We're about to reach the ultimate stage: after massively rotting the web with centralized silos in which they locked up their users before monetizing them, Silicon Valley's billionaires finally don't really want you to go and read the web they've ingested, and prefer you to talk to their AIs. That way, you'll never leave their website.

I think Google knows very well that traditional search is dead, because of SEO and AI. There's no way to give "good" results anymore, because you can't tell if a site is legitimate or just an AI creation.
Since everything that's produced is no longer discernible from AIs, they might as well serve the content themselves: at least they control the AI. Paradigm shift:
"Users only use the first page of Google results"
to "Users only use Google."

Global Accessibility Awareness Day Continues!

Editor’s Note: previous titles for this article have been added here for posterity.

Silverlight, Pogressive Web Apps, Css in JS, Flash, ActiveX, Java applets

Tab and enter is the minimum.
There is more than 500 shortcuts.

Shortlist:

• focus indicators
• logical tab order
• skip navigation links
• keyboard-accessible interactive elements
• test them

Application SDKs provide services to use the customer's bandwidth. Companies sell these services for web scraping. The client's hardware is then the proxy. The client is a one of "millions of rotating, residential and mobile IP addresses". So it's lying to the end user too. The one whose equipment is used
without agreement, for purposes unknown to them.

Jan Wildeboer thinks most AI companies rely on these proxy services to scrap the web.

So these companies (assuming AI) are definitely doing shady stuff.

(via https://sebsauvage.net/links/?PLZ47Q)

Against the experience of SPAs

Some things you have to consider with SPAs:

What happens when users refresh the page?
What happens when users click the back button?
What happens when users click the back button twice?
What happens when users click the back button twice, the forward button once, and then the back button again?
What happens when users try to open a link in a new tab?
What happens when users users copy the link from the address bar and send it to a friend?
Where does the page focus go when it navigates?

But SPAs make sense in some cases though.

The purpose of NetHistory is to give you a feeling for what it was like in the pioneering days of BITNET and the Internet.

It references all web utilities :)

About regular links and hx-boost. This hx-boost exists only to compete with SPA. Building good websites requires dropping the sugar high of hx-boost and saying “here’s how to use a cache header.”

Use cache headers: cache-control if possible and etag for dynamic resources. "If I don’t even want to include a version number—maybe for a file like stylesheet.css—I can use a URL query."

Leverage HTML as much as possible: it only gets better.

When to use HTMX then? "Until HTML has an API to keep live content persistent across page navigations, some SPA functionality is required to make that happen."

SPAs are an advanced tool that the industry deceptively marketed as a simple one. Aram is a highly experienced web developer who’s using hx-boost to push the boundaries of what’s possible with page navigations; Most people, who just want to add a little interactivity to their webpage, should stick with the simplest tool available: a regular link.

A project leant to curate web content online. It is only an archive by now.

The Open Directory Project's goal is to produce the most comprehensive directory of the web, by relying on a vast army of volunteer editors.

It was so simple, anyone who wanted to could create a free account [on Geocities, Tripod, FortuneCities, or Freeservers and build a website to share their hobbies and ideas.

The web was more about browsing and exploration.

It is worth remembering a website [...] can also be art. The web is also a creative and cultural space that [can be Free from convention defined by commercial product design and marketing].

If the commercial web is "industrial", you could say that the small web is "artisanal". One is not better than the other. They serve different needs and both can co-exist in an open web.

There is a lot of old good website, internet archive links and examples

To quote https://rhizome.org/editorial/2015/nov/30/oldweb-today/

Today's web browsers want to be invisible, merging with the visual environment of the desktop in an effort to convince users to treat "the cloud" as just an extension of their hard drive. In the 1990s, browser design took nearly the opposite approach, using iconography associated with travel to convey the feeling of going on a journey.

The web was "browsed", discovered by neighborhoods or [webrings], a circular collections of websites around a topic or a theme. To get orders and efficiency, one shared web directories such as the DMOZ open-directory project. One would simply go to a website and discover others on a page such as Retro Stuff

There are today gatekeepers keeping the attention only on some platforms: Facebook, LinkedIn. I would add TikTok now.

The commercial web emerged by the 2000s. Today's web is mostly commercial now. They invented words like "native advertising" and "sponsored content". They brought a completely different set of priorities: engage their audience, convert them and retain them for as long as possible.

Then came the product-oriented website and its sanitisation: it is polished, follows conventions and is optimised for efficiency. Modern websites are designed to direct user behavior towards certain goals: a purchase, a click, a share or a sign-up.

But the web remains and is also a creative space. the web is really a lot simpler than that. You really only need two things: a web host and HTML (and basic CSS for formatting).

If the commercial web is "industrial", you could say that the small web is "artisanal". One is not better than the other. They serve different needs and both can co-exist in an open web.

There are ways to discover it. Here some highlights from the past:

• Internet Archive, which, thanks to the 439 billion web pages saved since the mid 90s, lets you travel back in time and see how a website looked in the past.
• Restorativland, a "restored visual gallery of the archived Geocities sites, sorted by neighborhood".

and other highlights from the present:

• the search engine Wiby.me: for old-school, interesting and informative webpages, with a useful "surprise me" button that takes you to a random result.
• the Neocities.org is a modern web host that lets anyone create a basic website for free and be a part of a community where you can follow other webmasters.
• Curlie is "the largest human-edited directory of the Web. It is constructed and maintained by a passionate, global community of volunteer editors".

Some websites presented:

A fan-made site from 1998 about comedy duo Stan Laurel and Oliver Norville Hardy. Why? The siteinfo states "Why not!!!" - https://geocities.restorativland.org/Hollywood/Studio/5352/index.html

A student built the website Fractal Explorer to explore fractals. It includes very clear explanations, image galleries and step-by-step guided tours - https://web.archive.org/web/20020223163039fw_/http://www.geocities.com/fabioc/

The National Coca-Cola Bottle Clearing House lists all bootles since the 70s

NetHistory an informal history of BITNET (before internet) and the Internet - https://web.archive.org/web/20010516205238/http://nethistory.dumbentia.com/

Joan stark's ASCII Art Gallery - https://web.archive.org/web/20010420182629/http://www.geocities.com/spunk1111/indexjava.htm

European butterflies since 1998. Some pages such as Agrodiaetus ainsae have more informations than the dedicated wikipedia page.

The webtender since 1995, features over 6000 recipes, a handbook with information on bar glassware, tools, measurements and ingredients, a forum, a wiki and even lets you search for recipes based on what you have in your bar - https://www.webtender.com/info/

Disstant Skies is a fansite about the RPG game Crystalis - https://distantskies.neocities.org/

and you can build your own presence on the web!
Neocities.org allow to make a file and publish it with a free account. Spending hours browsing the websites made by passionates

There is also bear.blog dedicated for blogs.

The discussion follows on HackerNews https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23326329

age.xml is a free and easy-to-use website label that gives parental control systems information about a website’s age rating

(via https://nicolas-delsaux.hd.free.fr/Shaarli/shaare/LMJ21Q)

Use vanilla HTML/CSS
Don't minimize that HTML
Prefer one page over several
End all forms of hotlinking
Stick with native fonts
Obsessively compress your images
Eliminate the broken URL risk

About the web of the 90s:

Many people had personal web sites, usually published on GeoCities, where exploring the web was a fun adventure that was not fuelled by algorithms.

The Web 1.0 died because search engines prioritized money over quality and content. In some ways it is good because we get far more accurate search results. On the other hand, it's all about the money and tracking.

How to turn it positive?

Use social media sparsely: quit Facebook, Instagram and others. Look forward for decentralised alternatives like Mastodon. Break the dopamine addiction and turn off all notifications from social media. Familiarize yourself with POSSE and make your site the single source of truth for all your content online.

Discovering Web 1.0 through neocities: a modern implementation of GeoCities.
There are also other website aggregators such as personalsit.es.

Look for a blogroll on personal websites you come across. If you own a website, add one!

The web 1.0 is still there, underground and more accessible than ever!

Des traductions françaises de Slash Pages.