The non-browser browser

Consider the number of websites that use a shit ton of styles, images, advertising, javashit, whatever. All that is shitty cruft that you don't want to have to wade through to get to the important part: data.

Fortunately, many major Web 3.0 Bullshyte websites have RESTful APIs too (mostly JSON), allowing you to gain access to structured information in a consistent way.

Enter stage left: A scriptable, customisable program that, given an interface description for a particular website or data source, will show you the data you want in the format you want.
A true separation of interface from implementation.

However, there are drawbacks. Each data source will need its own interface design (but enough people who care coupled with a few public databases, that will not be a problem). Websites will lose ad revenue. The WWW as we use it will change.

So, /anus/ - is it worth it? Is there a need for such a program? Are there more, more serious drawbacks I haven't thought of? Am I just overreacting to Youtube's fiftieth redesign in the past three months?

>>48
I had you on my mind when I wrote that post.

They should trim down the core feature set and focus on improvements and meeting standards instead of ``user experience'' and fancy tools less than 1% of users even know exist.

Eventually you will face the problem of certain websites simply not working. Not just Web worker DOM storage integrated apps, but some of the sane parts of HTML5 that improve on HTML 4.01 and XHTML.

I think a nice proof-of-concept browser would be one that supports only a sensible subset of HTML5 and CSS3, perhaps zomgoptimized, then seeing how well it fares on the ``real'' Web.