The concept of HTML Lite is about restrictions that the source is forced to live within. As with AMP, it would not be an honor system. It would not be something that maybe that random link would conform to, but way more likely it wouldn't.
If I were looking for song lyrics, or a recipe, or schedule information, etc, I would be browsing in HTML Lite mode. I don't want popovers, subscribe now boxes, animated bullshit, etc.
My root post is sitting in the negatives right now, and I own that and embrace it because it is how discussions about AMP always go on HN. A bunch of web developers herd in to tell us how terrible AMP is while the web gets more and more bloated, more and more destructive and tragedy of the commons, and we all layer on various shoehorned, half-assed solutions to fight back (e.g. Ad blockers, nuisance blockers, tracking blockers, etc).
That’s fine. I agree; “HTML-lite” is fine, and most of AMP is even an acceptable implementation of that concept.
But in practice, the way AMP is used has fundamental problems. Like the fact that content is hosted by a third party, or that links are broken, or that scrolling is wrecked. I like the speed of AMP; the implementation is catastrophic and I wish dearly that I could disable its appearance in Google search results.
HN is seemingly incapable of rationally discussing AMP.
AMP solves a very real problem, which is that our web stack is open to enormous abuse because it is sometimes too powerful for its own good. While we could make simple HTML that is as fast (of course we can), the reality is that we don't, and many don't often for tragedy of the commons reasons. And the counter-argument that search rankings should just favor this -- e.g. just promote speedy pages -- ignores that abuse would be absolutely rampant (and the other argument -- just run a layer of ad blockers -- completely misses the point). AMP isn't just an ideal, it's a strict set of enforced restrictions.
In previous discussions I've noted that we need an HTML lite to counter AMP, not just the same head-in-the-sand strawmen about how it serves no purpose. An HTML lite that is a mode in the browser, enforced on the DOM and JavaScript. The anti-AMP rhetoric makes it impossible to discuss rationally.
We need an HTML lite but AMP doesn't get us anywhere close to it because it's a custom dialect of HTML driven by a bunch of proprietary Javascript. The google search spider enforcing a 'lite' subset would have gotten us closer, if not there entirely. We know they can do it because the spider runs JavaScript, they could examine loaded content and measure time to first content. They don't because it's way more effective to get content providers into a walled garden where they can be monetized.
I feel like this conversation, like all AMP conversations, is going in circles, spittle-filled comments denoted by unnecessary angry screeds of all caps.
Yes, right now there is a technical need for an intermediary because it guarantees AMP is actually AMP. It is trivial for a page to say it's AMP, load the AMP standard library, and then do everything disallowed by AMP. There is absolutely nothing preventing that but that intermediary rejecting non-compliant content.
Now of course we've talked about an HTML Light and that would be the browser enforcing that limited sandbox. It could send a relevant cookie and then reject content that steps outside the bounds. But we don't have that right now.
HN is utterly incapable of discussing AMP honestly or coherently, so you're hardly going to get many reality-based replies.
AMP is offered as a promise to the user, not the publisher. When I see AMP it guarantees that the site has minimally invasive JavaScript (and the scourge of nonsense that comes with many sites now), will load quickly, etc. The site cannot suddenly bait and switch and start mining bitcoin or spamming pop-overs because it has been technically restricted from doing so.
So yes, sites can be every bit as fast as AMP. And industrial manufacturers can be every bit as clean as required by regulators if they had no regulation. But they aren't, and they don't.
We need an HTML Lite as a mode in the browser that winnows down the enormous featureset of HTML. Not for all content, but for that content where text is king.
I don't understand how you see AMP pages representing a standard web? AMP represents the complete opposite of web standards and anything to remove it from the web leaves us all better off.
You've hit upon the most absurd part of these complaints. There are so many people here complaining about AMP, and not one of them in the years of AMP threads on HN have ever offered an alternative design for instant loading web pages.
But the common argument is nonsensical. Yes of course sites could make non-abusive, readable content. But they don't. The non-stickiness of the web, coupled with a low attention span of users, has yielded a sort of tragedy of the commons. AMP is a standard to say "this can't do that".
We should have an HTMLite of the sort like AMP. Like how Google Gears became a variety of accepted web standards, it should build into something rather than the nonsensical claim that it does nothing.
This seems to be the main recurring argument against AMP.
It isn't a comparison between AMP and the current web, it's a comparison between AMP and this utopian case where the entire web is simple javascriptless static HTML.
The problem is that the AMP standard is just generally poorly-thought-out, no matter who hosts it. Instead of a subset of HTML, it's a weird mishmash of everything that requires magic incantations to make things work for the browsers of the time it was invented.
It's like NaCl/PNaCl - a good idea in theory, but created by a team that didn't do a great job at speccing something that could be long lived and satisfy other players than Google+Chrome.
Nobody else wants to parse it because HTML is a perfectly well functioning and accepted system
Apple and Facebook, two of the largest content (re)publishers, have their own competing formats, and Bing currently spiders and parses AMP content as well. But thinking more holistically, many others simply pushed their content into apps, abandoning the web wholesale. Because while we can talk about how "well functioning" the web is, a virtually universal observation is that native apps that just wrap a web browser are sloggy garbage, and a big reason is that the HTML stack has grown so enormously flexible it becomes its own enemy.
We don't need a new version from Google that so far only helps with google rankings
I'm a charitable sort of person, so when someone like Google comes out with something I assess why they did it without presuming the worst. In this case we see silos appearing from Apple and Facebook, not to mention the appification of content, so Google looks for a way to keep the web compelling. And it is. When I see an AMP page there are a number of user-centric benefits that make it a draw as a link, not just speed but also best behaviors.
I mean, many of the complaints on here about AMP seem just surreal. For instance if you open the carousel (an option for trending topics like Trump) and swipe, it brings you to the next story in the carousel. This outrages some that you aren't locked in the gutter of a given site, which is just bizarre and anti-user.
"I imagine if they stripped off all the stuff from their own sites"
Well...of course. Limitations are empowering in their own way. HTML grew, and grew, and grew to the point that soon middle managers are demanding the most abusive tactics in a desperate tragedy of the commons. Users -- tired of pop-overs and subscription boxes and notification demands and location monitoring and janky scrolling and slow loading -- start to prefer silos like Facebook instant articles or Apple news. AMP comes along and says "we'll limit these to the minimum to elegantly provide text content and put an icon to let you know" and users love it.
Could the site optimize themselves? Of course but they won't.
Every time AMP comes up I remark that we really need a new HTMLite specification, and must demand the same promotion/iconography, or optionally allowing users to turn their browser to HTMLite mode where it will only accept validated HTMLite content. All to achieve the same user-benefits without the central control. Instead everyone just pretends that we all just need to behave as developers and it isn't needed.
I'm one of the less-technical and least techno-political, compared to most HN posters. I personally despise AMP for two reasons: the URLs are fugly when I send them to someone and take longer to parse when reading, and AMP hijacks my mobile browser's address bar and prevents me from accessing my tabs until I scroll all the way up the page. It's a thinly-veiled method of forcing me to look at the web page twice before closing it and I wish I could get my hands on the son of a bitch who thought it up.
AMP not being html or conformant is the point. It's a google dialect of HTML that they control that isn't compatible with anything else unless you load their JS.
AMP is a content lock-in strategy with the promise of boosted rank
Open, not locked in, anyone can parse and cache it and it has to be publicly available (versus Apple News and Facebook Instant Articles that are pushed to those services), ridiculously straightforward and obvious. Oh, and there is no boosted rank.
So aside from the entirety of your statement, you're entirely correct.
People can have rational discussions about whether AMP is worthwhile or not (for instance, Google hosting the canonical script seems dubious) -- or whether some other subset of HTML would be ideal given the endless bloat that allows publishers to abuse fly-by users. However the rhetoric on here regarding AMP is so over the top of flag waving nonsense that it simply doesn't fit on a site where presumably we're a little more enlightened.
I dislike AMP for essentially the same reasons listed in the article.
Additionally, I value parsimony, which isn't mentioned in the article. I disdain anything that further bloats the web stack. Unless there's a very good reason for a new web technology - and here, there isn't - then we shouldn't further complicate the standards or our browsers.
I'm not commenting on "ethics", but I can say why I dislike AMP as a user: I want to interact directly with a website, not through some third party. I especially don't want that third party observing my interactions or collecting data about them. I also don't want to allow that third party to run code (javascript) on my computer.
As a website designer (barely), basically the same reasons: I don't want my site under control of a third party, I don't want my users to have to run javascript to view my site, and I don't want them to have to consent to (possibly) being tracked. Most ironically, my site probably accomplishes more of the stated AMP goals (due to being pure html and light) than it would when AMPed up.
Quick edit: I also worry it can contribute to breaking or obfuscating hyperlinks, which is similar to the issue raised in this article. Having hyperlinks work correctly is crucial to the design of the web. I had similar problems when sites like Google search started making their search links redirect to some intermediate site before going to the actual link, and back when I used Google search I had an extension that removed them so I could e.g. right-click and copy the link.
If I were looking for song lyrics, or a recipe, or schedule information, etc, I would be browsing in HTML Lite mode. I don't want popovers, subscribe now boxes, animated bullshit, etc.
My root post is sitting in the negatives right now, and I own that and embrace it because it is how discussions about AMP always go on HN. A bunch of web developers herd in to tell us how terrible AMP is while the web gets more and more bloated, more and more destructive and tragedy of the commons, and we all layer on various shoehorned, half-assed solutions to fight back (e.g. Ad blockers, nuisance blockers, tracking blockers, etc).
reply