> "but it's the website that chooses want content gets served at any of its URLs."
No, not at all. The web was specifically designed so that the client chooses which parts of the available content to load, and in what way.
When I first started browsing the web I didn't have a graphical browser at home. My web client made decisions about which parts to display and which parts to not. It was not "blocking" anything, it was rendering the available content according to the capabilities of my system.
> "Nothing loaded about the term it's just descriptive."
It's a loaded term because it implies that websites ought to have control over display, when the web was specifically designed such that they should not.
> "Nor are they "content selectors/choosers", nobody uses their adblocking plugin to find content"
I modify many aspects of webpage display to help me assimilate content. When a website has chosen difficult to read colors, I change them so they're easier to see. I change fonts and font sizes. I modify page layouts, sometimes collapsing many separate pages into one long page, and sometimes I use screen readers and I don't even look at a visual rendering at all. I often remove annoying, obnoxious or intrusive content which also make it harder for me to read a page, many of which are ads.
The web is specifically designed from inception to give this agency to clients. Websites provide units of content and suggestions on how to best display it. That is all.
> No, not at all. The web was specifically designed so that the client chooses which parts of the available content to load, and in what way.
It was designed with this technical capability. But the social contract was always that you went to a site for it to tell you what to display. And we have many very nice, very non-standard sites because of it.
There is nothing wrong on blocking part of that content, but everybody's state of mind is that by default, any site content is expected to load.
> "Source that this is just a side effect from other design decisions?"
The source would be Tim Berners-Lee's original 1989 proposal for a hypertext information system. He specifically wrote: "We should work toward a universal linked information system, in which generality and portability are more important than fancy graphics techniques and complex extra facilities."
These sentiments are also reflected in other technical documents such as RFC 1866. The intent is crystal clear.
> "Your browser sucked because it couldn't even support the full standard."
I think this is a common reaction from people who aren't old enough to remember a world before mega-complex browser platforms and non-portable websites came into being. My browser absolutely was standards compliant at the time, and it was expected that websites would be viewable without graphics.
Keep in mind: javascript had not yet been invented.
Again, HTML is specifically designed around portability, generality, and flexibility. This has been degraded by the rush of commercialization and related platform lock-in -- in large part due to things web 2.0. This is not a good thing.
> "They should. Websites describe what should be shown using HTML and CSS. "
I think you should read a bit deeper into the underpinnings of these standards you're referencing.
>We should work toward a universal linked information system, in which generality and portability are more important than fancy graphics techniques and complex extra facilities.
This would support the opinion that entire web sites should be protable as opposed to just a small subset.
No, not at all. The web was specifically designed so that the client chooses which parts of the available content to load, and in what way.
When I first started browsing the web I didn't have a graphical browser at home. My web client made decisions about which parts to display and which parts to not. It was not "blocking" anything, it was rendering the available content according to the capabilities of my system.
> "Nothing loaded about the term it's just descriptive."
It's a loaded term because it implies that websites ought to have control over display, when the web was specifically designed such that they should not.
> "Nor are they "content selectors/choosers", nobody uses their adblocking plugin to find content"
I modify many aspects of webpage display to help me assimilate content. When a website has chosen difficult to read colors, I change them so they're easier to see. I change fonts and font sizes. I modify page layouts, sometimes collapsing many separate pages into one long page, and sometimes I use screen readers and I don't even look at a visual rendering at all. I often remove annoying, obnoxious or intrusive content which also make it harder for me to read a page, many of which are ads.
The web is specifically designed from inception to give this agency to clients. Websites provide units of content and suggestions on how to best display it. That is all.