

Understand The Web by Ben Ward - mikecane
http://benward.me/blog/understand-the-web

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pixelcort
I like how the author focuses on being able to link to content within an HTML
application.

The use of the window.location.hash property to support linking to content
within apps has been hit and miss in the last few years with web apps. Many
times the back and forward buttons don't work, bookmarking a particular hash
doesn't go back to that content on refresh, or there is no hash change for
content at all.

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justinludwig
tl;dr: "Want to know if your ‘HTML application’ is part of the web? Link me
into it. Not just link me _to_ it; link me _into_ it." Fuck yeah!

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mbrubeck
Also note that many "limitations" of the web should instead be viewed as
_constraints_.

The right constraints are a good thing, because they allow you to sacrifice
flexibility in exchange for useful guarantees. In programming languages,
constraints like "no shared mutable state" offer guarantees like referential
transparency and thread safety. In user interface design, constraints can
offer consistency and interoperability. In network architecture, constraints
like "no connection state" offer guarantees that benefit horizontal
scalability.

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tlrobinson
"The idea of undermining the core function of the web to achieve that is
detestable."

Bullshit. Whether you like it or not "the web" has come to mean both the
original application itself: a collection of hypertext documents, images, etc;
as well as the greatest application deployment platform we've seen (and those
applications may or may not have anything to do with hypertext)

These two things can coexist. Give me a different name and I'll start using
it.

~~~
Qz
Simple: _web_ vs _net_. The net is a means of connecting one computer to
another. The web is interconnected content, accessible via the net.

The web, with its interconnectedness, happens to be a pretty good tool for
distributing content. Applications tend to be tools for manipulating content.
So we get web applications: tools for manipulating content that you can find
or create on the web. The problem comes when web applications start to bite
the hand that feeds, by isolating the content within the application from the
rest of the web.

~~~
bnwrd
Thank you, Qz. I really regret that final line. It was too blunt, absolute and
negatively emotive. I'd have edited it later had it not been extensively
quoted by the time I woke up next day. Your expansion here gets to the heart
of what I was hoping to say, and is fantastic.

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andrewcooke
absolutely + amen.

