Angle Brackets and the Future of the Web
I’m tired of typing angle brackets, so here are some notes on what the future of content creation on the web might be.
1. To change _code_, it’s easiest to have modular elements that can be imported on the server side.
2. XSL can transform any document _linked to it_ on-the-fly; good for large websites changing system-wide settings. I guess that’s the same as server-side includes, merely linking XSL stylesheets instead of external files. However, with XSL you still have to have the XML source in the code.
3. A truly semantic system would have only the relevant information to a document in its file; no extra hidden/untransformed by XSL/CSS, yet all the relevant metadata. That seems to support a non-universal XML format: `
<content><author><link><date>`</p>
<p>4. PHP or other dynamic sites can create documents on the fly, server-side. Coding this is essentially the same as server-side includes. PHP is a document format, as is HTML. Both are heavily structured languages.</p>
<p>5. XML as a language is the most flexible; great for storage. A PHP site could use an XML database (I think); an HTML site could build itself from one. It alone is fairly human-readable, as all the content is there. Of course, so is plain text. Can you transform plain text with an XSL stylesheet?</p>
<p>6. I write exclusively on the web, so all of my changes are to the web versions of my writing. Changes like new comment form elements, search bars, menu lists, etc., are the big changes, though they don’t change the content at all. Yet in a static, document-centric HTML site, to change these elements requires rebuilding from the content level. That should not be the case. A change made to a template should affect all the items equally.</p>
<p>7. Or should it? <strong>A document is a snapshot of a certain time and thinking.</strong> If I wrote something while I like neon green text and no navigation, should that be considered “part of the document”? Perhaps if more of my content was designed; but most of it is written without regard to presentation, and thus should always take the form of the best, newest design. Documents made as a design statement, however, should stay in the style of the time period.</p>
<p>8. A document is a snapshot of my thinking. What must be preserved is the knowledge, not the document. If that is true, then we’re missing out on most of the knowledge out there. Google’s goal is to “Organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” Right now they’re only organizing the information that lives in documents, in fact the small part of that which is digital. Better to archive thoughts, spoken words, conversations, _audio_, _video_, and on-the-fly transform that knowledge into the format desired.</p>
<p>9. Ideal scenario:</p>
<p>* “Give me the text of Martin Luther King’s I have a dream speech”. –> Plain text</p>
<p>* “Give me audio of Bob Ryskamp’s latest blog entry” –> Audio file</p>
<p>* “I want to read the conversation I had on the phone with Scott yesterday” –> Plain text</p>
<p>10. <strong>Navigation and metadata becomes irrelevant as Google/search instantly gets you what you want anyway.</strong> Simply create _good content_ and let others do the rest. Let the client, or Google, or a Dashboard-type utility create your links. Note how this list has no links? Hmm…</p>
<p>11. A good median point might be to create PHP templates that can grab any static file from the server and display it in a nice frame, with links, generated metadata, and form elements. The content itself, however, would live untagged in plain format, not even in a database. Something like the PHP image gallery that grabs everything from a given directory.</p>
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<a href="https://bob.ryskamp.org/brain/angle-brackets-and-the-future-of-the-web/" title="Permalink to Angle Brackets and the Future of the Web" rel="bookmark">August 23, 2004</a>
- <span class="cat-links"><a href="https://bob.ryskamp.org/brain/category/technology/" rel="category tag">Technology</a></span>
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