zlacker

>>robbie+(OP)
The web went in the wrong direction when we abandoned the initial concepts of user agents, which was that the browser has the ultimate choice of what to render and how. That concept, transferred to today's world of apps would simply mean that any client like Apollo is essentially a browser locked on Reddit's website, parsing HTML (which has the role of an API) and rendering the content in a native interface. As long as the user can access the HTML for free, they should be able to use any application (a browser or a special app) and render the content however they wish.

Unfortunately with today's SPA apps we don't even get the HTML directly, but with the recent resurgence of server-side rendering we may soon be able to get rendered HTML with one HTTP request. And then the only hurdles will be legal.

>>danije+KI
> Unfortunately with today's SPA apps we don't even get the HTML directly

It works the other way: with today's SPAs the API (that powers the frontend) is exposed for us to use directly, without going through the HTML - just use your browser's devtools to inspect the network/fetch/XHR requests and build your own client.

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On an related-but-unrelated note: I don't know why so many website companies aren't allowing users to pay to use their own client: it's win-win-win: the service operator gets new revenue to make-up for the lack of ads in third-party clients, it doesn't cost the operator anything (because their web-services and APIs are already going to be well-documented, right?), and makes the user/consumer-base happy because they can use a specialized client.

Where would Twitter be today if we could continue to use Tweetbot and other clients with our own single-user API-key or so?

>>DaiPlu+TU
> inspect the network/fetch/XHR requests and build your own client

The purpose of an API is the agreement, more than the access. You can always reverse engineer something, but your users won't be too happy when things randomly stop working, whenever reddit chooses.

>>nomel+EZ
Total non-issue. If it breaks, people will fix it. There's people out there maintaining immense ad filter lists and executable countermeasures against ad blocker detection. Someone somewhere will care enough to fix it.

>>matheu+fe1
There are only so many programmers, who will fix the client, per 1 person. This fraction, when inverted, will be a rough threshold for the client's audience size for continued fixes to be there.

>>chromo+qj1
And yet these people somehow maintain immense amounts of ad blocking filters and code, including active counter measures which require reverse engineering web site javascripts. I gotta wonder what would happen if they started making custom clients for each website instead.