The Open Web Is Leaving Us

Today, WeChat once again flooded my Moments with mini-programs, the previously rumored application-type.

However, this piece won't delve into the technical details of mini-programs, nor speculate (because we know very well...).

It also won't discuss what impact mini-programs will have on the Chinese Internet (product managers will discuss that...).

Let's talk about the Web, the Web.

When we commonly refer to the Web, we are actually abbreviating World Wide Web to "the Web."

Similar to H5, this term is an abbreviation of an abbreviation, so concise that in the end, nobody knows what it originally meant.

Don't say that the common people in China can't distinguish between the World Wide Web and the Internet; the same goes for ordinary Americans who can't differentiate between the Web and the Internet.

Many practitioners who don't seek in-depth understanding are not much better off. The term "Web" is consistently translated into Chinese technical articles in a way that leaves readers perplexed.

In the Chinese-speaking world, one of the clearest and most attentive explanations of this matter belongs to @不鳥萬如一.

For example, in his article One Day World: WeChat does not "manage" external links, because in practice, WeChat Official Accounts do not allow any external links - 不鳥萬通讯 - Zhihu Column, he writes:

The Chinese world has always confused Internet(internet) and World Wide Web(web). The "open spirit of the Internet" that people remember so much is actually the open spirit of the World Wide Web. The openness of the World Wide Web is mainly reflected in one point: Any article on the World Wide Web can be linked to each other at will through the URL . If I want to introduce the website UbuWeb in the article, I can directly add its URL ubu.com to the six letters UbuWeb. You may think this is nonsense, but you can't do that in articles on WeChat public accounts; you can only add links within the WeChat ecosystem, such as this (that is, the link to the above "Specification")

So Ruyi uninstalled WeChat (Farewell to the world of WeChat for a day) and wrote: WeChat - the de facto local area network , well, as someone who is increasingly hardcore about Open Web, I agree.

Ruyi may care most about articles, but what I care about more is applications, Web Apps.

The so-called Web App is an evolution of the Web: from providing text information (hypertext) to multimedia (hypermedia) to providing software application services. The translation of hard core is probably "World Wide Web-based applications", such as Youtube, Twitter, Medium, Github, etc. that you use in your web browser. They can still be linked to each other at will through website addresses (URL), follow Web is an open standard, and you can use this service on almost any platform with a browser, so Web App is also open.

If you've heard of Google's Progressive Web Apps, it actually stands for Progressive Open Web Apps, but that's just too long and wordy.

After all, the concept of the Web should include Open.

(The purpose of this article is not to advocate PWA, but if you are interested in PWA, you are welcome to read: Next Generation Web Application Model — Progressive Web App)

If Hybrid architecture is just a concession to Web idealism, then the emergence of React Native has undoubtedly caused the collapse of some people's beliefs, followed by Weex, and then maybe WeChat as you guessed it.

Seeing that the method of "developing with the Web paradigm for Native platforms" is becoming more and more popular, although it seems that the people who benefit are Web front-end practitioners, I don't know whether I should be happy or not.

I'm not saying they are the “wrong technical direction”, from a pragmatic perspective they are great and solve problems.

However, no matter how much they look like the Web, they are not part of the Open Web platform.

RN/Weex doesn't have URLs at all (don't get me started on Universal Links or App Links, URLs and URIs are different)

Starting from the JS-SDK, WeChat has been a closed ecosystem.

Although this momentum originated from Facebook, it is more likely to spread wildly in China.

There are many people in the English world who are sensitive/hardcore about this kind of thing, such as Jeremy Keith, who wrote Regressive Web Apps. Because PWA is not URL-friendly enough, it has nothing to do with Chrome development. The boss Alex had a quarrel, and Alex said anxiously:

so, your choices are to think that I have a secret plan to kill URLs, or conclude I'm still Team Web.

You know, the reason Alex took Chrome to develop PWA was because he didn't like Hybrid destroying the Open Web.

If Twitter/FB is like WeChat and doesn't allow links to be linked casually, you may have to abandon Twitter, and then write a Byebye Twitter/FB article in anger like Ruyi.

However, what is being advocated every day in China is that XX helps the HTML5 ecosystem, but most of the time these so-called "HTML5 ecosystems" are contrary to the Web ecosystem, and there is no judgment.

I started to get a little incoherent.

In this Chinese world where HTML5 and the Web are extremely misused, I don't know how to cry out.

All I know is that when the Web can only survive as Native's "Markup Language", the Web will cease to exist.

When no one follows the Web standards and creates their own, the so-called cross-platform features of the Web disappear.

I've written about it before, and Chrome Product Leader Rahul also said it at I/O:

The Web's Dicoverable, Linkable, Low Friction, Broad Reach, etc., are not the essence of the Web. The essence of the Web is Open and Decentralized. This is the original intention of the World Wide Web (WWW). This is the prerequisite for all these characteristics to be established.

The belief in Open Web has brought browser manufacturers back together, and they are asking you:

Hey, can we make the web great again?

Author : Xuan Huang
Origin Link: https://huangxuan.me/2016/09/22/the-open-web/