Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A small collection of text-only websites

shkspr.mobi

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 63 posts

Re: A small collection of text-only websites

#41

Post by kgwxd »

subless wrote: post #24
eleventen wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost none of the sites in that list are actually text. They’re just minimally styled html/css.

This entirely depends on your perspective/interpretation of “text-only”. To me, having only text as the output with no ads, videos, or images is “text-only”. It doesn’t matter how it’s presented as long as it’s just text. But I also see your perspective. You want plain defaults with white background color, black foreground color, and no formatting.

"No arbitrary code execution" is how I'd put it. "Ads" can be plain text, they just usually aren't on the internet. If a plain text site decided to include them once in a while, I'd celebrate the choice.

Re: A small collection of text-only websites

#43

Post by al_borland »

shakna wrote: post #30
al_borland wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to wonder if printing has gone down in popularity, in part, because so many websites handle it so poorly these days. I will sometimes "print" to PDF to save an article I want to read or reference, so I don't have to worry about the site disappearing on me. The quality of these PDFs has dropped dramatically over the years. With some sites it's almost not even worth it.

On several of my previous projects I've been tasked with making the print broken, not just "disabled", to try and force people into the "happy path" where there's a download button. Despite the beforeprint event that would let me trigger the same process. (I've argued and lost that fight, more often than won it.)

In these fights, did they give the justification for the download button? I'm continuously frustrated by these types of things that go out of their way to break native functionality. Is there a way where they can get extra information and tracking on the user; is that the goal?

To me the "happy path" is the one the user would naturally take, without needing to learn the quirks of each site.

Re: A small collection of text-only websites

#45

Post by NetOpWibby »

If you append ".txt" to any memo (post) or remark URL on my blog[1], you'll see a text-only version, formatted like an RFC.

This redesign is only a few weeks old. Previously, only the homepage of my blog was HTML/CSS, the posts were all text files by default. Most (all?) people were frustrated with the mobile experience but I loved it. I only redesigned because I wanted to see images on my blog again. You can see the previous version in the 2025 branch[2] of my repo.

---

[1]: https://blog.webb.page

[2]: https://github.com/NetOpWibby/blog/tree/2025

Re: A small collection of text-only websites

#46

Post by leejoramo »

simonw wrote: post #10

I didn't know about the .text extension for Daring Fireball: https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/12/31/photoshop-1-and... Interesting to see how the original creator of Markdown uses it. I'm presuming that's the version he edits and not output automatically converted from an intermediary representation.

Daring Fireball had the ‘.text’ version since at least the public release of Markdown, if not earlier.

This should be the version Gruber edits in MarsEdit or BBEdit, but it maybe partly rendered by the Moveable Type CMS

The extension is ‘.text’ because that is what he suggested as the Markdown extension, but of course most of us went with ‘.md’

While keyword tags are not used on the website, you can see the one he uses for his personal purposes at the bottom of the Markdown

Re: A small collection of text-only websites

#48

Post by ryukoposting »

syngrog66 wrote: post #44

I like the spirit of text-only but Markdown is similar enough and gives clickable links, embeddable static images etc. Its the JS, CSS, video, audio and surveillance shenanigans which have gotten out of hand and become noisey (and nosey.)

I've been considering implementing a feature like this in my blog, but in a slightly more HTTP-ish way. Something like, if the Accept header leads with text/markdown, reply with markdown.

This feels more "pure" to me, but it also means that you couldn't actually use it from a typical web browser. So it'd be utterly pointless, but then again, so is my blog.

Re: A small collection of text-only websites

#49

Post by Linux-Fan »

evolve2k wrote: post #21

I’m pondering on this functionality for static site builders that already say have some sort of Markdown to HTML Page pipeline. For most SSG (Static site generators) I’ve seen that take a plain text to html conversion, they usually only serve up .html Wondering out loud if this would be a useful and desirable addition for SSG tools to have the option to serve up say .html and a .md (or .txt or whatever). Am I missing…

I do it and it works.

The only thing you might be missing: I don't think it helps many people really.

I personally still like the feature because I put my website under a free software license and then it is only fitting that you could view the actual source code. Having the `.md` next to the `.xhtml` available helps to achieve this.

Re: A small collection of text-only websites

#50

Post by ynac »

subless wrote: post #24
eleventen wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost none of the sites in that list are actually text. They’re just minimally styled html/css.

This entirely depends on your perspective/interpretation of “text-only”. To me, having only text as the output with no ads, videos, or images is “text-only”. It doesn’t matter how it’s presented as long as it’s just text. But I also see your perspective. You want plain defaults with white background color, black foreground color, and no formatting.

I struggle with the purity of meaning for text-only as well. Before this thread, I didn't understand the mime settings; I've been living a lie with a browser friendly landing page that uses:

And then all the other pages of the site to be pure *.txt files. In the end, until there are standards to point to, I just accept minimalism as the scale. I have ads, layouts, boxes / frames, and all sorts of possibly annoying aspects to my textsites. It is a medium that's just as easily abused as any!

Post reply on HN