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During Helene, I just wanted a plain text website

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Re: During Helene, I just wanted a plain text website

#131

Post by theandrewbailey »

neilv wrote: post #40

One way to get to this is to start with almost-'94 HTML: Some Topic Some Topic Information goes here. Information goes here. Information goes here. Then add a little non-'94 CSS styling. If you decide to add an off-the-shelf wad of CSS, like Pico.css, consider hosting it alongside your HTML (rather than turning it into another third-party dependency and CDN cross-site surveillance tracker). Minified, and single-reque…

HTML5 boilerplate: https://github.com/h5bp/html5-boilerplate/blob/main/src/inde...

Re: During Helene, I just wanted a plain text website

#132

Post by Y_Y »

webdevver wrote: post #93
treesknees wrote: post #2

Several news sites offer text only versions. https://lite.cnn.com/ https://text.npr.org/ https://wttr.in/ More listed at https://greycoder.com/a-list-of-text-only-new-sites It’d be great if there was some standard that allowed these to be easily found, and supported on the local news sites.

> https://wttr.in/ didnt load for me

Did load for me.

Closing.

Re: During Helene, I just wanted a plain text website

#133

Post by transcriptase »

The_Double wrote: post #109
treesknees wrote: post #2

Several news sites offer text only versions. https://lite.cnn.com/ https://text.npr.org/ https://wttr.in/ More listed at https://greycoder.com/a-list-of-text-only-new-sites It’d be great if there was some standard that allowed these to be easily found, and supported on the local news sites.

That CNN website is great, except it still has a huge cookie banner. Looking at the cookies of the site, I think the only cookie it sets is that i clicked on the banner. Most of the size of the page is also related to the banner it seems.

You can’t put a price on some round-rim glasses wearing EU bureaucrat named Klaus-Dietrich von Regulieren sleeping soundly because of that banner.

Re: During Helene, I just wanted a plain text website

#134

Post by japhyr »

I live just south of Asheville in NC, and we were completely isolated after the storm for a few days. The only reason we were able to get out after a few days was that a fire truck had been abandoned at the bottom of our driveway as trees fell around it, so they came back as soon as they could to get that resource back. People just the other side of those trees were unable to get out for about a week.

Our best source of information, even after we started to get a bit of service, was an inReach. I messaged a friend far from the region and asked them really specific questions like, "Tell me when I can get from our house to I-26 and then south to South Carolina."

Yes, absolutely, emergency information sites should be as light as possible. And satellite devices are incredibly useful when everything local goes down.

Re: During Helene, I just wanted a plain text website

#135

Post by hasanhaja »

It's hard to understand the privilege bubble you're in unless you actively try to live like your users. My read of the current trend [1] is that building for your marginal users isn't prioritized culturally in orgs or within engineering. Unseating those ways of working in my experience has been immensely challenging, even when everyone can agree on methodologies to put users first in theory [2].

[1] https://infrequently.org/2025/11/performance-inequality-gap-... [2] https://crukorg.github.io/engineering-guidebook/docs/fronten...

Re: During Helene, I just wanted a plain text website

#136

Post by phantasmish »

transcriptase wrote: post #133
The_Double wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That CNN website is great, except it still has a huge cookie banner. Looking at the cookies of the site, I think the only cookie it sets is that i clicked on the banner. Most of the size of the page is also related to the banner it seems.

You can’t put a price on some round-rim glasses wearing EU bureaucrat named Klaus-Dietrich von Regulieren sleeping soundly because of that banner.

If I’ve understood the grandparent post correctly, they don’t need the banner. They wouldn’t need it if the only cookie they set were a functional 1st-party cookie, and since that sole cookie is just to track cookie banner status, they especially don’t need it.

Re: During Helene, I just wanted a plain text website

#137

Post by jayknight »

amelius wrote: post #77
treesknees wrote: post #2

Several news sites offer text only versions. https://lite.cnn.com/ https://text.npr.org/ https://wttr.in/ More listed at https://greycoder.com/a-list-of-text-only-new-sites It’d be great if there was some standard that allowed these to be easily found, and supported on the local news sites.

Maybe there could be a service which translates any website into a trimmed-down text-only version.

Firefox's Reader mode is pretty great. Doesn't reduce network traffic but makes almost any page more readable.

Re: During Helene, I just wanted a plain text website

#138

Post by ignoramous »

treesknees wrote: post #2

Several news sites offer text only versions. https://lite.cnn.com/ https://text.npr.org/ https://wttr.in/ More listed at https://greycoder.com/a-list-of-text-only-new-sites It’d be great if there was some standard that allowed these to be easily found, and supported on the local news sites.

> great if there was some standard that allowed these to be easily found

Too bad Google sunset Chrome Flywheel (likely after AMP?): https://research.google/pubs/flywheel-googles-data-compressi...

Opera Mini Turbo was equally popular during 2G/Edge era.

Re: During Helene, I just wanted a plain text website

#139

Post by sdeframond »

treesknees wrote: post #2

Several news sites offer text only versions. https://lite.cnn.com/ https://text.npr.org/ https://wttr.in/ More listed at https://greycoder.com/a-list-of-text-only-new-sites It’d be great if there was some standard that allowed these to be easily found, and supported on the local news sites.

Well, there is RSS.

Re: During Helene, I just wanted a plain text website

#140

Post by ignoramous »

treesknees wrote: post #2

Several news sites offer text only versions. https://lite.cnn.com/ https://text.npr.org/ https://wttr.in/ More listed at https://greycoder.com/a-list-of-text-only-new-sites It’d be great if there was some standard that allowed these to be easily found, and supported on the local news sites.

https://lite.duckduckgo.com/lite
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