We should have multiple formats besides HTML. In fact we already do have this, in the “Content-Type” response header, we just should use it more
Send data with Content-Type text/json and Firefox will display a fancy JSON viewer, send data with text/plain and Firefox displays plain text, pdf files, downloadable files, etc. Well, we can add text/markdown where the browser automatically renders markdown files. And when the next HTML replacement comes out we can add that as well.
What about backwards compatibility? We already have that too: webservers can check the User-Agent request header, and return converted data for older browsers. Though we’d need a centralized database or fallback solution to support niche browsers…
Send data with Content-Type text/json and Firefox will display a fancy JSON viewer, send data with text/plain and Firefox displays plain text, pdf files, downloadable files, etc. Well, we can add text/markdown where the browser automatically renders markdown files. And when the next HTML replacement comes out we can add that as well.
What about backwards compatibility? We already have that too: webservers can check the User-Agent request header, and return converted data for older browsers. Though we’d need a centralized database or fallback solution to support niche browsers…