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Poor Man's Web

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Re: Poor Man's Web

#71

Post by JohnFen »

threatofrain wrote: post #55
surprisetalk wrote: post #18

I recently documented some similar thoughts on the “cheap” web: [1] https://potato.cheap IMO, protocol is largely a distraction from the good stuff. The question I’ve been wondering lately is, “why don’t most people I meet have personal websites?”

It's possible that a social media profile is the new website. Rather than stand alone as a single page, it's often connected to other people and orgs that you may want to be affiliated with, so it comes with its own relevant blogroll.

Social media profiles and personal websites are very different things, for very different purposes. I don't think that one can substitute for the other.

Re: Poor Man's Web

#72

Post by threatofrain »

JohnFen wrote: post #71
threatofrain wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's possible that a social media profile is the new website. Rather than stand alone as a single page, it's often connected to other people and orgs that you may want to be affiliated with, so it comes with its own relevant blogroll.

Social media profiles and personal websites are very different things, for very different purposes. I don't think that one can substitute for the other.

A lot of small shops use Facebook as their web presence.

Re: Poor Man's Web

#73

Post by skydhash »

PurpleRamen wrote: post #27
II2II wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Any slightly lengthy text will just bury you in a desert of letters. Is this a bad thing? Books are a "desert of letters", with little to break the text up outside of chapters, sections, and paragraphs. If you broaden the scope a bit, you can added illustrations and photos. People have been reading books for generations. While many books do break that mould, many books continue to follow that tradition.

> Is this a bad thing? Depends on the purpose. For a Webpage, which is a collection of short texts, to sell you on something, it is bad. > Books are a "desert of letters" Depends on the book. A phone book would be a desert of letters, I don't think many would enjoy reading them. Something like a novel, would be a forest of chapters, full of trees with letters arranged in a meaningful way, leading you on a road toward…

I use a rss client which has a content view, and it's barely different than what gemini offers. I also read plenty of epubs and while inline images are possibles, it's often looks really bad. I think there's a value on prioritizing content over forms. Some contents won't fit to these restrictions and that's ok. It's not like it's a web replacement, just an alternative whose restrictions create some kind of exclusivity.

Re: Poor Man's Web

#74

Post by 8n4vidtmkvmk »

JohnFen wrote: post #70
appplication wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn’t have one even if it was dead simple and free (or honestly even paid). I just have too much on my plate, and I struggle to see what value it could bring. Let’s say I If I had a personal website, then what? I have to create content for it on some consistent cadence, which feels like a job. And then either no one reads it, which would feel both pointless and demoralizing, or I have to actively market it to tr…

> If I had a personal website, then what? I have to create content for it on some consistent cadence, which feels like a job Why would you have to do this? You could just update it if/when you feel like updating it. I've had a personal website for decades, and I've always just updated it when I had something I wanted to share (code, usually). I don't bother with artificially trying to "create content" for it at all,…

+1. I have a personal site I update every couple years. Just has some contact info and links to my other stuff on the big sites. Not too dissimilar from "linktree" I guess.

But it serves some other value too. I had a subdomain point to my home PC so my friends could connect for gaming. And my hg repo on there. And a DB I sometimes use because I'm lazy and don't want to run one locally. Worth the $5/mo

Re: Poor Man's Web

#75

Post by lproven »

sircastor wrote: post #15
lproven wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Entirely this. I feel that if there were some way of promoting a Javascript-free web, everything the world needs is already there in all modern browsers. I suspect that between HTML5, and indeed XHTML, and CSS and all the many modern image formats and so on, everything important that almost any site needs could be done using these tools and no JS at all. And the result could also be interpreted and rendered successfu…

I think a contest would be antithetical to the idea being circled here. The early web (to me) was filled with content front people who put out there because they wanted to share. Put your page up because here’s something you think is cool. I feel like it loses something with a contest.

I think you misinterpret my motivation here.

What I want is less use of Javascript and related scripting languages across the web. I'd like more websites that don't need it.

I am merely proposing a mechanism for getting people to explore what can be done without it, and how it might in fact be easier, more fun, and more maintainable.

Re: Poor Man's Web

#76

Post by lproven »

giantrobot wrote: post #25
lproven wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Entirely this. I feel that if there were some way of promoting a Javascript-free web, everything the world needs is already there in all modern browsers. I suspect that between HTML5, and indeed XHTML, and CSS and all the many modern image formats and so on, everything important that almost any site needs could be done using these tools and no JS at all. And the result could also be interpreted and rendered successfu…

I don't think a contest is needed. Just a desire to participate in the "Smol Web". Back in the day we had the "best viewed in any browser" badge indicating a page worked fine in IE and Navigator and probably also lynx. Personally I hate making web pages that don't work in Dillo or lynx.

I think, as per my comment above, you're misinterpreting me too.

I am not trying to create a reason to make script-free websites. I think they are their own justification.

I am trying to propose a method for making them visible and showing webdevs what can be done and why it's worth trying.

Re: Poor Man's Web

#77

Post by JohnFen »

threatofrain wrote: post #72
JohnFen wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Social media profiles and personal websites are very different things, for very different purposes. I don't think that one can substitute for the other.

A lot of small shops use Facebook as their web presence.

Yes, but I was talking about personal websites.

But even with business websites, the two aren't equivalent. If a shop has Facebook as their only web presence, for instance, then they are completely invisible to me.

Re: Poor Man's Web

#78

Post by factormeta »

mattlondon wrote: post #45

I think Gemini has missed a trick being being deliberately too simple - e.g. no inline images, no tables, no forms, no basic formatting etc. I know these were deliberately left out for "simplicity" reasons, but then they have a fairly unsimple mechanism for user login/auth that totally undermines their claim for making clients little more than slightly-augmented-terminals, which for me is a smoking gun for these thin…

wouldn't it just be better to start a new html5 without JS trend? It can the defector standard for document based web! A lot of modern CSS options to build nav menus now days[1]:

Form submit etc to send network traffics are all available, JS is only needed when you wanna do something cute like network call (AJAX) or change dom elements without refreshing the page. And come up with kluge such as allowing js to change the route with in the domain.

Footnotes: 1.https://1stwebdesigner.com/pure-css-navigation-menus/

Re: Poor Man's Web

#79

Post by cxr »

appplication wrote: post #64
emrah wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “why don’t most people I meet have personal websites?” The bigger question for me is, if it was dead simple and all they had to do was -say- pay $10/mo, would most people actually choose to have a personal website? I think the issue comes down to most people not seeing enough value to have a personal site to pay for it. And if they don't want to pay, the free DIY options are either a site like Medium or the technic…

I wouldn’t have one even if it was dead simple and free (or honestly even paid). I just have too much on my plate, and I struggle to see what value it could bring. Let’s say I If I had a personal website, then what? I have to create content for it on some consistent cadence, which feels like a job. And then either no one reads it, which would feel both pointless and demoralizing, or I have to actively market it to tr…

> Let’s say I If I had a personal website, then what? I have to create content for it on some consistent cadence, which feels like a job.

You're putting the cart before the horse. Having a personal site doesn't have to be any more complicated than minting (ideally permanent) URLs for stuff you're already creating—a namespace that third parties don't control. I'd argue that if you're trying to "create content for it", then you're already off on the wrong foot. This is another reason why I strenuously argue against the Smol Web clan who loudly advocate for personal websites as a sui generis medium[1] for (a specific, technofetishistic type of) personal expression—because people in turn respond to it the way you are here, and then their conception of a personal website is compromised exactly like this: that it's something that they don't actually want.

You probably created some kind of document (or other artifact) for distribution to people within your sphere at some point in the last week or three. Why shouldn't it be citeable by URL? That's what TBL's original vision of the Web was really about—not the false/misplaced nostalgia for Geocities-style gewgaws that insist upon themselves and motivates so much of what comes to the fore and dominates these conversations when the subject of personal websites comes up.

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38682884>

Re: Poor Man's Web

#80

Post by cxr »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #44
surprisetalk wrote: post #18

I recently documented some similar thoughts on the “cheap” web: [1] https://potato.cheap IMO, protocol is largely a distraction from the good stuff. The question I’ve been wondering lately is, “why don’t most people I meet have personal websites?”

> The question I’ve been wondering lately is, “why don’t most people I meet have personal websites?” The answer from my experience is simple: because most people that I meet are not programmers (at least not in a strict sense), and don't know many programmers. On the other hand: most programmers and many STEM degree holders that I meet do have their own websites.

... that they never update

... because they're all posting on social media platforms big and small, just like everyone else.

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