Gregory's ServerOne of the things that drives me nuts about the modern Web is that you could write a plain text file, save it as "index.html", and it will display just fine. And everyone seems to have forgotten this.
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@foolishowl People forget how svelte and flexible the HTTP/HTML trifecta is. It's just been horribly abused by bad design decisions mostly at the hands of marketers. @praetor I remember early Web design guides that complained about the limitations of HTML that made it difficult to control the user's experience. Preventing people from controlling the user's experience was part of the point. I remember the 90s, how word processor formats were, by design, incompatible. SGML was invented for archivists, to allow the creation of documents that were free of vendor lock-in and obsolescence. HTML was derived from that.  @praetor With all flexibility still, there is not too much easy way to include repetitive content like footer/header/navigation, so at least some tools likely necessary, like static site generator.  @foolishowl perhaps now that search engines are lost with AI brain fog the old ways will come back Related - neocities.org  I was curious as to whether anyone had tested simple vs complex sites and found LOTS of examples in your favor. Here is a good example. "After just two-and-a-half weeks, these were their staggering results:" https://cxl.com/blog/why-simple-websites-are-scientifically-better/ @Ralph That's interesting. I'm thinking in terms of how to make it really easy to publish on the Internet; I'm impressed by the possibilities of static site generators and markdown. My point about text is that people shouldn't have to be worried about web design if they want to do something as simple as publishing essays. @Ralph From reading through the Wikipedia page, Nvu was an active project from 2004 to 2005, then shelved in favor of KompoZer, which was an active project until 2010. SeaMonkey is still an active project and includes Seamonkey Composer, a descendant of Mozilla Composer. Cool, I was actually using IceApe, which was the Debian (copyright free) version of Seamonkey. I didn't want to go down that rabbit hole unless you were already versed in Linux branching. Good luck with your quest for HTML simplicity! @Ralph "“Visually complex” websites are consistently rated as less beautiful than their simpler counterparts." this sounds like study done in US-only audience group. I recall an article that describes how different "beautiful website" looks for the Japan audience, and author described the possible reasons, partly coming from local typographic and culture traditions. @foolishowl   @foolishowl The last two websites I published are SPWs, aka index.htmls. (Okay, one is generated, by Pandoc, but the other is hand-crafted 🧑💻)  @foolishowl I didn't and in fact I take pride in my Website being only text, some basic CSS and a single WebFont self-hosted on it... @foolishowl But is it *really* a website if you don't have to download 5 MB of dependencies to display it?  @foolishowl the problem is that "look good" needs to mean "have the look controlled" because accessibility and user experience are antifeatures when compared to the ability to make the browser a desktop program experience
 @foolishowl You can't get paid for doing that. The people paying for the web see it as a surveillance tool at best; most of them see it as a means of compulsion. ("I can make you give me money.")   @foolishowl@social.coop relatedly, everyone seems to have forgotten how to make things degrade gracefully. if I can't even view the basic text on your basic website when I block the megabyte of JS and CSS you try to serve me, or worse, you actively block me from viewing it to "block bots" or "prevent your content from being copied"... what are you even doing?  @foolishowl but Big Tech have ruined the Internet and the Web! Subscribe to my substack and don't forget to star my github repos.  @foolishowl The bare-bones HTML can be a little blunt. I need just a little bit of styling, something like readable.css adds a few kilobytes of overhead. @nantucketebooks Oh, to be sure, a little effort goes a long way. I'm mostly emphasizing that the basics can be simple and easy to understand. Actually, looking at https://readable-css.freedomtowrite.org , it looks like it's very much the sort of thing I'd hope for. @nantucketebooks @foolishowl I believe you mean: "the default rendering by browsers can be a little blunt", if I'm wrong sorry But that is something we could fix with better *browsers* rather than forcing individual pages to have styling |
@foolishowl
Amen