this post was submitted on 21 Nov 2023
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It’s time to get rid of user-agent strings that declare anything other than desktop, mobile, or html version.
User agents are not unfortunately not the only way to identify a browser, there are other ways to fingerprint a platform.
JavaScript as it is today also need to be thrown in a trash of history. Website should not contain additional code. If someone wants to send me an app hacked on top of website rendering, it should be a popup asking me first if I want to run this.
That's a terrible idea. Every single thing other than a block of text requires js.
This is absolutely not true and just a myth. Images, video playback, "show more", forms, tabbing, animations, custom icons, hover effects, popups, background images and videos, light/dark mode, hamburger menus...
It's hard to count things you can do with advanced format that is HTML+CSS. Saying JavaScript is nessesary for anything other than block of text is like saying that in Minecraft command blocks are nessesary for anything other than making voxel art.
For basic things like interacting with your bank or goverment, running any additional code should be unnessesary. And I believe this needs to be a law targeting accessibility and compatibility.
For maps, dynamic updating, OK. But look at the web now, most sites are apps requiring 99% of web standards implemented to work. No wonder it's now impossible to actually make a new browser.
HTML was made to last. If browser do not support some tag it would try and render it anyway. Meanwhile with today's webapps browsers in 2033 will be required to have so much technical debt that for now was exclusive to operating systems.