Re: please come with some term other than "browse-by Web"

Adam Barth <w3c@adambarth.com>, 2012-05-29 10:33 -0700:

> I'm not sure I quite understand the motivation behind your email.  Is
> there something wrong with the term?

Don't want to beat this into the ground man, and I'm not saying it's
"wrong". It's just that it's not in common use, and it's opaque. And it
seems like for whatever reason it's trying to explain the scope of this new
work in terms of what it's not instead of in terms of what it is.

> As far as I know, it's a new term, but the need for the term is also new.
> The intent is to distinguish between the usual browser execution model
> (and its security model and social customs) and the execution model we're
> discussing in this working group.

The usual browser execution model is what people are already familiar with,
and this new thing is something that people are not familiar with. Or to
put it in other words, the "browse-by Web" is what all of us already just
know as "the Web", period. And this new stuff is not something that most
people think as being part of the Web. So maybe it'd be better to make it
really clear that it's not. Maybe call it the "off-Web". Or something.

> The idea is that the "browse-by" web consists of content that's safe
> for users to casually visit in their browsers without worrying too
> much about the security consequences.

I understand the distinction you're making, but geez, incidentally, that's
a really odd sentence. Especially coming from you. For a guy who's one of
the handful of acknowledged experts in this particular area to be talking
about an environment where users casually visit content without worrying
too much about security... 

I would think in general we want to encourage users to worry more, not less.

> It's meant to invoke connotations of "just browsin' by", the way one
> might take a casual stroll in a mall and browse through the shops.

As far as wording goes, that sounds more like window shopping. "browse by"
connotes something more like "drive by". To me at least.

> By contrast, many of the APIs we plan to discuss in this group are not
> safe in the usual browser execution model, and users who are just
> causally "browsing by" ought not to be ambushed by content seeking to
> use these APIs.

So it seems to me at least the place where those APIs are exposed it
clearly not "the Web". Not as any of us know it now. It's some other place.
So I think there'd be some benefit in making it crystal clear it's not the
Web, and it's be better to call it the "off Web" or something.

> Instead, the idea is to have surrounding social customs more like what's
> current used by native apps on mobile phones, where there's some sort of
> store that contains reputation information and an explicit install /
> uninstall process.

FWIW, (and again incidentally) I think most users are way too much trusting
of that model. They simply click through all the prompts that tell them
stuff like, "This native app essentially has a keylogger that can record
every single thing you type and use that data for whatever they people who
made it want to do with that data."

You obviously know way more than me about this area, but naively speaking,
it doesn'jt seem to be that trust model is such a great one to build on
further without some other effort to prevent users from inadvertently
agreeing to expose all kinds of private data that they really would not be
agreeing to expose if they actually understood what was happening.

> The main difference in "feel" between these two cases is that the
> latter doesn't feel like "browsing".  It's of course all part of the
> Web, and the content itself might well have HTTP URLs and be hosted on
> servers, for example, but users don't arrive at the content by
> browsing.  Hence the term "browse by" to refer to the existing model.

I understand but I still think the term is opaque and counter-productive.
Instead of trying to coin a term to re-describe the existing model (the
Web), I think you'd be way better off coining a term to describe this new
model -- the "off Web" or whatever.

Anyway, I'm not trying to block anything. I'm trying to give some hopefully
constructive feedback at this relatively early stage of this new thing. As
with all the other stuff we do, you all are the ones doing the actual work
on this, so just take my comments for what they're worth to you.

  --Mike

-- 
Michael[tm] Smith http://people.w3.org/mike

Received on Thursday, 31 May 2012 18:29:46 UTC