Textpattern CMS support forum
You are not logged in. Register | Login | Help
- Topics: Active | Unanswered
Pages: 1
Beaker Browser
Brought to my attention today…
Beaker Browser, “a peer-to-peer browser with tools to create and host websites. Don’t just browse the Web, build it.”
I haven’t looked at it closely yet, but it’s got me curious.
Offline
Re: Beaker Browser
qaul.net/ is a project we are currently exhibiting in our space. It’s much more subversive and you do not even need an ISP or a card in your phone to run it.
Yiannis
——————————
NeMe | hblack.art | EMAP | A Sea change | Toolkit of Care
I do my best editing after I click on the submit button.
Offline
Re: Beaker Browser
Destry wrote #307950:
Brought to my attention today…
Beaker Browser, “a peer-to-peer browser with tools to create and host websites. Don’t just browse the Web, build it.”
It immediately made me think of Ted Nelson’s Project Xanadu.
He started out liking the World Wide Web.
First of all, I think the WWW was a brilliant simplification. As I understand it, and maybe I have this wrong, but Tim Berners-Lee came and we had lunch, in, oh I guess it was 1989, 90, something like that, in Sausalito, and I really liked the guy, and he’d done this very simple thing, and it sounded too trivial to me {laughs} but he certainly was a nice fellow and I expected to keep in touch with him, although I am a very bad correspondent, and the next thing I knew suddenly the thing had caught on. And what it turns out to be is simply an extension of file transfer protocol, in other words it’s saying you can anonymously go in and dip in and take out this file and here is a proposed way to look at it. This is called HTML. You have to undestand the HTML/SGML kind of format where you’ve got all these warty little knobs and boogers in it that are formatting codes — this is absolutely contrary to the Xanadu idea that you have clean data undefiled. However, it works, it’s very simple, and you can always take those things out, so that’s OK. But all it is is FTP with lipstick so that you can look at these things and the jump addresses are hidden and the formats and you have paragraph levels and stuff and it’s basically what people needed and frankly I think it’s much better than word processing. I’m really happy now that I’m planning to switch from Microsoft Word to HTML just because there’s no need not to. It’s a perfectly good format, and it makes everything simpler to browse in. -Orality and Hypertext: An Interview with Ted Nelson
But later not so much.
The creator of hypertext has criticised the design of the World Wide Web, saying that Tim Berners-Lee’s creation is “completely wrong”, and that Windows, Macintosh and Linux have “exactly the same” approach to computing. Ted Nelson, founder of first hypertext project, Project Xanadu, told Techworld Australia the structure of the Web is “totally archaic”. “They got the World Wide Web completely wrong,” he said. “It is a strange, distorted, peculiar and difficult limited system… the browser is built around invisible links – you can see something to click on but you’ve got nowhere else to go.” – Hypertext creator says structure of World Wide Web ‘completely wrong’
Offline
Re: Beaker Browser
Would Beaker similar to Opera Unite?
Offline
Re: Beaker Browser
michaelkpate wrote #307983:
Ted Nelson
I read that second article, and… It sounds like the brilliant rantings of a man who doesn’t have influence over anything anymore. Not to mention the article itself is a string of nonsensical quotes. Anyway, that was 6 years ago. I don’t see any change to the concepts he’s complaining about (docs/folders); not in the web nor in operating systems.
I’m not saying he’s right or wrong. I honestly can’t say either way. But what’s the relation of Teddy Boy with Beaker Browser? Connect the dots for me, please. ;)
Offline
Re: Beaker Browser
Destry wrote #308017:
I’m not saying he’s right or wrong. I honestly can’t say either way. But what’s the relation of Teddy Boy with Beaker Browser? Connect the dots for me, please. ;)
Brief aside:
The first browser that let you edit websites directly was Netscape Composer.
As Vienuolis noted, Opera Unite was the first browser to include a built-in web server (which I honestly didn’t remember).
Back on topic:
I initially thought they were similar in that anyone could create any content they want but the more I read over this, the more I realize I was wrong. This is actually the opposite of what Nelson wants.
Cheap and democratic as it was, Berners-Lee’s Web didn’t have half the features Xanadu promised to, and two-way linking was one of them. Without a central server it couldn’t be enforced, and to make authorship of pages as simple as possible – given the state of the art at the time – it had to be left out along with automatic attribution, micropayments, copyright management, unbreakable links, and most of Nelson’s other ideas. – Ted Nelson’s two-way links
Beaker doesn’t have a central server, either. But takes it a step further than the regular web by making access totally unreliable aka often-broken links.
Will my files be available when I’m offline? It depends. When you turn off your computer, you are no longer hosting your files. But if you’ve shared the URL to your site with others, it’s possible that they might be hosting its files. – Beaker Browser
Now it reminds me more of the Indieweb movement – but at least they recommend you host your content on a server somewhere.
Offline
Re: Beaker Browser
michaelkpate wrote #308023:
“When you turn off your computer, you are no longer hosting your files. But if you’ve shared the URL to your site with others, it’s possible that they might be hosting its files.” – Beaker Browser
Interesting. The onus of a functioning/accessible site is on a community of some sort, then, who has vested interested in the project. Not a terrible idea, actually. When a node is down, other nodes can keep it available, seemingly. I guess you want to have more people than less and spread around time zones.
Offline
Pages: 1