Like fuck all the proprietary junk and versioning, and just have a bare bones HTML ASCII extranet designed to be simple and without any bugs to patch? Obviously a naive question.
But seriously, the 56k dialup world with Napster GeoCities and AOL Instant Messenger was better. Add capacitive touch screens, current data throughput infra, and lithium batteries to 1999 and we are peak Matrix internet territory. Yahoo and net navigator were better than chrome stalkerware and google digislaver fascism.
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https://marginalia-search.com/
“The need for discovery
Nothing you do to try to make the web a better place matters if nobody can find what you did. There are a lot of precious websites out there that deserve an audience, but instead are languishing in obscurity.
This makes alternative discovery mechanisms an urgent priority of the free and independent web, both document search as well as blog and RSS-feed discovery.”I honestly tend to think that instead of using search engines where you already have to know what you’re looking for, it might be better to use something like lemmy where you can advertise what you made with a post in an appropriate community.
I honestly tend to think that instead of using search engines where you already have to know what you’re looking for, it might be better to use something like lemmy where you can advertise what you made with a post in an appropriate community.
Obviously both have their place, but POSSE is the magic sauce:
“POSSE is an abbreviation for Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere, the practice of posting content on your own site first, then publishing copies or sharing links to third parties (like social media silos) with original post links to provide viewers a path to directly interacting with your content.” ―https://indieweb.org/POSSE
⚜︎ arscyni.cc: modernity ∝ nature.
No profit to be made with that, and fixed costs are still fixed. Why make an efficient static page for 6 dollars per month when you can make several hundred pages with AI and make 15 cents?
Neocities encourages static 90’s style webpages.
I can make one super fast but if my internet gets reset I’d have to share my IP again since I don’t have a domain name and my ISP gives me a random IP every time the modem is reset. It also might get me some kind of notice if there’s enough traffic because the home service isn’t meant to he used to run a server like that. I actually kinda wonder what they’d do if I hosted some new SM site that blew up into the next Twitter… 🤔 Can I get $40B?
Haha, there are other language versions links at the bottom. I just started Czech course at university, and I think I will send my group link some time, because it’s pretty funny (for a Polish person at least).
Your framework? The hipster café that"s “temporarily closed” every time you need it.
Can’t easily verify on mobile, but iirc last time I inspected the html that site had a google tracker and there’s a commented line acknowledging the irony and challenges you to fight them. I could have it mistaken with another, similar site, though.
You can. But people want more than what static sites are able to provide. Our computers and Infra are incredibly capable and we dont need to artificially limit ourselfs to static webpages.
I love browsing static blog sites but even I’ll admit I’d quickly get bored if we had no JavaScript web apps.
I miss webrings. Especially for mods.
Nexus is great, but i remember when darkone started it with Morrowind mods.It wasn’t better. Static pages are just boring, you read it one time and then that’s it. Not enough people can write plain HTML so it would matter.
The internet today with Lemmy, Mastodon, etc. is way closer to what Tim Berners-Lee imagined that everyone would be a publisher, not only consumer.
You don’t have to know or write plain HTML. There are plenty of static page generators that take markdown and generate a site for you. Also, boring is good and yes, read once and don’t care next is also good: it’s how books work for thousands of years. If you like a site or article/post you’ll get back to it sometime, if not that’s OK.
Static page generator is already half way to a blog with a database.
It’s easier to learn and write plain HTML than it is to use a static page generator. I will die on this hill. Static page generators are all needlessly complicated because they are made by developers for developers to show off.
It is kinda ironic having this debate on a platform that isn’t static html
This is one of those times when the attempt to address the wrong part of a statement immediately goes into Ackermann-like recursion.
The only irony present is the pretense of validity of the supposed contradiction.
I’ve been around since the early 1980s on BBSs. I think what OP is describing is gopher:// links which were common in the early 1990s. I recall getting news and music tablature that way, but like others said it was boring and there wasn’t much else.
To me, 1996 to 2005 was the peak of the Internet experience, especially in the early 2000s when content was increasing. Big business was still oblivious about it, and little forums were able to truly thrive on their own without being on a billion dollar platform.
Web 2.0 was when it all went to shit. I remember the look when it was happening… every website went to white webpages, tons of white space, big-ass sans serif fonts, rounded buttons, and very little actual content, just minimalist screens everywhere. Every website was doing it. I knew at the time that this was symbolic of the vacuousness of the coming Internet.
Check out Chinese internet. There’s shit everywhere.
It’s
vs 
Wait, are we suppose to be in favor of the first one? I think like maybe a 25% tone down/declutter of the one on the right is a good sweet spot that’s comfy and livable.
They still use web badges and sometimes lack https
For a more modern take on gopher consider also checking out gemini if you haven’t already. It is somewhat different yet familiar.
Gopher , Gemini a few other protocols exist use them
There are still fragments of the old internet around, though I agree that it’s nothing like it once was…
Sometimes I remember the joy of using Gopher or dial-up BBSs and cry actual tears. Nothing makes me feel older.
I’m an old E2 member!
You can. What makes you think you can’t?
The thing is that there’s no demand, not least because there’s no direct interaction between users. People yell bloody murder if a game doesn’t have some sort of multiplayer component and static content is single player internet.
It takes a critical mass of like minded people.
That is not really the point here. The actual question is more about stopping the evolution of hardware and software deprecation, like creating a minimum system that is never updated.
Oh right , i forget; this is not “no disingenuous questions”. Hard to tell sometimes.
You want a decent webpage AND attention / clicks?
Your problem is not the coding of the webpage. pebkac.
You must be a bot. If not your face must have a lot of well earned character.
haha yeah, i i was actually so pissed that i “walked into a tree” last night. Still a wee bit merry. pebpat
Ad homenim attacks just make you look more wrong.
Huh? I don’t understand, are you saying you can’t have static websites on today’s hard/software? I’m so confused.
Permacomputing
100 rabbits.
Demand? What?
You can just have a site that says things. You might just get a trickle of readers, and that’s okay. Not everything has to try to rule the world. You can contribute this little part of it, that might amuse or inform some people, and not pile up yet more value to a terrible corporation like Wordpress, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit or (while I’m ranting) Fandom.
Plain HTML doesn’t break. You don’t need to update frameworks. It won’t make the user’s browser consume a ton of their RAM. Even if your image hosting goes down, the text will still be there. The biggest problems with HTML are external. Google giving attention to Reddit over your site, or de-prioritizing it if it’s not “responsive to mobile,” and web browsers choosing not to reveal by default what terrible resource hogs big sites can be. Check about:processes (on Firefox at least) some time, I’ve seen Youtube, Facebook and Twitter consume over a gigabyte of memory by themselves, apiece. (Nota bene, Mastodon consumes a lot too.)
It’s okay to be small. That was what the World Wide Web was envisioned as, its motto: Let’s Share What We Know.
I don’t disagree.
I mean, this is all true. But these web sites which mostly work fine and are fine with small audiences already exist - and yet OP is here, on Lemmy. Apparently the demand actually doesn’t exist - ie, OP is choosing not to visit these sites because they find them less enticing than sites with js.
We can. Individual sites still exists. Simpler pages still exist. In some way, wikipedia is a large project that’s mostly “old school” (despite many attempts to change that). Old communication tools still work, mail can still be done with ease by small or even individual providers. Forums are still a thing in some communities. RSS to get informations about many sites in one place still exists and never stopped existing (it’s surprising how many recent websites still implement it). Some people still use IRC and newsgroups on a daily basis.
I’d even argue that google search, the old, simple, easy one, still exist. Look up udm14, set this in your browser, and your done. And contrary to the apparently largely accepted trend, this one still gives great results.
Firefox, despite recent attempts (that will probably keep coming) can still be trimmed to be a basic browser for the most part. Large surface to open an HTML page, bookmarks, tabs on top (fancy), and nothing else in the way. I don’t know how long this will persist, but it’s still possible.
There are many things that are still around, the presence of huge behemoths in the front row doesn’t change that. The only difference is that using the web in this manner requires a bit of involvement and a bit of work. When it was the only way to do things, people got involved and spent effort to do so. Nowadays, with large services providing one click stop to seemingly everything, most people won’t put up the effort to look somewhere else. And they don’t care about the consequences of this centralization on privacy, bias, censorship, etc.
But a lot of the old web is still available. Heck, even old reddit is still around (although the content itself is still reddit).
And it is a simpler life. Taking back control of our digital activities requires some minor involvement, but not being crushed by the endless content and notification machine is real nice in this overstressed world.
