CDP only works with Chromium, Chrome and 
other Blink-based browsers, so does Puppeteer. If you require more than 
that, then sticking to Selenium and its WebDriver API still remains the 
best option..
===

The Selenium WebDriver API might be a useful code base to be considered, 
in the design of the p'n'c "subversive incremental load" browser ...

My 2 cents worth.

>>>
>>> Thanking you for your input!
>>>
>>>
>>> Dee




---
Talk Mailing List
talk at gtalug.org
https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk