[HN Gopher] Show HN: A minimalist (brutalist?) website for shari...
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Show HN: A minimalist (brutalist?) website for sharing all your
links
Do you remember the internet of the early 2000s? Neat single
function websites that let you be creative and customize your
spaces and weren't setting out to be the next major conglomerate
(or to be bought by them). I'm building a series of websites that
have simple concepts but too many of the players have tried to make
their product so big. I also used to live in a very rural area so
my goal is to make websites that load fast even on very slow
internet. I'm starting with Lynx.boo. A linktree style website
that lets you fully customize your CSS (and adds a bunch of classes
to your links to help style them easier as well as very non-
restrictive CSS you can do html{display:none;} if you really want
to) and the features aren't locked behind yet-another monthly fee.
I'll be adding analytic support when I figure out the best way to
do it. Also there isn't a user system (per se), you just confirm
changes by email but you never register for the site and you won't
be spammed. Please feel free to try to break the CSS (or anything)
as much as you want. I think it's fairly robust but I would love
any security vulnerabilities you see. Thank you for your time!
Author : TravisPeacock
Score : 126 points
Date : 2024-11-02 17:10 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (lynx.boo)
(TXT) w3m dump (lynx.boo)
| TravisPeacock wrote:
| I want to follow up that the thing I think I'm really proud of is
| just HOW small the pages are. Of course, this is a stupid simple
| site but also I don't think it's ugly and even the page with the
| most Javascript and HTML is about 5kb large.
|
| I spent time teaching in Alaska and it made me really appreciate
| websites with small footprints.
| codazoda wrote:
| Shameless plug for my NeatCSS project:
|
| https://neat.joeldare.com
| dddw wrote:
| Ooh, nice, thanks.
| shashashasha___ wrote:
| would love to see it working without providing an email. no demo
| page?
| stavros wrote:
| Reminds me of Linkpack a bit:
|
| https://www.linkpack.io/lp/rWYo9k/
| TravisPeacock wrote:
| That's more like del.icio.us. mine isn't to share things you
| find interesting but rather links to yourself (generally)
| though you could use it for that.
| stavros wrote:
| Ahh I see, thanks!
| jaktet wrote:
| Tried it out real quick.
|
| The validation on the form page doesn't require a valid url but
| when you hit submit the validation fails if the url is incorrect.
| When you click back to go correct it you can't fix it because the
| submit button is still spinning.
|
| Also requiring a title for a url doesn't seem necessary, just use
| the domain as the title or the url itself if it's empty.
|
| Sorry don't have any other feedback I stopped there.
| TravisPeacock wrote:
| Love the feedback. You're the second person (that I've seen)
| whose mentioned what a bad user experience it is to fill out
| everything and then get told that you have an invalid url. I'm
| trying to use very minimal javascript but this seems like a
| good place to add a little extra.
|
| Also I need to fix the submit button problem.
|
| Edit: This has all been fixed.
| jaktet wrote:
| Awesome
|
| Some additional feedback:
|
| Still would be nice to just put in website.com and have it
| assume I mean https://website.com
|
| - If a title is required maybe offer the option to just set
| the title as an emoji or something. This is definitely just
| my personal feedback I could be an outlier here.
|
| - Once I submitted the email went to spam. I assume there's
| not much you can do here other than become more established.
|
| - After clicking the confirm link I'm taken to a page that
| says my changes have been confirmed and saved. I'd expect
| messaging along the lines of your page has been created along
| with a link to my page. Screenshot: https://www.dropbox.com/s
| cl/fi/leus6ntppsf9yihe6i1sb/Lynx.Bo...
|
| - At this point the only way I found to get to my page is
| just to type in what I assumed was the url format into the
| browser: lynx.boo/username
|
| Wrote the feedback as I went through it. Once I see the page
| itself I understand why a title is required and an emoji
| might not make sense. Love the super clean layout and
| simplicity though, I will keep this tool in mind.
| hall0ween wrote:
| I'm on the novice side, and I think this could be neat! I'd
| benefit from a demo page (unsolicited feedback, regardless cool
| work!)
| TravisPeacock wrote:
| Great point. I have https://lynx.boo/Travis
|
| I had this on the homepage but removed it. I'll add it back, I
| also want to add some examples of custom CSS so people can
| copy/paste.
| 12thhandyman wrote:
| Do you anticipate a pricing model or feature addition for making
| links "do follow"?
| TravisPeacock wrote:
| I had thought of that as well as a sitemap.xml placement but
| part of the fee would bring non-automated verification. Like
| you could only pay with a real credit card (not virtual) but
| nothing sounded super great. A do follow is only as good as the
| others on the site.
|
| I already have the code there to make people do follow. I was
| just going to make an automated program that saw people who
| generate traffic and put it into a queue to manually check.
| cabinguy wrote:
| I created a page. If you want to look without signing up, here
| you go: https://lynx.boo/dg
| brm wrote:
| Brilliant that help you've offered is SEO spam. If that's not
| the Internet in a nutshell I don't know what it is. Good show.
| cabinguy wrote:
| 2 birds. Seriously though. Adding links to a website for
| sharing links is now spam? Ok.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| It's the way you've done it: not suitable for people, but
| (nofollow aside) a good format for PageRank. It's kinda
| crass.
|
| If you put "Technology blog" and "Real estate portfolio"
| (for example) before those two spammy-looking links, it'd
| make it less viscerally offensive.
| cabinguy wrote:
| [edit] @wizzwizz4 Is it crass to edit your comment
| multiple times (with no declaration) to address a reply
| to your comment?
|
| Lol. Thats how the site works. It asks you for a URL and
| a title for the link. It's my page, my account, so I
| linked to my site when trying it out. C'mon. I'm not
| going to argue about it anymore. Y'all can keep
| downvoting me if you want to.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| That would indeed be crass; but I thought my edits came
| in before your reply. I apologise if they didn't.
|
| To actually address your comment: "my page" and "my
| account" are irrelevant. (You're not entitled to
| _anything_ on someone else 's server, except in special
| cases.) If you're linking those pages because you would
| like those they're relevant to to visit them, perception
| matters. If not... well, the perception of "spam" can
| lead people to treat your site as spammy. (Related:
| https://www.kjartan.co.uk/.)
| cabinguy wrote:
| I know I said I was done, but, let me get this straight.
| If I sign up for a website that was created for people to
| sign up to save links, and in doing so it requires you to
| submit a URL and a title for the link - and I use the
| page title as the title for the link: 1) I'm not entitled
| to do that and 2) It means my website is similar to a
| geocities page?
|
| Interesting.
| clan wrote:
| Interesting, really! Yes. And I should not step into a
| bar fight! ;-)
|
| You are both right!
|
| I love that you posted the link. You made it easy for me
| to get the point of the site as I did not want to use my
| mail. You effectively lowered my barrier of entry and I
| thank you for that.
|
| Buuut. You did do the equivalent of just hitting "asdf"
| on the keyboard. I just put in "my own site". That was
| not clear to me up front either. I "felt" it "spammy" as
| well.
|
| While disclaimers are often overused this would however
| had been nice. "Here you go (just dumb links to my own
| site)". That would actually have encouraged me even more
| to visit you.
|
| Someone on the Internet was wrong. Please, no knives :-D
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| You've generalised in a direction that erases the
| distinctions I'm trying to highlight. I'm talking about
| perception (specifically, perceived spamminess), and
| you're talking about what is permitted. If you _don 't_
| care about the perception, then that's fine and you can
| safely ignore me.
|
| 1) I'm entitled to pour custard on my head. Doesn't mean
| that will achieve my goals if I do it in an investor
| meeting. 2) Sadly, I'm not comparing your page to the
| _positive_ aspects of Kjartan Poskitt 's homepage. Look
| at the bottom row of links, and the analogy should become
| clearer.
| 12thhandyman wrote:
| At least it gives us all a way of seeing what the link pages
| look like after completion.
| robobro wrote:
| Boooo.
| MollyRealized wrote:
| Seriously? That's a pretty low effort comment there.
| tky wrote:
| Thanks! That's all I wanted to see, and you provided a good
| example. "viscerally offensive" and "SEO spam" made my eyes
| roll like a slot machine wheel.
| jdthedisciple wrote:
| Yea I genuinely don't get the criticism, what's supposed to
| be so off the marks about dg's site? Self advertisement?
| Isn't that what this is for?
| nosrepa wrote:
| I was not expecting to see town names adjacent to mine!
| TravisPeacock wrote:
| Snagging the good names!
|
| Thanks for the example :)
| graypegg wrote:
| Maybe just a small thing, but lynx.boo is a bit of a rough domain
| to use for a e-business-card sort of thing. That's pretty hard to
| communicate and easy to misremember. (links? link? What was the
| tld again?) I honestly didn't even know .boo was a thing.
| TravisPeacock wrote:
| It's better than my last company D&Tea. "Go to d and tea dot
| com... No, like the drink not the letter.. yes spell out a-n-d"
|
| And & isn't available to search literally on Twitter so if you
| want to see what people are talking about you without tagging
| you you can't.
|
| I need to get better at it.
|
| Admittedly, I just assumed most people would use it in their
| bios on social media and I also use it on a QR code.
|
| It's a fair critique. I was going to make the logo a lynx but
| decided no images.
| Perz1val wrote:
| No images, but svg would be just an xml text, right?
| calmbonsai wrote:
| Check out Pinboard https://pinboard.in/tour/ for some great
| minimalist link UX inspiration.
|
| My favorite 'touch' is the in-situ text replacement for canceling
| an action.
| MollyRealized wrote:
| Pinboard's creator has some history ... right here on this
| website. Later I will see if I have the links still. They (in
| my opinion) did not behave honorably with people's
| subscriptions.
| navigate8310 wrote:
| Choosing a .in TLD is itself a very bad decision IMHO
| Thorrez wrote:
| It sounds like a number of limitations, bugs, outages have
| cropped up, and the creator isn't responding.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34062802
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41533958
| asdefghyk wrote:
| RE "....did not behave honorably with people's
| subscriptions....." My experience - Does not respond to
| (several) support requests. Has not even provided the paid
| for service over several years.
| TravisPeacock wrote:
| I can see based on the title how this would be mentioned but
| this isn't a del.icio.us type site it's linktree type site.
| kengoa wrote:
| If I set my own email in someone else's email linx page from
| lynx.boo/username/edit, can I change others' links? (I haven't
| tried)
| 12thhandyman wrote:
| "Email does not match the one on file. To change your email
| address email hello@lynx.boo using the email address on file
| for this user."
| Turboblack wrote:
| mail is not arriving
| yuvadam wrote:
| arrives as spam on gmail
| Turboblack wrote:
| its not gmail its meta.ua
| TravisPeacock wrote:
| It likely arrives as spam there too :)
| Turboblack wrote:
| I didn't even get it in spam
| TravisPeacock wrote:
| If you can email hello@lynx.boo with the email address
| you used it would be helpful for me to determine what
| happened to the email. I'm hosting my own SMTP server so
| I don't doubt that:
|
| 1) I screwed something up (most likely) 2) Your email
| rejected it because it's some no name ip with no
| reputation.
| Turboblack wrote:
| this address has a 25 year reputation ))) it's just that
| now for some reason many are surprised that someone uses
| something other than Google
| TravisPeacock wrote:
| It's not your servers reputation that's the problem it's
| mine. Your server is likely rejecting my email.
|
| But I'd have to check the logs.
| iJohnDoe wrote:
| Cool! Can we self-host? Open source?
| TravisPeacock wrote:
| Soon*
|
| It's the plan but I have a bunch of stuff that I hard coded in
| the final push that I would need to make into variables.
| drexlspivey wrote:
| Another alternative is https://github.com/microfeed/microfeed
| which is self-hosted for free on cloudflare workers/pages
| Turboblack wrote:
| Hi! I fully support such projects, and I am for backward
| compatibility good luck and prosperity to your endeavors
| EasyMark wrote:
| Ehhhhhhh they need a demo up before they get an email, even a
| Firefox relay email. Sorry they lost me already :(
| TravisPeacock wrote:
| https://lynx.boo/lynxboo (and I have put one on the index as
| well)
| kranke155 wrote:
| It rejects the URL
|
| Www.myurl.com
|
| For reasons unknown
|
| Then I have to refresh and then I don't want to do it again.
| TravisPeacock wrote:
| Likely because you're not using http:// / https:// but it's a
| good note that it should give more information as well as it
| should redirect back with the error message on top.
|
| Edit: or better yet, a little bit of javascript to catch it
| first. I'm really trying to use the minimal amount of JS
| possible.
| Bjartr wrote:
| I think HTML forms support pattern based validation, no js
| required.
| TravisPeacock wrote:
| I just looked up https://dev.to/joelbonetr/form-input-
| validation-without-java... and saw this, I'll look into
| implementing it via this strategy.
| zephyreon wrote:
| I was able to submit an edit request for the lynxboo link by
| guessing the email on record was hello@lynx.boo.
|
| This seems like it could be abused pretty easily. Not necessarily
| insecure but I could get a lot of spam no?
| TravisPeacock wrote:
| I had thought about this a bit, I don't think it's any
| different (and actually even more secure) than someone putting
| in your email in a "Lost Password" field. In that case you just
| have to guess that email is registered on the site, in my case
| you have to know the email is registered to this specific Lynx.
|
| It could be annoying but it seems an edge case to be abused.
| donio wrote:
| For a site that claims to be minimalist/brutalist and has lynx in
| its name I was hoping that it would work without JS. But the
| edit/create page doesn't.
| TravisPeacock wrote:
| Do you have a thought on how to do the edit page without JS? I
| am with you I wanted to make it no js, then added a little here
| and there. I couldn't think of a way to allow someone to add
| unlimited links in a way that was clean and fast without JS. I
| guess I could detect if you're not allowing JS and then have an
| input field so you can select how many you want to have and
| then pass that as a GET variable.
|
| It's added to the roadmap to investigate more.
| Jorge1o1 wrote:
| Well, theoretically you could make your current "Add Link"
| button and your current "Remove" button just trigger a
| server-side request and then refresh the page.
|
| maybe some combination of the <noscript> tag and then if so
| wrapping the buttons in <form> and making the buttons submit
| those forms?
| dccoolgai wrote:
| I love this! Great work! Just an idea here, since you already
| have a form with the `action` set up, you could do some kind
| of `noscript` section with like 10 preset `input` elements,
| where the "n+1"th input appears when strings are present for
| the "nth" ones (using :has or something like that... the
| internet is lousy with examples of how to do this kind of
| thing). To go really hardcore "progenhance" you could even
| wrap that all in a @supports CSS rule. (So "if you don't want
| to use CSS, here's all 10 inputs. Have fun, sailor.")
| clan wrote:
| Your heart is the right place but your logic is upside down!
| :-)
|
| The easy way to make it simple is do it as a form and _then_
| embellish it with javascript. Maybe counter intuitive but
| still. Let the javascript mangle the form so it does not look
| like a form and Bob is your uncle. By always using that
| pattern you easily end up with good usability and
| accessibility.
|
| The same as with CSS. Make good content with nice semantic
| HTML. Then go crazy with super cool CSS.
|
| But I am an old fart who hates Tailwind with a vengance. But
| I do acknowledge it get work done and many think it is great.
| So I will sulk in the corner and say that they are doing it
| wrong. Old man yelling at clouds.
|
| Next: REST is great but misunderstood. I do not miss SOAP.
|
| But know this: I love your sentiment and attitude. Nice job!
| _Grumble_ ;-)
| czhu12 wrote:
| I love this stuff, ignore all the haters! Just here to show my
| support! I'll be sure to throw this on my twitter bio as long as
| it stays up :) https://lynx.boo/chriszhu
| TravisPeacock wrote:
| That's the kind of flattery that gets you on the do-follow list
| :P
| jdthedisciple wrote:
| your mockachino link is broken my friend
| creativenolo wrote:
| I will use this, thanks.
|
| +1 to the other comment about not needing to name a link (be
| great if it grabbed the page title or allowed the url only.)
|
| The confirmation went to spam.
|
| Probably this is not the spirit of minimalism (but maybe the
| spirit of Unix), I would love to be able to augment this with
| other services: this stays a very minimal link hosting but it
| offers web hooks and an API key. This means if a link was added,
| I could self host with something that uses an AI to summarise the
| for example, or extract a screenshot from the page, or triggers
| something that adds it to my notes, etc... To me, this would be a
| great way for the web to be. Rather than companies trying to
| scale up around link sharing, or be open source and hope people
| will dive into a codebase.
| TravisPeacock wrote:
| I actually forgot to mention but if you add /json to your url
| it will already give you your links.
|
| I am trying to make it difficult for bots to create/edit lynx
| because spam etc.
|
| I should note it on the site that the confirmation might go to
| spam.
| starkrights wrote:
| Tangential, but I love your feedback responses. I'm nobody,
| but I feel like these are exactly how I'd show off a product
| & then respond to feedback.
| twochillin wrote:
| Since there's a question mark about brutalism, here's a link or
| two to read up on. tl;dr Brutalism in graphic design today has
| two distinct in popular usage meanings:
|
| 1. Bare bones. Pure utility, any styling is simply for
| readability. Craigslist style.
|
| 2. Big, garish, bold; sometimes called Nu-brutalism or
| Sportsbrut.
|
| I should note that each of these has very little, if anything, to
| do with the 20th century architectural trend, which focused on
| applying usage of basic shapes and raw materials at a large
| scale. On the web, the "raw materials" part is the only real
| connection to the origins of the term, with the first one focused
| on lofi design with basic tooling, and the second highlighting
| garish things you can do with basic forms.
|
| Neo-brutalism is another trend to note; think of it as a focus on
| raw shapes with some niceties added on top to make things more
| interesting.
|
| Links:
|
| 1. https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2020/01/split-
| personality-b...
|
| 2. https://medium.com/@sepidy/how-can-i-design-in-the-neo-
| bruta...
| TravisPeacock wrote:
| I tried to incorporate both as much as I could. Minimally
| styled (there's less than a KB of styles) and if it is styled
| then use thick black lines.
|
| Great links
| rerdavies wrote:
| Seems to me that a truly minimalist website would have to be
| set in Times Roman (is that not still the default typeface).
| And that a truly brutalist website should have a gray
| background.
|
| Both utterly pedantic quibbles that are completely intended
| to be ignored.
|
| Good job.
| jdthedisciple wrote:
| Times _New_ Roman you mean, surely
|
| Can't improperly reference that legendary script.
| sylware wrote:
| Funny, because I am a user of links and lynx browsers... which do
| not support css.
|
| doh!
| smusamashah wrote:
| This being brutalist, you could (optionally?) eliminate the
| title/url fields altogether.
|
| Just provide a text box which accepts a list of entries where
| each entry is just "title URL". That's what I expect from this
| being brutalist.
|
| Notify line number with the link if text box contains invalid
| url.
| hypnot wrote:
| I was excited to see "minimalist" and "brutalist, but you lost me
| at requiring to enable my javascript, and after that using
| cloudflare Captcha.
| calmbonsai wrote:
| It's great seeing this design evolve in near real-time. Kudos HN.
| xaerise wrote:
| i created a link: https://lynx.boo/tos/edit ....
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