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Rediscovering the Small Web

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Re: Rediscovering the Small Web

#101

Post by entha_saava »

I used Opera mini on a J2ME phone on a 2G GPRS connection in Rural India (when studying in High school). The average speed was 5-10 KiB/s.

Opera Mini is one awesome browser for such connections. Average page sizes were around __20 KiB__ (They use some compression proxy). No Javascript was loaded. (Simple JS tasks were delegated to server side. I guess with some optimizations they could save on those full page reloads, but maybe it was computationally expensive for those phones).

There was a vibrant ecosystem for those phones. Till this day, those websites that host pirated music from Indian movies work with simplest of WWW browsers.

That's nostalgia. I remember a Modded version of opera mini which had tonnes of other features that worked on those phones with 4-8 MiB of memory (I don't know exact specs though, they were not mentioned for those phones).

Even today, with my paranoid no-js no-web-fonts browsing (UBlock origin), there are parts of web that are efficient. Hacker news or i.reddit.com, for example.

Re: Rediscovering the Small Web

#102

Post by nulbyte »

godot wrote: post #65
z3t4 wrote: post #42

I like this article, and I also like hand typing HTML and CSS. But coding is not for everyone. What we need is a better Wordpress, so ordinary people can publish their own website. It has to look good, perform well and be secure, but most importantly publishing content should be quick and easy.

I think writing some basic HTML is not hard, what's hard is everything else around hosting a web site properly nowadays. (and is where Wordpress wins users, I think) I have non-tech-savvy family who has started content web sites over 20 years ago, by writing some basic HTML, and uses FTP to upload HTML files. It's a mental model that's easily understood by someone who can operate Windows. He went on to maintain the s…

For sites where a static-site generator will suffice, there is Forestry[1]. It puts an editor-friendly frontend on top of Git. I have thought about this for a few projects that involve folks who aren't very tech savvy, but none of them have gained much momentum (for other reasons), so I've only given it a cursory look. It seems pretty well put together, though.

[1]: https://forestry.io

Re: Rediscovering the Small Web

#103

Post by livatlantis »

gonehome wrote: post #75
livatlantis wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excellent! Joined, thank you!

Thanks! I think your site is awesome, it's exactly the kind of thing I think of, when I think of the best of what the internet can be. I'm a fan. [Edit]: I also caught a tiny typo: > "But the web is not always "profit-oriented" and it certainly does not need be "user-centric" (and I say this as a UX consultant)." I think you wanted "does not need to be" I created a PR for you: https://github.com/parimalsatyal/neu/pul…

Thank you, merged!

Re: Rediscovering the Small Web

#104

Post by akavel »

kickscondor wrote: post #12

If you're interested in recent innovations on this front: (rather than just retreading the same Web as before) * Beaker ( https://beakerbrowser.com ) the peer-to-peer browser just released their beta release - and it has some exciting features. Particularly the built-in editor, meaning you can edit, serve and read your pages all from the browser. (Blogging in Beaker is as simple as visiting: hyper://a8e9bd0f4df60ed52…

You made me read about Beaker and install it. Looks very interesting. Thank you!

Re: Rediscovering the Small Web

#105

Post by _sbrk »

asaibx wrote: post #82

My favourite portal for discovering sites like this is something I discovered just recently here on HN: https://wiby.me/ It never fails to amaze me how much amazing stuff is out there online, hidden by a thick layer of top search results, and even more than that, the sheer amount of individual and collective effort that has been put into each of these sites. Someone mentioned the word "niche" and there is certainly s…

Thank you for reposting this treasure. Oh, how I miss pages that don't need a scroll wheel to read!

Re: Rediscovering the Small Web

#106

Post by kickscondor »

kilroy123 wrote: post #100
kickscondor wrote: post #12

If you're interested in recent innovations on this front: (rather than just retreading the same Web as before) * Beaker ( https://beakerbrowser.com ) the peer-to-peer browser just released their beta release - and it has some exciting features. Particularly the built-in editor, meaning you can edit, serve and read your pages all from the browser. (Blogging in Beaker is as simple as visiting: hyper://a8e9bd0f4df60ed52…

I just wanted to say that I love fraidyc.at and use it daily. Thank you so much for all the hard work.

Seriously?? wow I'm so glad!

Re: Rediscovering the Small Web

#107

Post by marttt »

kickscondor wrote: post #22
StavrosK wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, that's very useful information, thank you! Personal directories seem more useful and easier to put together, I think you're right.

Well then here are some little directories to inspire you! :) * Edwin Wenink's 'etc' page: https://www.edwinwenink.xyz/etc/etc/ * Gabby Lord's: https://omglord.com * Fingers.today: https://fingers.today * Neonauticon: https://neonaut.neocities.org/directory/ * Gwern: https://www.gwern.net (the whole thing is a massive personal directory)

Great list. I would like to add UbuWeb, a massive collection of hard-to-find avant garde art, movies and texts. Curated by hand by Kenneth Goldsmith. Online since circa 1996 (and I think he has also more or less kept the original layout).

http://ubu.com

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Goldsmith

Re: Rediscovering the Small Web

#108

Post by httpsterio »

kickscondor wrote: post #80
httpsterio wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for this post. I checked Fraidycat out and it solves many issues that I consider broken with social medias these days. Your personal website made me incredibly nostalgic and almost depressed, longing back to a simpler time in my life. Both of your projects will serve as inspiration for myself. Your personal site especially as it feels creative and liberated, things I strive for in my personal life. Thank you.

Oh don’t be depressed - my messy site took five years to make and you would be disgusted at the guts of it. And besides, there are many many days still in the future - I just flicked through my calendar and couldn’t seem to reach the end - so there is time to unlock more for you. Your site looks good, so I think you are underestimating yourself, which is lying Sami - it’s lying.

Hah thanks man. I do like what I'm currently building for myself as well, but it lacks a certain IDGAF attitude and it's not different in any ways. Plain and vanilla, which is fine for conveying information but there's nothing creative about it.

The indie web movement with self hosting simpler sites, webrings and RSS are a nice blast from the past and I hope that the issues we've seen with Facebook, Medium et al will bring back all the good thing's we've seemingly almost lost. RSS should be mandatory.

Re: Rediscovering the Small Web

#109

Post by pixxel »

kickscondor wrote: post #12

If you're interested in recent innovations on this front: (rather than just retreading the same Web as before) * Beaker ( https://beakerbrowser.com ) the peer-to-peer browser just released their beta release - and it has some exciting features. Particularly the built-in editor, meaning you can edit, serve and read your pages all from the browser. (Blogging in Beaker is as simple as visiting: hyper://a8e9bd0f4df60ed52…

What a wonderful post. I’ll be checking out the links when I’m at my desk. Many thanks.

Re: Rediscovering the Small Web

#110

Post by hattori31 »

asaibx wrote: post #82

My favourite portal for discovering sites like this is something I discovered just recently here on HN: https://wiby.me/ It never fails to amaze me how much amazing stuff is out there online, hidden by a thick layer of top search results, and even more than that, the sheer amount of individual and collective effort that has been put into each of these sites. Someone mentioned the word "niche" and there is certainly s…

This is absolutely awesome. For example, searching for pokemon gives blogs from 2000 about the "new movie". Far too nostalgic.
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