One 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.
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.
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.
I used the WYSIWYG HTML editor called Mozilla Composer. It was very simple as long as you just want text, images, lists, tables, and links (no CSS nonsense or ECMAScript). It looks like the latest iteration is Nvu (pronounced "N-view").
@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. https://www.seamonkey-project.org/
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.
@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
i like how in 2023 it’s still possible to ssh into your university linux account, put some html text files in your public AFS folder and boom you have a website.
Parade du Grotesque 💀
•Praetor 🏳️🌈
•FoolishOwl
•@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.
Ænðr E. Feldstraw reshared this.
Kévin ⏚
•perhaps now that search engines are lost with AI brain fog the old ways will come back
Related - neocities.org
Omnivore
•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/
Why simple website design is the best: the scientific reasons
Tommy Walker (CXL)FoolishOwl reshared this.
FoolishOwl
•@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.
Omnivore
•I used the WYSIWYG HTML editor called Mozilla Composer. It was very simple as long as you just want text, images, lists, tables, and links (no CSS nonsense or ECMAScript). It looks like the latest iteration is Nvu (pronounced "N-view").
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Composer
You can see an example of the result here:
http://instrumentation.conlang.org/instwork.html
I haven't actually used Nvu, but it's here:
http://www.nvu.com/
HTML editor and web authoring module of the Mozilla Application Suite
Contributors to Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)FoolishOwl
•@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.
https://www.seamonkey-project.org/
The SeaMonkey® Project
www.seamonkey-project.orgOmnivore
•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!
Ray McCarthy
•Fabian N. T. 🦆
•Kevin Karhan :verified:
•Dave Heinemann 🇦🇺
•Mikko Husari
•silverwizard
Graydon
•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.")
Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell:
•™️¥
•Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell:
•Adam Piggott
•but Big Tech have ruined the Internet and the Web!
Subscribe to my substack and don't forget to star my github repos.
Nantucket E-Books
•FoolishOwl
•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.
readable.css
readable-css.freedomtowrite.orgsilverwizard
@Nantucket E-Books @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
Nantucket E-Books
•@silverwizard My first sentence was hanging by a thread, sorry.
As for better browsers, I was intrigued by the way that different Gemini-protocol browsers would render the Gemtext, some of it looked quite snazzy.
zheng3_jim
•FoolishOwl
•zheng3_jim
•These days I only write websites with BBEdit and Fetch in a System 7.1 emulator.
Cuts down on the bloat.