The 100 Year Web (slight return)
In 2018 I gave a keynote at Balisage called The 100 Year Web.
I recommend you watch the video that I made of that talk if you want to hear all my thoughts.
In any case, I will just repeat the closing slides from that talk.
The web is the way now that we distribute information. We will need the web pages we create now to be readable in 100 years time, just as we can still read 100-year-old books.
Requiring a webpage to depend on a particular 100-year-old implementation of Javascript is not exactly evidence of future-thinking.
At least declarative markup is easier to keep alive because (see the 5th slide) it is INDEPENDENT OF THE IMPLEMENTATION!
It is time for a new movement, to lead the Web to its full potential.
We should seize back the Declarative Web.
As XForms and other markups have shown, we can still create meaningful declarative documents, and serve them to HTML browsers.
HTML5 can become the assembly language of the web, and we can go back to having a coherent, declarative, author-friendly web.
Technically, such things as:
Socially:
All this can't happen overnight.
But it needs to happen.
We need to seize the initiative, and recreate a declarative, robust, lasting web.
Let HTML5 play; HTML5 is now the assembly language of the web.
It is time for some Higher-Level Languages!
Who's in?