@ScriptCoded Then the option should remain. Many prefer pulling down to do one thing and one thing only: moving up the page. Nothing else.

@NotWhoIUsedToBe Do you mean the YouTube channel?

@vane Even then, it requires great workarounds. And shadow DOMs can be open and closed. Closed ones are inaccessible from external JavaScript.

He remembers the pre-2013 YouTube.

@Alexanderr If sites are heavier, they load slower. And YouTube is an 8 MB chunk of JavaScript to get the same work done that 100 KB of HTML did in 2012.

If the browser needs to fight through 8 MB of JavaScript, it adds delay.

@ScriptCoded "good is subjective" - Accidentally refreshing the page while scrolling up and not being able to see the URL in the tab list is objectively disadvantageous.

@joewilliams007 Except it lacks proper page saving.

Its useless "reading list" feature saves pages in a locked-in directory which can not be backed up, so it dies along the phone.

Chrome for Android correctly saves pages as MHTML in the download folder.

Imagine a camera app which saves photos in a locked-in directory where they can never be moved out, so they are only accessible through that one app on that phone.

At least it does not have a trojan horse called "Samsung TV block".

@ScriptCoded Not that alone, but two essential options being removed that severly the browsing experience is a massive rip-off. But pull-to-refresh being mandatory is the worse of the two.

"things have to go" - Only bad things should "go". Good things must stay.

@Alexanderr Not sure which comment you replied to.

@Voxera Loading speed only increases if Internet speed increases but the site does not get heavier.

@Lensflare Legacy YouTube used no API for the basic page layout. It immediately served the page text through HTML.

@Voxera One would expect that lightweight websites cost less. Also, these heavy JavaScript websites don't get much more work done.

YouTube has less functionality than it had in 2012, yet it needs several megabytes of JavaScript. This means it is far less efficient.

@saucyatom Brilliant stuff.

@Demolishun Almost everyone does.

@cuddlyogre Totally agreed, that backspace navigation was horrible. In Firefox, that could be disabled in about:config.

browser.backspace_action

@c3r38r170 The last time I did not mention that a possible reason for Google's reluctance to introduce an option to turn the pull-to-refresh anti-feature off is public embarrassment.

@Fast-Nop "Browsers were never meant as FTP programs and only supported the download because people were downloading from FTP sites" - perhaps so.

Perhaps I am just nostalgic for the times I could browse my Android smartphone like a website. No means of file sharing was so universally supported. Android file managers supported it and could even host their own FTP servers which could be set up within seconds. Windows Explorer supported FTP, and web browsers supported it too. The same files and folders viewable in so many different user interfaces.

@Fast-Nop Browsers never supported FTP upload or hosting, that's right. They were just a simple FTP client for downloading data.

"All with completely insecure FTP, blasting your password over the internet, getting hacked as result" - That's what the warning is for: "Data accessed through FTP is not private if unencrypted" or similar.

FTP was useful for purposes like sharing huge encrypted archive files with 20 GB of home videos to relatives and sending them an FTP link and then saying "You don't need to install anything! You can access it immediately through your browser!". Simple as that. Good times. No third-party software was required. Good look sharing that stuff through WeTransfer (2 GB limit).

@Fast-Nop Both Windows and Linux recognize my external USB floppy drive perfectly well and Android does too via USB-OTG! Android can not even recognize optical discs!

Windows also puts a floppy disk icon on it, so it can distinguish it from a USB stick. Perhaps because of the small size?

I totally agree that floppy disks are very obsolete. However, some people perhaps find stuff from their grandparents in the basement and want to be able to read it. Paper handwriting - easy. Just use eyes. On floppy disks? Not so much if the format is unsupported.

Anyone who has the need to read floppy disks for whichever reason should be able to.

@tosensei As far as I am aware, any computer that supports 3½ floppy disks is capable of using 5¼ floppy disks. And modern computers still support 3½ floppy disks, otherwise many abandonware games would have been lost.

@tosensei Except there would be no noticeable performance difference in ECMA 6 but the site would be useable again on millions of unchangeable pre-installed smart TV web browsers.

@tosensei EMCAscript6 is somewhat like 64-bit processors. They were commonplace in the last decade but are still in use in 2023. We don't have 96-bit or 128-bit processors yet.

Sure, improvements are always welcome, but is there any website that could not be made to work in ECMAscript 6?

@tosensei I am used to create backups in the form of disk images because they preserve the file attributes and don't touch the time stamps of folders and are the fastest speed. And FAT-based file systems are also supported by pretty much all multimedia devices such as car radios with a USB port or SD card slot.

People don't want to have to pay thousands to replace stuff just because a file system was deprecated. Having to use a virtual machine every time to be able to use a FAT file system would be a gross inconvenience.

I also believe that MTP should not be unsupported because it is decade-long established and pretty much all smartphones released since the last decade support it, even though MTP is not good.

@tosensei That is true for 2023. 20 years ago, the most widely used web browser was Internet Explorer 6, bundled with Windows XP. Trying to support IE6 today would be a nightmare for any web developer, and it was already back then. YouTube, for example, dropped IE6 support in 2009.

By 2035, "20 years ago" will be 2015. This was when ECMAscript 6 was introduced. Web standards were already mature then.

@tosensei (part 2)

FTP used to be the simplest way to share really huge amounts of data between two computers over the internet for free. All those online services like WeTransfer have pathetic size limits like 2 GB, OneDrive 5 GB total, E-Mail even 25 MB, but FTP wouldn't mind me sending a 1 TB file over the 'net, and I don't have to pay a dime (except electric bills).

No means of file transfer was more widely supported, ranging from Android OS file managers, dedicated clients, to web browsers. FTP does not require a custom HTML user interface like HTTP does, hence the name "File" transfer protocol instead of "Hypertext" transfer protocol. Why create an HTTP file server with a custom hypertext-based UI when FTP lets the client have control over the UI?

Besides, the inventor of FTP is in the Internet Hall Of Fame since 2023.

@tosensei "just like we got rid of a lot of obsolete things. like FAT16 or FAT12. or 16-bit executables. or IPX."

FAT16 and FAT12 have a near-identical design to FAT32 and the most recent operating systems still support them for a very good reason: preventing a locked-down digital dark age.

"16-bit executables" - Anything 16-bit executeables could do has been adapted by 32-bit and 64-bit software. Also, 64-bit processors can still emulate 16-bit software. But your family photos stored on FAT16 or ISO9660 media can not be replaced. This is why FAT12 and FAT16 should be supported at least until 2100.

Also, the FAT file system is so lightweight that supporting it indefinitely is no burden at all. It is almost like TXT file support can be supported indefinitely.

@Fast-Nop "That's because FTP needs actually two connections, data and control" - and yet it is much faster and much more reliable than MTP (Media Transfer Protocol) which works with one connection.

@lorentz "Web browsers are not file browsers, not 3D renderers, not fucking text editors"

Yes, they are! Having everything in one place is convenient!

Sure, a web browser is not as sophisticated as a dedicated tool, but some times that is enough.

@fjmurau You're welcome. I hope you had an excellent weekend.