Author mentions web browsers and extensions in the context of barriers to creating a successful malleable system.
Surely the web browser - considered in relation to web pages & technologies (HTML, Javascript etc), rather than extensions - is perhaps the most successful malleable system in history.
The core browser "functionality" has been and can be extended in an almost infinite number of ways via web "pages". You could consider his dichotomy between "foundational" features (unavailable to the user/tinkerer) and extendable features to be comparable between Emacs (C vs elisp) and the Browser (C++ [for example] vs HTML/Javascript/CSS).
I realise that to "extend" the browser by building a web page includes a great deal more friction than playing with elisp in scratch. Does this rule out the browser as a "malleable" system?
You are taking the point of view of a web developer, not a web user: a web browser gives a web site's developer a lot of control over the experience of a visitor to the web site; the visitor has some control over his or her own experience, but not much. In contrast, an Emacs user has a lot of control over his or her own experience.
Simple example: Emacs is of course used to view files not written by the Emacs user. It is the sole decision of the Emacs user what size, color and thickness/thinness the text will be. In contrast, the writer of a web page decides those things, and maybe the user can modify that and maybe they cannot.
In Chrome for example, there is no simple way to increase the text size without also increasing the size of all the other elements on the page (without increasing the zoomLevel, in other words). If some of those other elements are fixed-position elements (elements that remain in the viewport no matter how much the user scrolls) that already take up a large fraction of the viewport (which happens a lot when you browse the web on a 1360-pixel-wide monitor and you have old eyes and consequently need large text), it might not be possible to increase the zoomLevel.
That's not the same thing: if the content can be modified by the content provider then it is malleable for him, not for the user; the dynamicity is entirely controlled by the site owner.
Following that logic, wouldn't be everyting that eats content to display them malleable? Image-viewers, audio&video-players, office-applications, MS Paint and Windows Notepad? They all have the core-functionality of showing something to the user which is not embedded in their source-code, while this core-functionality is part of it.
If anything, I would go for web pages as a malleable system. Because with userscripts and userstyles you can change them however you want.
Surely the web browser - considered in relation to web pages & technologies (HTML, Javascript etc), rather than extensions - is perhaps the most successful malleable system in history.
The core browser "functionality" has been and can be extended in an almost infinite number of ways via web "pages". You could consider his dichotomy between "foundational" features (unavailable to the user/tinkerer) and extendable features to be comparable between Emacs (C vs elisp) and the Browser (C++ [for example] vs HTML/Javascript/CSS).
I realise that to "extend" the browser by building a web page includes a great deal more friction than playing with elisp in scratch. Does this rule out the browser as a "malleable" system?