[HN Gopher] The HTML Hobbyist
___________________________________________________________________
The HTML Hobbyist
Author : janandonly
Score : 202 points
Date : 2025-07-30 12:03 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.htmlhobbyist.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.htmlhobbyist.com)
| szszrk wrote:
| I instantly love the SVG animation ("the badge") and how it feels
| ok, while continents are flat and just move side to side :)
| unavoidable wrote:
| I've been looking for a community of exactly this! This website
| layout/feel scratches a really deep itch. Let's make a hand-
| crafted web of enthusiasts and bring back 1999 all by ourselves!
| :)
| nurettin wrote:
| Albeit it won't feel the same without windows 98 viruses, php
| exploits, yahoo! chat and flash animations.
| unavoidable wrote:
| Some of the sites on this "web ring" (amazing!) definitely
| have Yahoo chat like applets and GIF animations that remind
| me of Flash. I miss Flash (kind of).
| mxuribe wrote:
| Oh wow, are in luck! These kinds of communities have been
| building up over the last few years (maybe decade or so?), and
| now they're quite prevalent. I was about to share a few links
| (like indieweb.org, fediring.net, etc.)...but, then remembered
| stumbling upon the following blogroll/link page that does a
| wonderful job of capturing some really good starting points:
| https://shellsharks.com/indieweb
|
| Enjoy! :-)
| raytopia wrote:
| I'd recommend looking into Neocities.
| net01 wrote:
| have a look at this https://512kb.club/ this is a list of
| websites that are all handcrafted to be under 512kb of data
| revskill wrote:
| No. We need more spa.
| atoav wrote:
| Say no more: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
| US/docs/Web/API/View_Transi...
| revskill wrote:
| You have a good humor kind of thinking, i love it.
| graham1776 wrote:
| I love this. My wife calls them "art projects". It's freeing. Yes
| you build ideas and abandoned them. But so does an artist. Enjoy
| the creation even if it doesn't turn into a business.
|
| And yes domain collecting is real.
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| here's my hobby site, includes marquee, and a special Holy
| Chalice mouse icon
|
| https://utraque.org/
| endemic wrote:
| hilarious _and_ theologically sound!
| turnsout wrote:
| I love this, and I wish more people would just fire up a text
| editor and write HTML like it's 1994.
|
| If you do this, it's a good idea to learn about the handful of
| meta tags you'll need so your page doesn't look weird in search
| results or social media. But word to the wise, it's easy to go
| overboard with HTML "best practices."
| Nickersf wrote:
| I encourage this!
| Waterluvian wrote:
| The thing that's usually on my mind when people are lamenting how
| the Web has evolved is that all the tools are still there to
| build websites however you want. So the lamentation is really, "
| _other people_ are doing things in a way I don't like and that
| upsets my experience."
|
| Which is this mix of... yeah I guess that's true. I feel the
| same. But also, I have absolutely _zero_ right to really
| externalize that grievance. People can do whatever they want for
| good or bad reasons, whether I'm equipped to understand those
| reasons or not.
|
| But what we can do is be the change we want. Just make my own
| little oasis. Find other oases and hook 'em all up.
|
| Which then got me thinking about if there could be a special Web
| Classic experience we could voluntarily hook into. Maybe someone
| runs a search engine that only indexes crawled pages that have a
| X-Web-Classic header or whatever. If people actually want it
| enough to put the work in, can't we make it? I guess corporations
| would come to capitalize on its success if it became successful.
| But I'd be willing to fight that battle if we got to that point
| (ie. curation or tech limitations or whatever...)
|
| I'd love a browser that I switch into Web Classic Mode and it
| pretty much only reaches these resources. Example.com doesn't
| implement an X-Web-Classic header response? Give me a 404. Does
| it try to load cross origin resources that aren't X-Web-Classic?
| 404. Straight to 404.
| neonnoodle wrote:
| >Which then got me thinking about if there could be a special
| Web Classic experience we could voluntarily hook into.
|
| This is kind of like what the Gemini protocol is trying to do.
| mxuribe wrote:
| While i am not aware of a browser that behaves like you
| described exactly, i vaguely recall that there is a browser
| plugin that is similar to what you described....but can't find
| it right now.
|
| That being said, there is a search engine named Wiby
| [https://wiby.me] that focuses "...building a web of pages as
| it was in the earlier days of the internet.", so maybe that be
| nice to check out?
| zwnow wrote:
| > So the lamentation is really, "other people are doing things
| in a way I don't like and that upsets my experience."
|
| Well put. Personally I have zero issues with SPAs and the
| amount of Javascript we are facing in the web industry right
| now. And if you try to build some kind of business that wants
| to present itself successfully to potential customers, on the
| web, there is no way to write a appealing website without
| Javascript.
|
| Most target demographics at this point and in the future have
| grown up with beautiful websites and the internet being really
| interactive. I highly doubt they'd be interested in what you
| have to say if you wrote your page in a way the web was
| supposed to be used.
| recursive wrote:
| The whole idea of target demographics seems kind of
| antithetical to the premise here.
|
| Here's some information. Take it or leave it.
| zwnow wrote:
| This approach doesn't work nowadays. We have 3 apps for
| everything. If your app sucks people will go to one of the
| other 2.
| recursive wrote:
| It works as well as it ever did for its purposes. There's
| an implicit framing that we need to drive engagement and
| increase user base. Your comment is doing it too. In the
| old web, hobby sites existed on their own terms, and
| didn't have a prime directive of increasing metrics. If
| someone likes another site better, there's no problem for
| them to just use that instead.
| at-fates-hands wrote:
| >> there is no way to write a appealing website without
| Javascript.
|
| This has always made me wonder if anybody really builds
| anything from scratch any more. With so many frameworks, even
| for basic static sites, I wonder who's out there writing
| HTML, CSS and JS from scratch.
|
| Or is something that has been regulated to the dustbin of
| history?
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I'm sure some do.
|
| I've seen someone build furniture from literal trees and
| wooden tools. I guess they didn't smelt their own metal,
| but they're not using power tools. Is that a viable
| business? probably for a _very small_ bespoke traditional
| furniture audience. Most furniture these days is built
| using layers upon layers of technology. (and just like with
| the Web, people, including myself, have strong opinions on
| furniture quality and source)
| at-fates-hands wrote:
| When I was in college studying to be an anthropologist,
| of one my professors told about his TA who just happened
| to be studying one of the local Mennonite groups and they
| were complaining when the wheels on their buggies and
| other stuff would break or go bad, they really didn't
| have any local carpenters who could or would help them.
| It was kind of a big issue in their communities.
|
| He ended up doing a two year apprenticeship to learn how
| to hand make wheels and other instruments they needed.
| Before he graduated, he already had a very lucrative
| niche company and woodworking business selling his wares
| and delivering them to the families.
|
| There is still a strong demand for well built wood
| furniture but most people never realize there are
| economies that rely on this stuff for their livelihood.
| rikroots wrote:
| All of my canvas library's demo pages are hand-coded HTML,
| CSS and JS. Including the site navigation. Is it worth the
| effort? Probably not; I just do it this way because I'm too
| lazy to pull together a sensible tool chain.
|
| https://scrawl-v8.rikweb.org.uk/demo/index.html
| recursive wrote:
| I would if I was building something for my own purposes.
| And I wouldn't claim it to be the most efficient or
| beautiful. But if I did it for my own purposes, I wouldn't
| need to justify it. I just like the process.
| jv22222 wrote:
| I'm building a Google docs style platform from scratch. No
| js html css libs of any kind. (But also, not canvas, it
| does use contenteditable)
| lelanthran wrote:
| > With so many frameworks, even for basic static sites, I
| wonder who's out there writing HTML, CSS and JS from
| scratch.
|
| I do it, for my blog at least.
|
| However, I use a proprietary framework of my own for
| commercial software development with the only f/end
| dependency being materialcss (although, I won't be using
| that soon, either). Backend dependency is PostgreSQL.
| MrGilbert wrote:
| Shameless plug: My own website[1] is mostly handwritten,
| although I use PicoCSS as a CSS framework.
|
| [1]: https://g5t.de
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I think it could even be perceived in simpler terms: All
| website authors have a goal. They can choose whatever
| approach they want in trying to achieve that goal.
|
| Inside that idea are all the nuances of what's your goal? Who
| is your audience? What do they care about? What do they want?
| What do they tolerate? Etc. If you achieve your goal and
| reach your audience, but a different audience hates that
| you're using JavaScript or React or whatever, do you really
| care?
| 8n4vidtmkvmk wrote:
| I don't think I buy that. It's hard to build a nice web app
| without JS, but an informational website doesn't need JS to
| be beautiful.
| zwnow wrote:
| That's why I wrote business. Wikipedia works for ages now.
| woodrowbarlow wrote:
| craigslist too! that's a business. definitely an
| exception, though.
| motorest wrote:
| > I don't think I buy that. It's hard to build a nice web
| app without JS, but an informational website doesn't need
| JS to be beautiful.
|
| It's not that I disagree with the premise, but you should
| understand that the "informational website" scenario tends
| to apply only to a subset of a website's requirements. As
| soon as you stumble upon any need that goes beyond what
| static HTML can provide, you are faced with the decision to
| either create tech sprawl and a patchwork of ad-hoc
| solutions, or you just bite the bullet and onboard a
| framework that handles all your needs.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Scripting heavy sites do provide a good signal; you can be
| sure the people behind them are prone to bad designs and
| aesthetics over functionality. It is disheartening to see how
| popular that stuff is, but at least it draws attention to
| itself.
| zwnow wrote:
| Customers won't care about all that. You may be right from
| a engineering view but thats not where the money is.
| wryoak wrote:
| I think that's where you're misunderstanding the
| intention of this. It's not about money or customers, or
| even engineering for that matter
| bee_rider wrote:
| > It is disheartening to see how popular that stuff is
| [...]
|
| > Customers won't care about all that. [...]
|
| Looks like we're on a similar page.
|
| I do think people are generally frustrated with how shit
| everything is nowadays, but have trouble spotting the
| root cause.
|
| A suspicion of mine (I have no data) is that part of the
| problem is that most of the folks who could handle
| complexity and who pay attention to detail (people who
| could be designing QA tests for devices) have instead
| been funneled into building and testing complex websites.
| Or building website building frameworks and then testing
| the frameworks, the websites themselves rarely seem to
| actually get tested.
|
| It is also hard to price the cost of all this nonsense,
| because the main way of paying for it is that companies
| buy ads on social media sites. The price of those ads has
| to be factored into the price of their products
| eventually, but it is all really diffuse.
|
| What can we do? Not buy stuff from companies that engage
| in all this. I don't buy much, as a result.
| ngriffiths wrote:
| > But what we can do is be the change we want. Just make my own
| little oasis. Find other oases and hook 'em all up.
|
| Perfectly said and I think this is applicable far beyond
| websites.
| bowsamic wrote:
| What a load of rubbish. We absolutely can criticise other
| people's choices. It's insane to think you should only be
| allowed to choose your own
| poszlem wrote:
| This is nostalgia for the world before a series of "Eternal
| September" events. In my opinion, it's essentially longing for
| an internet dominated by a different kind of user than today's
| majority and no amount of technical solutions will solve that.
| kkukshtel wrote:
| spot on
| jraph wrote:
| It's not necessarily nostalgia nor a feeling that the thing
| is mainstream so we are not special anymore.
|
| These heavy websites and apps have many consequences:
|
| - security: supply chain attacks. For the user, difficulties
| to check what runs in the browser (yeah, most users don't
| know how to do this and/or will not take the time - all the
| more reason, I'd say).
|
| - software freedom: you end up running a crazy amount of non-
| free software in your browser, or you are just barred from
| basic things
|
| - environment: it's a disaster: this stuff requires powerful
| devices, and probably leads to the disposal of many perfectly
| capable phones / computers. CIs are spending crazy CPU ticks
| building and building the app. Complex CDN-based setups to
| mitigate a bit the bloat.
|
| - cost for the users: after having to buy newer hardware
| better have a strong data plan for all these heavy wannabe
| app websites!
|
| - wait time for the users: it's awful the amount of time we
| collectively waste looking at loaders and slowly loading
| pages despite crazy bandwidths of today.
|
| - convenience: all this memory and cpu usage leads to worse
| battery time. If your network is spotty, you'll need to spend
| a lot of time retrying to load the thing
|
| - inclusion: if you happen to live in an area where you can
| only afford slow network access, things will be barely
| usable.
|
| Environmental costs and user costs for developer convenience.
| As usual, companies externalize costs.
|
| It's not only irrational feelings like nostalgia, it's solid
| reasons as well.
|
| I do have hope that we figure out at least more lightweight
| SPAs at some point though.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Nailed it.
|
| I find it pretty annoying that people mischaracterize the
| dislike of the modern web as nostalgia. The modern web is a
| big wasteful resource hog that expects users to just
| randomly download and run JavaScript programs.
|
| And another thing: A modern web browser has to be
| incredibly performant because of all the bloat, and also
| have a robust enough sandbox to just download JavaScript
| programs from the Internet and run them. So we've ended up
| in a situation where only Google can (plausibly pretend to)
| have a good enough sandbox for this use-case.
|
| This isn't just nostalgic grumpiness, we've gone from a
| diverse ecosystem to a hugely fragile tech monoculture run
| by an ad company.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I dunno. I have zero interest in World of Warcraft Retail,
| but there's also a smaller World of Warcraft Classic
| community that I'm thoroughly enjoying a 20-year-old
| nostalgia boost from.
|
| We cannot _make_ Retail turn itself back into _Classic_ but
| we can have choices.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _This is nostalgia for the world before a series of "Eternal
| September" events._
|
| The good news is that we're headed right back to the old days
| before there was an "internet."
|
| Back then, all information was paywalled and siloed in
| CompuServe, GEnie, Delphi, Quantum Link, American People
| Link, and a dozen other services.
|
| Today, all information is quickly migrating back into
| paywalls and silos. Only the names have changed.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I wouldn't say the internet is dominated by a different kind
| of user nowadays. In the past it was dominated by a bunch of
| nerds, now it is dominated by Google, a company founded by
| some old-school nerds. Sure, a much smaller subset of the
| original nerds that now control it, but is not really a
| different kind of user.
| Gud wrote:
| Google is not the user.
| s_ting765 wrote:
| Take this website for example. https://www.adaline.ai/
|
| Some vibe coder saw nothing wrong with this. This is the future
| of the web.
| oc1 wrote:
| what's wrong with that?
| s_ting765 wrote:
| Open the network tab on F12. Or for giggles try accessing
| that UI from mobile.
| oc1 wrote:
| 365 requests 77.2 MB transferred 79.8 MB resources
| Finish: 5.71 s
|
| I'm impressed it took only 6 seconds. Would hire.
| Popeyes wrote:
| I mean that's the kind of website I would have been done by
| Flash and I would played around for ages on. Now it's just
| stupid scroll jacking and poor HTML.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Frankly I think it's badass that people can author such
| incredibly rich and different websites. We truly are spoiled
| with choice.
| s_ting765 wrote:
| I disagree. It's badass, revolutionary even, to communicate
| with simple html, javascript and css in 2025!
| motorest wrote:
| > Some vibe coder saw nothing wrong with this.
|
| What do you think is wrong with the site?
| vntok wrote:
| Why would you think it is bad?
|
| The website cost next to nothing but a bit of prompting time,
| it loads almost instantly on my 2021 smartphone while on
| network broadband (4G), it uses parallelism extensively to
| optimize perfs with cascade loads, it is very responsive, and
| it's objectively quite nice to the eye.
| philote wrote:
| I think the answer to "classic mode" browsing is at the bottom
| of the site: web rings.
| timeon wrote:
| Even this article links to login-walled Twitter when talking
| about "1000 zines" instead of linking to web ring or some of
| those zines.
| Tade0 wrote:
| > Maybe someone runs a search engine that only indexes crawled
| pages that have a X-Web-Classic header or whatever.
|
| Well, not exactly, but this is the next best thing:
|
| https://www.marginalia.nu/
|
| The author is a HN regular.
| exitb wrote:
| The neat part of the late 90s/early 2000s web was that, when
| you did something vaguely interesting, people actually came to
| see it and engaged with it. Obviously you can still create a
| weird webpage but it doesn't matter if you publish it, as it
| will attract exactly zero traffic anyway.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _But what we can do is be the change we want. Just make my own
| little oasis. Find other oases and hook 'em all up._
|
| While I agree with everything you wrote, the nuance is that not
| everyone _can_ make their own little oasis. That doesn 't make
| a complaint about a lack of oasis invalid.
|
| And even for those who can, the vast majority of time spent on
| the internet is consuming content, not creating it, so it's
| perfectly logical to lament the lack of the little oasis that
| used to exist.
|
| _I'd love a browser that I switch into Web Classic Mode and it
| pretty much only reaches these resources._
|
| Be the change you want: https://github.com/mozilla-
| firefox/firefox
| bee_rider wrote:
| I don't want to impose my preferences on other random people. I
| think sites loaded up with JavaScript are garbage and the
| people who make them are bad at their jobs, but whatever,
| that's their business. I can hold negative opinions about
| things without suggesting we ban them.
|
| But I do think it should be considered totally unacceptable for
| things like government services to be gatekept by JavaScript.
| Same for entities that receive lots of public funds, like
| universities.
| ravenstine wrote:
| I see there being two related but distinct issues:
|
| - The desire for a simpler, quaint looking Web
|
| - The desire for _discoverability_ on the Web that isn 't so
| driven by algorithms
|
| I love what the Web once was, aesthetically speaking, but to me
| the real problem is that of discoverability.
|
| There was a time where, if you built it, the audience would
| come. Today that is not so much the case, especially for
| written content which has become so heavily devalued. I would
| never write a blog today (especially one that is self-hosted)
| because I know I would spend most of my time begging for
| scraps. If you really want a large enough audience that your
| creative efforts are worthwhile, you have to _churn out_
| content. I don 't want to churn anything out. One can churn out
| snippets, which is effectively what one does on sites like X,
| but then your writing has to either by pithy truisms or cringey
| drama. Besides, more and more people just want to consume
| content _passively_ through audio and video. But then now I
| have to essentially put on a big production just to get my
| ideas out there, and for an audience that is probably less
| intellectually curious than those who would actually read an
| article.
|
| The classic Web isn't coming back until something changes about
| the way people discover new things. The web is no longer a
| place where one goes to seek information; it's where
| information _comes to you_ through word-of-mouth and so-called
| algorithms putting content in front of you.
|
| Golden-era web was great. Now I'd just rather do my job,
| comment on HN, and go fishing. Actually trying to bring back
| the old web is like trying to bring back Jazz clubs hoping
| everyone will come to their senses and dance the Charleston
| again. No, it will always be a niche thing.
| krapp wrote:
| I don't think that discovery without algorithms is possible,
| because the Web is essentially unstructured. Any means of
| discovery needs a way to _organize_ all of that information,
| and then present it in a _relevant_ way. People forget that
| Google was actually good at this.
|
| The problem isn't algorithms per se, but how those algorithms
| are implemented. Unfortunately, people coming up with
| alternatives tend to lean too far in the other direction - we
| have alternative search engines designed to exclude all sites
| using Javascript, for instance, which cater to people who
| don't want to interact with any part of the modern web, but
| we don't have an alternative that does what Google used to do
| before search became big business and simply attempt to
| catalog the _entire_ web (including the parts that HN hates)
| and display relevant results to the end user.
| floren wrote:
| > I would never write a blog today (especially one that is
| self-hosted) because I know I would spend most of my time
| begging for scraps. If you really want a large enough
| audience that your creative efforts are worthwhile, you have
| to churn out content.
|
| Why assume you need to seek an audience at all? I have been
| periodically writing blog posts for about 15 years about
| whatever I feel like. I may only post a few times a year. I
| don't have comments turned on. I still enjoy going back
| periodically to see what I was up to in 2015, and
| occasionally I get a really nice email from someone who
| stumbled on a post they found worthwhile.
| ravenstine wrote:
| To each their own. At that point, I'd rather just write to
| myself without publishing so that I can be 110% candid,
| which I already do by journaling.
| derekzhouzhen wrote:
| My blog is essentially my journal; no one else reads it.
| However, knowing someone else _might_ read it is making
| me spend the effort to write in better style, to watch my
| language, so I would not be embarrassed by myself. That's
| the value of blog over journal for me.
| BalinKing wrote:
| To be fair, they could be entirely disjoint sets of people, but
| I'm surprised by the simultaneous 1) hate for JavaScript[0] and
| the "modern web" and 2) praise for all the Flash-based websites
| from the '90s-'00s. To be fair, my first interactions with the
| web were largely after the "Flash for everything" era, so I
| might be out-of-the-loop: Did corporate Flash-based homepages
| get the same reaction then that SPAs do now?
|
| [0] I _do_ strongly dislike JavaScript myself, but specifically
| from the perspective of language design.
| reactordev wrote:
| Flex was amazing. It was flash based app builder for
| enterprises with a robust ecosystem of "components". It was
| the React of Flash.
| githubholobeat wrote:
| An alternative exists to Flex. It is called Apache Royale
| [https://royale.apache.org/]. Here is a components showcase
| [https://royale.apache.org/tourdejewel/]
| reactordev wrote:
| Yeah, no, HTML won. Sorry.
| CM30 wrote:
| Oh, I remember a lot of developers hated Flash back in the
| olden days, especially those that focused their efforts on
| usability or who wanted to advance web standards. Case in
| point:
|
| https://www.nngroup.com/articles/flash-99-percent-bad/
|
| Heck, I'm sure at least some people celebrated when Adobe
| pulled support for Flash, just like some people probably
| would now if the likes of React went away forever.
| Animats wrote:
| > All the tools are still there to build websites however you
| want.
|
| No, they're not. The good tools all died off.
|
| I wish there was still something good that just edited HTML and
| CSS locally and uploaded it. Mozilla Composer died long ago.
| Its spinoffs, Nvu, Kompozer, and Blue Griffon are all dead. You
| can still buy Dreamweaver, but Adobe wants $300 or so a year
| now, and they really want to sell you their whole "creative
| cloud". Brackets has been abandoned and converted to something
| called Phoenix, which now does more things less well.
|
| I don't want a whole "content management system" that assembles
| pages on the fly from a database. Just a decent WYSIWYG editor
| that can also manage uploads. I don't want something controlled
| by the hosting service. I'm using a Dreamhost account for this
| site, and its main purpose is to host some API endpoints
| implemented in Go. The human-readable web part is just the
| documentation. There are many images, so I need more layout
| than Markdown supports. It's not a blog, so Wordpress is the
| wrong tool for the job.
|
| You'd think there would be something good. As far as I can
| tell, no. Anybody know of anything?
| motorest wrote:
| > I wish there was still something good that just edited HTML
| and CSS locally and uploaded it.
|
| What's wrong with launching a file watcher, opening the page
| in a browser, and editing away with any IDE of your choice?
| Animats wrote:
| That's writing HTML and CSS by hand, which is a pain.
| azemetre wrote:
| Not everyone makes websites by hand. I know people that
| strictly use WYSIWYG editors to make static content. My
| friend uses this very archaic looking program to make his
| static content. They all look like design straight taken
| from geocities but it's what they use. I doubt they're a
| small co-hort.
|
| They're probably larger in number than devs.
| al_borland wrote:
| It looks like RapidWeaver still exists, though last I used
| it, it wasn't a typical WYSIWYG editor like classic
| Dreamweaver. I found it has a higher learning curve than I'd
| like.
|
| https://www.realmacsoftware.com/rapidweaver/
|
| Most WYSIWYG editors have become text editors. Panic's Coda
| has become Nova (a text editor). Even what I last saw of
| Dreamweaver, it was very code-forward.
|
| I think the less technical users just use platforms. More
| technical users have historically turned up their noses as
| WYSIWYG editors, so it left a gap in the market.
|
| Looking at AlternativeTo, there are some options out there.
|
| https://alternativeto.net/software/adobe-
| dreamweaver/?featur...
| Animats wrote:
| - Rapidweaver. Nice, but MacOS only. Seems to be on the way
| out, too. It's called "Classic" now, and they want users to
| migrate to "Elements", which comes with "cloud storage".
|
| - Silex. "It is designed for no-code developers with basic
| HTML/CSS knowledge". That's an oxymoron. Silex looks
| interesting, but the documentation is confusing. It used to
| be a desktop application.[1] That was discontinued in 2022.
| Now it seems to be more closely tied to Gitlab. Worth a
| look.
|
| There are some commercial products, but most are cloud-
| dependent.
|
| [1] https://github.com/silexlabs/silex-desktop/releases
| rekabis wrote:
| > Just a decent WYSIWYG editor that can also manage uploads.
|
| There is your problem.
|
| Any such editor will invariably be heavily limited to what
| its developers envisioned the user's use cases as being, and
| therefore WYSIWYG software is fiendishly complex as a result
| for even simple layouts and designs (as opposed to straight
| code editors).
|
| Plus, web frameworks (HTML, CSS, JS, etc.) are still evolving
| on a yearly basis, requiring constant updates to any WYSIWYG
| that demand either a paid product or something that rides on
| the well-funded coattails of another service or product.
|
| If you want a piece of software that lasts, learn how to code
| directly. If you can picture a soccer ball in your mind, you
| can (mostly) reliably envision what code will appear like on
| the screen before you even test it. It takes practice and
| experience, but building the WYSIWYG aspect into your own
| mind is eminently doable unless you have aphantasia.
|
| And honestly, that's how I view WYSIWYG editors: as
| accessibility tools for people whose legitimate disability is
| aphantasia.
|
| For everyone else, WYSIWYG tools are a skills-nerfing crutch,
| as it isolates the user's use of code from its direct
| consequences. By working directly with code, you are _forced_
| to envision the output of each element and its relationship
| to everything else on the page.
|
| And honestly, the only major exception I can come up with is
| desktop publishing, where the underlying "code" is typically
| restricted to that master file on the designer's computer,
| and has no effect beyond it... once the file is printed out
| (and the content leaves the designer's control) everything is
| cemented 'in stone' and the underlying "code" no longer has
| any impact. Because the system is radically more constrained,
| with markup standards that are limited to the software and
| not world+dog, a WYSIWYG program _makes sense._ And yet...
| most are still paid products.
| Animats wrote:
| > WYSIWYG tools are a skills-nerfing crutch
|
| Everyone should be writing their documents in LaTeX, not
| using Microsoft Office or Google Docs as a crutch to
| understanding formatting.
| wolpoli wrote:
| WordPress isn't just for blogs and I think it might fit your
| use case for documenting a set of API endpoint. There is
| likely a free swagger plugin in WordPress that would help
| you, although I hadn't really looked.
|
| Other than that, you could look at using a static site
| generator like MkDocs or Docusaurus. It'll generate a site of
| HTML pages, and you could either manually upload them to your
| host, or you could set up an automation that updates your
| host when you merge changes into git.
|
| I think my response illustrates another problem with modern
| tools compared to the 90s - there isn't any single tool that
| edits HTML/CSS and upload them. You now have to glue together
| several tools.
| jrm4 wrote:
| What?
|
| We have zero right to externalize it?
|
| That's _absolutely ridiculous_ and I 'm surprised this is a
| thought taken seriously.
|
| The Web isn't some sort of optional little playground anymore;
| it's literally the "cyberspace" that affects us all, whether we
| like it or not. Going full Ted K. isn't an option for normal
| people. As such, not only isn't criticizing it allowed -- NOT
| criticizing it when you know about it is irresponsible.
|
| Please, everyone, continue to EXTERNALIZE THE HELL OUT OF THIS
| GRIEVANCE.
| degenoah wrote:
| You have no idea how much nostalgia I was just hit with the
| instant I opened that website. In a way, this feels liberating to
| see.
| bowsamic wrote:
| In my experience the issue with these ideas is that they are so
| niche that it ends up being a network of unstable or odd people
| who I cannot at all relate to. Of course when there is a
| selection effect towards enthusiasts you end up losing a lot of,
| for lack of a better word, socially "normal" people. And then,
| yes, it does become harder to enjoy. I'm sure this will be cast
| as my problem but it's a very real effect. Of course there was
| also some selection effect at the beginning of the internet but
| the net was still a bit wider than it is today. I'm not really
| interested in the 1000th furry rust hacker
| rambambram wrote:
| Now I'm curious, what are some places on the internet that you
| like and would consider calling "socially normal"?
| daft_pink wrote:
| I find it very enjoyable to build svelte 5 websites where all the
| JavaScript and css is inline and nothing is needed but the page.
| Complicated application logic that runs on virtually any platform
| with a ui in one document that can just be uploaded to a simple
| server. It's beautiful :)
| mock-possum wrote:
| I'm somewhat tickled by the irony that the webs of yesteryear
| would never have been able to display that animated svg badge,
| iirc.
| Arch-TK wrote:
| It's funny to talk about non-essential CSS and then to use a grey
| background.
|
| I don't think any CSS should be essential, but I think tasteful
| changes to make your website look unique for those who have it
| enabled is totally appropriate.
|
| E.g. https://kramkow.ski/
| tropicalfruit wrote:
| is it the "democratization of publication and a liberation of
| information" we miss or the authenticity that came from a lack of
| polish
|
| there was more personality from an era of tech-naivety. sadly
| thats almost all gone.
| immibis wrote:
| It was the way it hadn't been financially optimized to hell
| yet.
|
| Basically, the web, today, is roughly 99.999% spam. This wasn't
| the case in 1995. In 1995 it was mostly ham.
|
| Spam is any media that is created with a higher importance
| placed on making money than on making the media enjoyable.
| azdle wrote:
| For people who are excited about this idea, this coming Saturday
| is HTML Day: https://html.energy/html-day/2025/
| oc1 wrote:
| What a bunch of crap. Everyone who lived these era remembers the
| horrors of optimizing for a bunch of different browsers. Ajax was
| barely understood. PHP was all over the place. No frameworks. No
| Stack overflow. No Vibe Coding. Nah. Nowadays i just have to
| prompt Claude "Hey, write me a html site for html hobbyists and
| upload it somewhere on the internet". voila!
| fauverism wrote:
| This era is before optimizing for browsers.
| rambambram wrote:
| I like how you say this last part out loud, even with some
| sense of pride, it seems.
| shayway wrote:
| I've noticed a bit of a divide in the small web, between those
| who:
|
| A. Want to get back to the web's roots as a document network,
| keeping a clear structure and a focus on content,
|
| B. Want to use the web's flexible presentation itself as a medium
| for expression through styling, interactive content and so on
|
| The Gemini protocol is a good example of A taken to its extreme,
| while e.g. Neocities leans more toward the latter. The web is by
| its nature fractured - the independent web even moreso - but
| sometimes it seems the gap between the two philosophies is the
| biggest obstacle to more widespread adoption of small web
| practices, or at least more unified tools for discovery and
| networking.
|
| It also seems like developers tend to favor type A, which has led
| to robust infrastructure and projects around it - like Gemini, or
| the site linked here. But I think a lot of people looking to make
| a break from big tech are doing so because of the limitations,
| and going from one set of awkward restrictions to another doesn't
| look like an upgrade.
|
| Just my two cents. I'd be sad to miss out on the wacky creative
| sites people build, whether it's because they're stuck in big
| social media, or because they took the pledge from the linked
| page:
|
| > make a simple, honest website with the proper use of HTML, the
| use of CSS only where essential, and the use of JavaScript only
| where it's absolutely necessary.
| fauverism wrote:
| I used to love... - https://shift.jp.org/ - https://dhky.com -
| https://praystation.com - https://burodestruct.net/ -
| https://www.netbabyworld.com/
|
| I feel good about the future when I see... https://os.ryo.lu/
| https://neal.fun/
|
| Somewhere on a zip are my IE 5.5 bookmarks. I'll stumble upon
| them again one day and remember how excited I was to surf the web
| on my 233mhz G3.
| foco_tubi wrote:
| 1,000 different universities, 1,000 different research centers,
| 1,000 different scientific organizations, 1,000 different
| fanzines, 1,000 different personal sites, 1,000 different hobby
| sites, 55 burgers, 55 fries, 55 tacos, 55 pies, 55 Cokes, 100
| tater tots, 100 pizzas, 100 tenders, 100 meatballs, 100 coffees,
| 55 wings, 55 shakes, 55 pancakes, 55 pastas, 55 peppers, and 155
| taters.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| needs more taters! (+deg#deg)+( +-+
| samgranieri wrote:
| jokes about tater tots hilariously disrupted work slack a few
| years ago. so many napoleon dynamite jokes
| mclau157 wrote:
| Can we not just attempt to revive the Neopets days not of flash
| but of fun content on the web easily accessible?
| lutusp wrote:
| The problem with traditional Websites is that search engines
| don't index them in a way that attracts visitors. I know this
| because my archaic, out-of-date, 34-year-old static-page Website
| https://arachnoid.com/ has no advertising or other features that
| might cause it to be given priority by a search engine.
|
| My occasional use of JavaScript only supports technical
| animations, specialized calculators and real-time LaTeX
| rendering, not dynamic page generation or dark patterns.
|
| From a modern perspective, my Website is actually a museum. The
| proof? While I once directed Website visitors to my YouTube
| channel (https://www.youtube.com/@lutusp), I now find myself
| directing YouTube viewers to my Website.
|
| Not our topic, but one reason is kids can't read:
| https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/american-childrens...
|
| Apropos, here's one of my favorite jokes. I visit a bookstore. On
| the wall is a poster: "The tragedy of illiteracy -- now available
| as an audiobook."
| reactordev wrote:
| I like this. I remember my first website. A collection of all the
| punk rock websites I could find. Then I started designing sites.
| That lead to a software career. But, even though I don't _do_ web
| sites anymore (way better qualified people for that), I have
| maintained a personal website for the last 20 years.
|
| Right now it's just a thing I did for fun. I'm always messing
| around with JavaScript. No frameworks, just fun.
|
| https://gabereiser.com
| _the_inflator wrote:
| I, too, lament the fact that some dude laments about others. ;)
|
| Technically, the dude is right, but stating the obvious doesn't
| help. Simply saying "Let's do something like 1996 while
| appreciating 2025, because!" would have caught my sympathy.
|
| I like projects like these, but lose sympathy when these people
| trash others as phony; The "purity is the ultimate
| sophistication" is a dogma.
|
| Roll everything back? "Hey, stop doing Java or Go, let's go X86
| Assembly instead because in the end your code is only an
| abstraction and the magic happens in the compiler and linker,
| which produce a gargantuan bloat of X86 machine language
| instructions."
|
| We could say the same about "pure HTML". Which standard? Why not
| text files?
|
| PS: Has someone already written a browser for HTML in pure X86
| yet? It is about time, I guess.
|
| (I love Assembler, do quite some 6510 and 68000 assembler stuff.
| But it is hard. Brutally hard. I am glad we evolved from there.)
| ineptech wrote:
| Last week I wanted to quiz myself on German vocab words, and
| after searching in vain for a simple "flashcard" site without
| subscriptions or bullshit I ended up just making one myself. Very
| barebones, a single index.htm file with a little css and js in
| the header. Threw it on to a silly novelty domain I own (
| ineptech.com/flash ) and bang, a useful (to me) webapp from zero
| to done in maybe two hours. And I'm a terrible programmer! It
| does feel sort of powerful in the way this site describes.
|
| Still, I can't see buying a domain for it and putting it on this
| guy's webring, because while it's possible someone somewhere
| might find it useful, i don't think it's possible that person
| would be able to find it. They'd see the same 30 links to adware
| crap I saw and build their own like I did. In fact I'm probably
| the hundredth person to build this exact site for themselves.
| That part doesn't feel so powerful.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| Steps 1 and 2 are flipped. You should make the website _before_
| you put your credit card in
|
| Always use relative links like `../css/default.css`. Never use
| absolute links like `example.com/css/default.css`, never use
| domain-relative links like `/css/default.css`. Those will break
| your site when it moves between domains, between directories, or
| between schemas.
|
| If you use relative links judiciously, you can prototype your
| site under `file://` and it will Just Work when uploaded
| mattlutze wrote:
| I'm currently on hiatus from work and took it on myself to build
| some passion projects. It's been really fun to strictly build
| with HTML5, hand-jammed CSS and I've been learning HTMX for some
| dynamic content.
|
| They are soooo simple, but still feel like web applications I've
| seen significant businesses built around. I hope to drive more
| projects this direction when I'm at work again.
| exiguus wrote:
| What fascinates me about the World Wide Web is that all the
| technology is open, and the specifications are open. This
| includes everything from BIND, Apache, and Gecko to codecs and
| the operating systems that run the web, as well as all the
| working groups of the W3C and their specifications. You can teach
| yourself everything. You can read the specifications, implement
| them, and even improve them. You can create your own software and
| share it with others. You can build your own website, host it on
| a server, and make it accessible to the world.
|
| For me, this is the essence of the World Wide Web: it is open and
| accessible to everyone. It makes knowledge accessible to everyone
| in the world, regardless of how poor, educated, or disabled you
| are. It's kind of a communist utopia, where everyone can
| participate and contribute.
|
| Now, why do I write this and use the term "communist utopia"?
| Because I think that the World Wide Web is a great example of how
| open standards and open technology can create a better world.
| Even when capitalism tries to take over the web, it is still a
| place where everyone can participate and contribute.
|
| And this brings me to the point of this article: Telling people
| what not to do and what to do when sharing content is, in my
| opinion, not the way to go. Instead, we should focus on how to
| make the web a better place for everyone. We should focus on how
| to make it more accessible, more inclusive, and more open. We
| should focus on how to make it a place where everyone can
| participate and contribute freely. And by freely, I mean without
| losing your autonomy or paying with private information.
| ge96 wrote:
| I remember I had a friend design this crazy interface and I used
| that as a background on the website, then I'd use position
| absolute to mount interfaces to it, oh boy... scales the window,
| doh
|
| Proportionally it kind of works but has problems
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-07-30 23:01 UTC)