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This Page is Designed to Last

jeffhuang.com

71–80 of 458 posts

Re: This Page is Designed to Last

#71

There's no reason why a web browser bookmark action doesn't automatically create a WARC (web archive) format. Heck, with the cost of storage so low, recording every webpage you ever visit in searchable format is also very realistic. Imagine having the last 30 years of web browsing history saved on your local machine. This would especially be useful when in research mode and deep diving a topic. [1] https://github.com…

I actually this week asked the author of SingleFile if he could implement a save-on-bookmark feature for SingleFile, and he was amenable:

https://github.com/gildas-lormeau/SingleFile

https://github.com/gildas-lormeau/SingleFile/issues/320

Re: This Page is Designed to Last

#72
All my projects have a README.md, some a README.org. These are simple uncluttered formats which everyone with the most basic of readers can read. A few years back I fount my decades old masters thesis, written in plaintext latex. It compiled first time to pretty pdf on a raspberry pi.

If you care about content, or anything really, keep it simple.

https://plaintextproject.online/

Re: This Page is Designed to Last

#73
post #15

There's no reason why a web browser bookmark action doesn't automatically create a WARC (web archive) format. Heck, with the cost of storage so low, recording every webpage you ever visit in searchable format is also very realistic. Imagine having the last 30 years of web browsing history saved on your local machine. This would especially be useful when in research mode and deep diving a topic. [1] https://github.com…

>There's no reason why a web browser bookmark action doesn't automatically create a WARC (web archive) format. Indeed. And I still remember the modem days where I would download entire websites because the ISP charged by the hour, and I'd read them offline to save money.

I can't put my finger on it but this has a sort of Dickensian quality to me.

I think this says something kind of profound about information and capitalism and whatnot.

Re: This Page is Designed to Last

#74
post #66

I was expecting the solution to be mirror your generated pages on IPFS ( https://ipfs.io ), so they just don't go away at all (as long as someone has them pinned). The proposed solution set seems extremely convoluted and don't actually solve the issue.

That’s quite the caveat, and speaking as somebody who has attempted it, you’ve introduced quite a bit of complexity. The whole point is that complexity militates against keeping it online. Keeping it simple, the author’s theory seems to go, is the single most effective way to make something likely to be able to be available long term. I think he’s probably right.

None of what he wrote mitigates the case where he no longer maintains his site and stops paying for the server, which is the very reason all those links he mentioned were dead (defunct websites/hosts).

Re: This Page is Designed to Last

#75

There's no reason why a web browser bookmark action doesn't automatically create a WARC (web archive) format. Heck, with the cost of storage so low, recording every webpage you ever visit in searchable format is also very realistic. Imagine having the last 30 years of web browsing history saved on your local machine. This would especially be useful when in research mode and deep diving a topic. [1] https://github.com…

Safari used to (and still) do this automatically but in a limited way. In the browsing history view (Command Y), you can search visited pages by its content, and this is extremely useful. But there's no way(†) to tell Safari to display that saved content. If you revisit a URL in the history, Safari fetches it again, losing the original saved content.

(†): short of direct plist manipulation

Re: This Page is Designed to Last

#76

There's no reason why a web browser bookmark action doesn't automatically create a WARC (web archive) format. Heck, with the cost of storage so low, recording every webpage you ever visit in searchable format is also very realistic. Imagine having the last 30 years of web browsing history saved on your local machine. This would especially be useful when in research mode and deep diving a topic. [1] https://github.com…

Firefox actually purges history automatically. For instance, the oldest history I have on this browser right now is from January 2018. I found about this the hard way.

Re: This Page is Designed to Last

#77
post #69

I don't think there's any good solution to the dead link problem. For example there are 11 links in this article: https://jeffhuang.com/ https://gomakethings.com/the-web-is-not-dying/ https://archivebox.io/ https://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/25315/hotlinking-what-is-it-and-why-shouldnt-people-do-it https://goaccess.io/ https://victorzhou.com/blog/minify-svgs/ https://evilmartians.com/chronicles/images-don…

Put a wayback machine link in parentheses/superscript after every link in the page?

Re: This Page is Designed to Last

#78

There's no reason why a web browser bookmark action doesn't automatically create a WARC (web archive) format. Heck, with the cost of storage so low, recording every webpage you ever visit in searchable format is also very realistic. Imagine having the last 30 years of web browsing history saved on your local machine. This would especially be useful when in research mode and deep diving a topic. [1] https://github.com…

Firefox actually purges history automatically. For instance, the oldest history I have on this browser right now is from January 2018. I found about this the hard way.

Safari does the same, even though I tell it to never clear browsing history.

Re: This Page is Designed to Last

#79
post #69

I don't think there's any good solution to the dead link problem. For example there are 11 links in this article: https://jeffhuang.com/ https://gomakethings.com/the-web-is-not-dying/ https://archivebox.io/ https://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/25315/hotlinking-what-is-it-and-why-shouldnt-people-do-it https://goaccess.io/ https://victorzhou.com/blog/minify-svgs/ https://evilmartians.com/chronicles/images-don…

I think the Stack Overflow guidelines have "solved" this problem in about the cleanest way currently possible: expect links to die, and include the relevant information in your answer.

If the link still works when it gets clicked on that's a bonus, but it shouldn't need to be available for the content you're reading to be understandable.

Re: This Page is Designed to Last

#80
post #69

I don't think there's any good solution to the dead link problem. For example there are 11 links in this article: https://jeffhuang.com/ https://gomakethings.com/the-web-is-not-dying/ https://archivebox.io/ https://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/25315/hotlinking-what-is-it-and-why-shouldnt-people-do-it https://goaccess.io/ https://victorzhou.com/blog/minify-svgs/ https://evilmartians.com/chronicles/images-don…

There's no great solution, but there are things you can do to help, for example:

- take an 'archive copy' of anything you link to so you can host it yourself if it goes away (copyright issues to consider, of course)

- automate a link-checking process so you at least know as soon as a target disappears

- only link to 'good' content (you can feed back results from previous step to approximate this on a domain-basis over time)

(although these things require a build process, which the article's author is against)

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