Lit
Lit is a framework that creates web apps that are hostile to web archival.
It was developed by Google and was first released in 2021.
Difficulties for archival
Lit-based websites can not be archived and displayed using conventional methods.
The fact that Lit-based websites require JavaScript to load content already adds a burden to web archival, but it gets worse. Unlike conventional (HTML-based) websites where the page content is served as a single document, Lit-based websites create encapsulated subpages known as "shadow DOMs" for each element. Shadow DOMs can not be directly served by a web server as HTML code, but have to be created inside JavaScript. (Shadow DOMs are also an invention of Google.)
Besides making custom user styles impossible, shadow DOMs can not be displayed on the Wayback Machine (example: romhacking.com) or stored as an HTML file, so the only known way to save content from Lit-based sites is to record them into an HAR or a WARC format file. Such files require special software to be viewed.
So archiving Lit-based sites is not impossible but at least much more difficult.
Lit creates sites that can be viewed but not easily saved. As such, Lit closely resembles a DRM (digital rights management) technology. In the past, Google has already tried to introduce a web technology that resembles DRM, the "Web Environment Integrity API".[1][2]
Popular sites that use Lit
- https://romhacking.com/
- Gerrit code review (the web app by Google, but not its site)
References
- ↑ Google's attempt to DRM the web should fail - video by right to repair supporter Louis Rossman.
- ↑ Google’s nightmare “Web Integrity API” wants a DRM gatekeeper for the web - Ars Technica, July 24, 2023