This Page is Designed to Last • Hacker News Board

Re: This Page is Designed to Last

#441

Post by ValueNull » Sun, Dec 22, 2019, 5:39 AM UTC

saagarjha wrote: post #149

whack wrote: post #124

Let's be honest with ourselves. The best way to make your content last for a long time is to host it on a platform that is free and very successful. For example, whatever photos I posted on Facebook 12 years ago? Still alive and kicking. The articles I've published on wordpress.com 7 years ago? Still in mint condition, with 0 maintenance required. In comparison, the websites that I've built and hosted or deployed mys…

If Jekyll died tomorrow, I still have the HTML to keep the website running, more or less. It's a build step in my pipeline but not one that abstracts it in such a way that I cannot use the final product as my archive. I'm not sure that a CMS could let me do the same.

Not to mention that you’d still be able to use Jekyll yourself for as long as you’d like, it being locally installable and open source.

Re: This Page is Designed to Last

#442

Post by freetonik » Sun, Dec 22, 2019, 7:34 AM UTC

dragonsh wrote: post #382

pinehqcom wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This... I just found a plugin for the static site generator Pelican that is 7 years old that still works. After running Pelican you get plain HTML that can be hosted anywhere. I like Netlify, but other options like GitHub pages are also great. The author recommends not putting on GitHub Pages because they haven't found a working business model and might not be here in the future. But... GitHub has been taken over by…

You can say the same about geocities when it was acquired by yahoo. But it didn't last and then now it's happening with yahoo-groups. So I am not hopeful if GitHub becomes a liability microsoft will keep it.

Yahoo! And Microsoft have very different business models. One is intently more sustainable (selling software and services).

Re: This Page is Designed to Last

#443

Post by BrandoElFollito » Sun, Dec 22, 2019, 11:54 AM UTC

Infinite scroll is an abomination and requires the JS the author wants to get rid of.

I prefer a page which loads completely and which I can search (directly or via Google)

Re: This Page is Designed to Last

#444

Post by strenholme » Sun, Dec 22, 2019, 5:11 PM UTC

a1369209993 wrote: post #420

hashmal wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate on why/how they suck? Do you have example links, to set a common ground for the conversation? I think most fonts that get your attention suck, the best ones are invisible and get you directly to the meaning of text, without getting in the way. So maybe there's a kind of bias (selection or sampling bias?) operating here?

Because they they are not the single system default sans-serif and single system default sans-serif-monospace fonts that all websites MUST use, period, no discussion. As you put it: > fonts that get your attention suck If I can tell the difference between your font and the system default font, your font sucks; if I can't tell the difference, what's the damned point?

> the single system default sans-serif and single system default sans-serif-monospace fonts that all websites MUST use, period, no discussion.

The web standards allow a website to use any WOFF (or WOFF2) font they wish to use. Please see https://www.w3.org/TR/css-fonts-3/

Re: This Page is Designed to Last

#445

Post by wopian » Sun, Dec 22, 2019, 7:00 PM UTC

falcolas wrote: post #176

bepvte wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When was the last browser change that broke things like simple news websites????

The phrases "simple" and "news websites" don't combine well these days. Even the NPR website downloads 13.2 MB of content over 91 individual requests, and takes just over 3.6 seconds to load (6.5 to finish). - CSS Stylesheets: 3 - Animated gifs: 1 - Individual JS files: 11 (around 2MB of JS decompressed (but not un-minimized)) - Asynchronous Requests: 14 (and counting) And that's with uBlock Origin blocking 12 differ…

If the site is being served over HTTP/2 then the 11 separate JS files is a good thing compared to a single 2MB JS file.

-

In my case it also has the added benefit of being able to cache JS for a long(er) period of time, with users only having to download maybe 0-30kb of JS when only 1 component is updated instead of invalidating the entire JS served (Way under 1MB however)

Re: This Page is Designed to Last

#446

Post by a1369209993 » Sun, Dec 22, 2019, 9:34 PM UTC

strenholme wrote: post #444

a1369209993 wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they they are not the single system default sans-serif and single system default sans-serif-monospace fonts that all websites MUST use, period, no discussion. As you put it: > fonts that get your attention suck If I can tell the difference between your font and the system default font, your font sucks; if I can't tell the difference, what's the damned point?

> the single system default sans-serif and single system default sans-serif-monospace fonts that all websites MUST use, period, no discussion. The web standards allow a website to use any WOFF (or WOFF2) font they wish to use. Please see https://www.w3.org/TR/css-fonts-3/

The web standards are wrong. This shouldn't be surprising, since they also allow a website to use javascript and cookies.

Re: This Page is Designed to Last

#447

Post by strenholme » Sun, Dec 22, 2019, 11:18 PM UTC

a1369209993 wrote: post #446

strenholme wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the single system default sans-serif and single system default sans-serif-monospace fonts that all websites MUST use, period, no discussion. The web standards allow a website to use any WOFF (or WOFF2) font they wish to use. Please see https://www.w3.org/TR/css-fonts-3/

The web standards are wrong. This shouldn't be surprising, since they also allow a website to use javascript and cookies.

Well, if it makes you feel any better, my website renders just fine on Lynx (no Javascript nor webfonts needed to render the page), complete with me putting section headings in '==Section heading name==', which is only visible in browsers without CSS. Browsers with modern CSS support see the section headings as a larger semibold sans-serif, to contrast with the serif font for body text. [1]

[1] There are some rendering issues with Dillo, with made the mistake of trying to support CSS without going all the way, making sure that http://acid2.acidtests.org renders a smiley face, but even here I made sure the site still can be read.

[2] Also, no cookies used on my website. No ads, no third party fonts, no third party javascript, no tracking cookies, nothing. The economic model is that my website helps me get consulting gigs.

[3] I do agree with the general gist of what you’re trying to say: HTML, Javascript, and CSS have become too complicated for anything but the most highly funded of web browsers to render correctly. Both Opera and Microsoft have given up with trying to make a modern standards compliant browser, because the standards are constantly updating.

Re: This Page is Designed to Last

#448

Post by chrisMyzel » Mon, Dec 23, 2019, 1:36 AM UTC

Using wallabag (o.s. Pocket like alternative) for bookmarks and it saves a copy of the website in a screenreader mode fashion so text and images - so far I have around 2k links in there and it takes no significant size so far

Re: This Page is Designed to Last

#449

Post by a1369209993 » Mon, Dec 23, 2019, 3:37 AM UTC

strenholme wrote: post #447

a1369209993 wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The web standards are wrong. This shouldn't be surprising, since they also allow a website to use javascript and cookies.

Well, if it makes you feel any better, my website renders just fine on Lynx (no Javascript nor webfonts needed to render the page), complete with me putting section headings in '==Section heading name==', which is only visible in browsers without CSS. Browsers with modern CSS support see the section headings as a larger semibold sans-serif, to contrast with the serif font for body text. [1] [1] There are some renderi…

> Well, if it makes you feel any better, my website renders just fine on Lynx

It doesn't; I only use lynx when someone tricks apt-get into updating part of my graphics stack (xorg, video dirvers, window manager, etc) and researh is needed to figure out how to forcibly downgrade it, and then only because I can't use a proper browser without a working graphics stack.

> the general gist of what you're trying to say: HTML, Javascript, and CSS have become too complicated for anything but the most highly funded of web browsers to render correctly.

This is subtly but critically wrong; I am saying that it is necessary than web browsers do not render websites 'correctly'. The correct behaviour is to actively refuse to let websites specify hideous fonts, snoop on user viewing activity, or execute arbitrary malware on the local machine.

> Browsers with modern CSS support see [...] the serif font for body text.

My point exactly.

Re: This Page is Designed to Last

#450

Post by BlackEspresso » Mon, Dec 23, 2019, 11:03 AM UTC

tempestn wrote: post #440

BlackEspresso wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice article but http://www.thesecretweapon.org/ isnt reachable anymore. The Page didnt Last...

Oh the irony. I'll update my link to an archive post or reproduce the important parts. Thanks for pointing that out! Edit: doesn't appear to be down, they're just using a self-signed cert.

hmm, your right. i tried "continue with insecure certificate" yesterday but maxbe i was to impatient