A mobile web of apps and documents

The web is/was an agreement about a set of technologies. We're replacing those technologies. Is the result still the web?

This presentation is from OpenTech 2015: http://www.opentech.org.uk/2015/

Transcript

1. A mobile web...
   of apps and documents
   Ade Oshineye
   

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2. What is the web?
   I’ve asked variations of this question in the past: https://plus.google.com/+AdeOshineye/posts/HJXQ81eVSqH
   

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3. The web is/was agreement
   http://blog.whatfettle.com/2007/10/31/the_web_is_agreement/
   

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4. The web is...
   • HTTP
   • User-agents*
   • HTML
   • URLs
   • View source
   * we say user-agents but in practice we tend to mean browsers
   

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5. HTTP => HTTP/2
   • Complex
   • Binary
   • HTTPS by default but HTTP/2 doesn’t
   mandate it
   • Multiplexed, 1 TCP connection,
   server-push, header compression
   • Hard
   • Simple
   • Text
   • Insecure
   • Inefficient
   • Easy to reverse-engineer
   

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6. User agents (not just browsers)
   • Apps containing pages
   • Embedded webviews
   • Chrome Custom Tabs/SFSafariViewController
   • Mobile versus desktop browsers
   https://developer.chrome.com/multidevice/android/customtabs
   http://bryan.io/post/104845880796/we-need-a-safari-view-controller
   

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7. HTML?
   Transition from docs and hypertext to web _apps_ that don’t work if you have Javascript disabled.
   

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8. HTML as object code
   Javascript frameworks that dynamically alter the DOM or server-side rendering that eventually emits HTML or component systems
   

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9. URLs
   • Deeplinks and custom URL schemes
   • Apps handling URLs and bypassing browsers
   

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10. Is this still the web?
    The web absorbed gopher, WAIS, FTP and friends.
    Is it still the web now that it’s absorbed apps?
    

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