> ... websites where instead of an HTTPS loadbalancer you put a video-streaming (Mighty?) server in front of your backend. How’s that for a crazy idea?
It is not that crazy. It decreases latency, but also: disables any browser plugins (including ad-blockers!); disables alternative browsers and older versions of one and allows devs to embrace monoculture; disables any user customizations like fonts or stylesheets; disables scraping, "reader view" and most forms of automated data extraction; disables user's ability to mess with cookies.
This idea is horrible for freedom of the user and is real regression for advanced users. But it does make websites faster, and developers' work easier, so I am sure it is going to be implemented by major websites eventualy.
The only hope is that accessibility concerns will stop it. But I am not holding my breath for this.
I think there might be space for open source solutions here as well as standardization. Would be silly if after all that fight over "bad proprietary Flash" we turned around and made every website depend on some proprietary streaming technology. I bet over time it will evolve into some open web standard type thing.
And if it's an open standard then you can have multiple vendors. And for some of them support for plugins might become a distinguishing feature. Some might even have that built-in.
But you might be right too, in which case we're pretty doomed.
It is not that crazy. It decreases latency, but also: disables any browser plugins (including ad-blockers!); disables alternative browsers and older versions of one and allows devs to embrace monoculture; disables any user customizations like fonts or stylesheets; disables scraping, "reader view" and most forms of automated data extraction; disables user's ability to mess with cookies.
This idea is horrible for freedom of the user and is real regression for advanced users. But it does make websites faster, and developers' work easier, so I am sure it is going to be implemented by major websites eventualy.
The only hope is that accessibility concerns will stop it. But I am not holding my breath for this.