A Reflection on the Small Web

https://misc.l3m.in/txt/smollweb.txt

by sodimel • 4 years ago

55 55 4 years ago

misc.l3m.in

smcn2• 4 years ago

Just want to say that I love the way this page looks and think that I'm going to ~steal~ take inspiration from it.

sodimel9• 4 years ago

Thanks! I found that you need to add some kind of magic chars [0] at the beginning of the txt file in order to display utf-8 chars (prevent this Ã©Ã Â :P), here's how to do it:

    echo -e "\xef\xbb\xbf\n" > myfilename.txt

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte_order_mark#UTF-8

smcn2• 4 years ago

Ah, good to know! Thanks!

tiborsaas• 4 years ago

Oh, the good old PHP days, when the BOM was considered a source of bugs :)

SahAssar2• 4 years ago

I'm guessing you wouldn't need that if you set this header:

  Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8

ploum2• 4 years ago

I would like to point out at Gemini, which is an incredible community regarding this.

I’ve developed a terminal browser for the web/RSS/gemini/gopher and I’m everyday astonished how 95% of what I need is best served as simple text in my terminal. It makes me wonder "why do we to invest so much time learning/tweaking CSS/JS when all we want to do is exchanging text and a few pictures ?"

https://notabug.org/ploum/offpunk

PS: to be inclusive of gemini/gopher, I prefer the word "smolnet" over "small web". But we understand each other, that’s really a detail.

sodimel9• 4 years ago

I wanted to mention offpunk but I forgot! (edit: done)

(I read your posts on your gemlog as well as the french ones on your blog, thank you very much for writing all of these posts)

0xbadcafebee5• 4 years ago

Gemini and Gopher seem to be quite different from the intention of the small web. One is a retro-computing thing, the other is a mission to focus on people rather than organizations

tgvaughan• 4 years ago

In practice they're not so different . There are plenty of people regularly publishing stuff over gopher that has nothing to do with retro-computing. Gemini also grew out of a gopher community.

sylware2• 4 years ago

Mostly because corpos and web dev tantrums: planned obsolescence and corpo/web dev locking via non-pertinent technical complexity and size of the web engines. This is a scam or toxic dellusions.

Those "open source" web engines have grotesque and absurd complexity and size, are written with a computer language (c++) which has a syntax complexity morbidely accute that it requires compilers (even naive ones) not better than the web engines themselves.

Hard truth: bazillions of services provided over the net can be provided as noscript/basic (x)html, aka basic html forms.

Hard truth: asking nicely usually does not fix that (I tried).

Hard truth: the real work in not the web "code", it is protecting it against hackers, like DDOS attacks.

Hard truth: Don't fool youself, hackers will be "paid" to push hard those sites on big tech network infrastructure (or are idiots). "Ppl coding computer viruses are probably those who sell anti-virus software".

erwinh2• 4 years ago

On a higher level, the trend a couple of years ago to have big video banners & highly complex interactive websites with lots of moving content does seem to have turned a bit. You still see it a bit from these more designerly 'award-winning' websites that start up with a loading bar...

But now tools such as Google Lighthouse and Next.js logging first load file sizes makes it quite tangible to focus the team on and advocate for faster first meaningful content paints.

denton-scratch• 4 years ago

faster first meaningful content paints.

That seems like trying to address one of the symptoms, not the underlying problem. "First meaningful paint" means nothing to me, depending on what the developer means by "meaningful". Why can't I just have the whole page load and display quickly?

A lot of this nonsense is because of mobiles. Mobile browsers don't handle some UI elements (checkboxes, radios, drop-downs) very well, and all the browsers have "interesting" incompatibilities; so developers use these compatibility shims, which usually result in a badly-degraded desktop experience, and slowness for everyone.

So I'm blaming the mobile browsers. They don't deal with standard markup properly.

erwinh2• 4 years ago

Depending on the goals of the page I would say its not up to the developer either. Developer/designer/pm whoever should ask the user: is this part of the page/content meaningful to you to load first?

Unless you have something specific you want to communicate and then its up to you to decide whatever you find meaningful to show first.

margarina72• 4 years ago

Just to add to conversation, IMO the smol web is mostly in need of great content, and discoverability.

When I say great content, I mean something that can federate a large audience and serve as a reference and inspiration for others.

Today most of content creator are producing for the rich web, so most of the interaction happen there, and as a result most of the new content is formatted for the rich web.

From the top of my head, Phrack Magazine [1] is the only examples I can think of text based good content. It is mostly aimed at a very specific audience, but I am sure they are other examples out there.

Which basically lead to the other question of discoverability...

1: http://phrack.org/

mod• 4 years ago

This should meet your standard, I think:

https://woodgears.ca/

0x445442• 4 years ago

But then he blows it by linking to Instagram.

ploum2• 4 years ago

The more I’m on the smolnet, the more I believe that there’s no content on the smolnet. Only conversations.

You will not find that trendy topic everybody is talking about. You will not find buzz and virality. You will not find a bunch of content creators with thousands of consumers happy to comment/reshare.

And that’s the whole point.

You write in the smolnet thinking you write in the void. Then, sometimes, you realize you are part of a conversation. Because you see posts replying to you. Because you receive emails.

The web is now mostly a huge stadium where we watch millionnaires playing football. The smolnet is the grassy field were you can play with others, having fun and improving your skills.

The small field is not there to replace the huge stadium. You can even enjoy both.

dmitriid2• 4 years ago

A lot of these (Gemini included) throw the baby out with the bath water.

Yes, we want pages small. But we also want images and video in those pages, and those can and will be quite large.

sodimel9• 4 years ago

(you can point to images in gemini pages, you just can't display them, and it changes my way to consume this content)

onemoresoop• 4 years ago

Yes for distraction free content!!!

betwixthewires• 4 years ago

Speak for yourself. I'd just like to click a video link and have it open in VLC.

BrainVirus• 4 years ago

I'm not sure I like it. This Small Web stuff (and other similar movements) is close enough to plausibility to capture people's time and attention, but far enough from reality to inevitably fail without making a dent in the awful state of the Web today.

Here is something you should think about. If Small Web actually worked, we would be discussing this on Small Web right now. Do think about what this statement actually means before dismissing it as yet-another-negative-HN-comment.

This means, for starters, that I would gladly use another platform to discuss your ideas, but none of the websites from various "alternative web" movements have any plausible solutions for people collaborating with one another. Which indicates a kind of lack of high-level, systemic thinking that is absolutely essential if you want to change anything at scale.

0xbadcafebee5• 4 years ago

Do think about what this statement actually means before dismissing it as yet-another-negative-HN-comment.

Well you've pooh-poohed the idea without offering a constructive alternative. To me that's a typical negative HN comment. Why not suggest some ways to make it closer to reality?

hosteur• 4 years ago

One alternative would be the web as today but without JavaScript. I think 90% of what sucks about current web goes away if js goes away. I don’t like executing arbitrary code from the web anyway. Even if the browser sandboxes it. Most of what websites do with JavaScript is not in my interest anyway.

sodimel9• 4 years ago

If Small Web would actually worked, we would be discussing this on Small Web right now.

You mean discussing about lightweight websites on a website that weights less than 100KB? That would be incredible for sure :D

jasode• 4 years ago

post: One of those ways is to force your browser to *not* download any file larger than a fixed threshold (like 50 kilo bytes
You mean discussing about lightweight websites on a website that weights less than 100KB?

Many HN threads exceed the 50kb download you mentioned in your post. See examples from: https://news.ycombinator.com/best

- over ~200 comments will often exceed 50kb download

- over ~500 comments can exceed 100kb

(Open those big threads in with F12 browser Dev Tools and look at the byte counts.)

The arbitrary byte limits of 50kb or 100kb don't seem like a useful heuristic. In other words, if you tweak the rules to increase it to 200kb to allow HN threads, it then conflicts with other "bad" downloads that seemed to fit the profile of 50kb on other websites being an indicator of something unwanted.

lambic• 4 years ago

If Small Web actually worked, we would be discussing this on Small Web right now.

Doesn't HN count as Small Web? It seems pretty minimal.

sylware2• 4 years ago

small web as it does not require big software to interact.

Not small in traffic.

jrm4• 4 years ago

"Small Web" is certainly something of an extremely viable idea, I just think that e.g. Twitter captured the essence of it.

sodimel9• 4 years ago

Twitter does all of it's loading using js calls, there's no content on a twitter page without js, and it makes me sad [0].

[0]: Another small rant here: https://misc.l3m.in/txt/html.txt

entaloneralie• 4 years ago

At least for a little while they did, I quit twitter the day they closed the html version of their website.

jjulius• 4 years ago

I'm not sure I like it.

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that that is basically what it boils down to - the small web, and similar movements, just aren't for you. Because...

This Small Web stuff (and other similar movements) is close enough to plausibility to capture people's time and attention, but far enough from reality to inevitably fail without making a dent in the awful state of the Web today.

... in spite of that point, the small web has always been around in one form or another. While the rest of contemporary culture glommed onto Web 2.0 and social media, there were just enough people keeping alive some of the ideals from the older web that have made their way into the more contemporary "small web" movements that you see today. There's always been an audience.

Which indicates a kind of lack of high-level, systemic thinking that is absolutely essential if you want to change anything at scale.

But I don't see it (and this is just my view of the small web) as an attempt to completely wipe out the current, contemporary, "popular" web. "Scale" isn't the goal, and I'd argue that scaling is antithetical to the general ideal of a small web. It's about focusing on smaller, community-run spaces without all of the noise and bullshit. You have to resist scaling in order to keep that spirit.

To that end, the small web will always be there, for those who want it.

carapace• 4 years ago

inevitably fail

What would failure look like though?

I mean, I have a couple of Gemini sites ("capsules") up on sr.ht, I figure that they will stay available at least as long Drew Devault lives, and I bet he'll take steps to keep the service going beyond himself.

Since I'm not trying to record traffic stats, or monetize, or anything like that, how would failure be defined?

If Small Web actually worked, we would be discussing this on Small Web right now.

As lambic says in a sib comment, I think HN counts as "Small" (that's a large part of why I use it and not, say, twitter.) Sure it has some JS and CSS, but it's basically text-based and all the dynamism is unobtrusive.

none of the websites from various "alternative web" movements have any plausible solutions for people collaborating with one another.

Gemini, at least, has facilities for interaction, and some sites make use of them.

Also Gemini itself was developed by people collaborating with one another, largely over email & mailing list. (Interestingly, last I checked the mailing list serve had gone down, and they left it down because Gemini A) is done and B) has developed a self-sustaining community outside of the list.)

(FWIW, I have a mailing list and an IRC channel for collaborating with people, suits me fine. YMMV.)

t_mann4• 4 years ago

Are anchor tags frowned upon in the small web movement? It feels like making it harder to follow hyperlinks goes against the "spirit" of what the web was built for.

sodimel9• 4 years ago

(this txt file is not an html element, it's lighter than a traditional webpage because of my poor connection and the fact that I'm self-hosting my website)

t_mann4• 4 years ago

ok, but wouldn't the tags still be resolved by browsers, even if they're not wrapped inside <html>? or is the point that it's not meant to be viewed through a browser? the overhead of the tags in terms of bytes seems fairly negligible, no?

perilunar2• 4 years ago

I'm all in favour of small websites, but publishing plain text files to the web seems a little bit too crude for me.

If you take text file, wrap it with just a <pre></pre> tags, and publish it as .html you can then use any inline html tags such as bold, italics, links, etc. And even block level stuff like headings and lists.

But really, just mark up your text as plain, semantic HTML. It add very little to the file size.

A Reflection on the Small Web

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