Re: [9fans] Re: Future of Plan9

[Ross Evans <vertiloto@blueyonder.co.uk>]

"William Staniewicz" <wstan@localhostnl.demon.nl> wrote in message
news:20010102192314.0CA33199EB@mail.cse.psu.edu...
> I wish web design professionals would take a few steps
> back from Flash and frames. I hate to sound "minimal", but
> I would be very with just a Lynx type browser if I could get the
> content I really need and not the other stuff that just takes
> alot of time to get and sort out.
>
> Bill
>
>

Im very glad this thread started, I have been playing with Plan9 for some
time. I too find the current web *browsing* paradigm less than satisfactory.
I have been working on some ideas for an application for plan9, that allows
one to navigate information with the fluidity of current point-and-click
browsers. I envisage an application that supports *full* HTML 4.0 and a good
portion of CSS 1/2. However, this support would not form part of a rendering
engine, rather some kind of translation system, that would take the
interpret the various tags attached to the document, then layout the page in
a information centric way.

Currently, the idea I have is hazy at best, I know the kind of thing I want,
but it is hard to describe. I don't want to take all the fun out of webpages
by any means. Images etc do have a place, I just don't think that the
inability of platform X or Y to display a certain aspect of a webpage should
make that page unusable to them. Im looking for a solution that gets around
this. Lynx is 1 way of doing this, but IMO it takes things too far. I want
to retain images and text layout, but I want a paradigm that is more suited
to plan9