Discussion
I long for a world wide web that goes back to basics: Markdown for text, JPEG or PNG for images, *no* Javascript or other client-side execution, designed to be writable by a human being with a simple text editor and no fucking interactive/dynamic bullshit. Make it as advertising hostile as possible. And above all keep it *small* (as in: a large, sprawling web site should fit on 16Mb USB stick).
In other words, web like it's 1996 again.
@cstross yeah ditto so long as there's some kind of latex equation embedding thing it'll do.
For me 17 years of rabbiting on about one thing or another works out to 3MB of markdown and 100MB of photos. Most of which is of no use to anyone, but what the hell.
@nickzoic Needs a Markdown-to-nroff processing stage on the way to the final delivery format. In which case you can slide in tbl(1) and eqn(1) support in the pipeline.
Hey, why are you looking at me like that?!? It worked just fine on Xenix back in 1992!
@cstross
In my company we are replacing the CMS with a static website.
@pthenq1 Your static website is presumably generated from a bunch of input data by an application that adds the HTML affordances, eg. links, styles, graphics. That's a CMS. All you're doing is ditching the *dynamic* (i.e. runs the CMS every time someone clicks a link) version, which is vastly more CPU-intensive.
@cstross There are also the bots we have to deal that does not understand a basic question and cannot resolve our query.
Those who invented and introduced these options want the same pay or more, for less work, or to avoid work altogether.
Is this culture and values something they get from their parents? Where do they get this ideology of progression from?
I'd like to see a time where electrical and mechanical devices aid and improve work, not impede it, and make a job or task more difficult.
@cstross It is not just the World Wide Web that could do with having the clock wound back. Customer services could do with going back in time. People no longer have time to deal with people. Instead they would rather use extensive list of predefined options we have to cycle through in the hope we are directed to the correct department. Then we end up in a queue waiting to be served, often to find that they cannot or will not help resolve our issue.
@cstross Was all ready to feel proud about my website, then checked and it's grown to 38MB. I need to do some culling. And you're right about javascript. Hate the stuff and use it sparingly.
@david My website is around 250-350Mb. Of which, about 10-20Mb is images—it's mostly static HTML generated by the CMS back end, including over 3000 lengthy essays on my blog and about a third of a million comments.
@cstross Thanks to your post I found the culprit on my site was images I'd recently uploaded and forgotten to optimise. Used Switcheroo on them and now I'm sitting at 15.1MB. However, it's really easy for me to do because I'm not a prolific writer with a real following and my website is more a playground for my silly ideas than anything else.
@cstross So many replies talking about Gemini here! I find it not quite what I want (needs to allow *some* author design) but all this enthusiasm convinced me to finally launch into Geminispace:
https://chaos.social/@gerwitz/117342022796131653
@cstross My first website fit in a 3.5" disk.
My current one is completely handcoded, except for a rarely updated WordPress blog section...
This is the way.
@cstross
Sorry, Markdown? YUCK! 😝
Agreed on everything else. 😁
@cstross imho….
Inline pictures were a mistake, let *images* be loaded in a proper image viewer when asked.
Inline tables were a mistake, let *tables* open tables in a proper spreadsheet viewer when asked
Stop emulating paper!! Use multiple overlapping windows!!!
Webpages should NEVER have been allowed to load files from other websites.
Allowing webpages to load objects from arbitrary locations enabled advertising.
Absolute URLs are exclusively for hyperlinks to other webpages/sites.
@DLC You forgot to end with WE HAVE BEEN PLAYED FOR ABSOLUTE FOOLS!!
@cstross Like Gemini?
I mean, I honestly think that regression is the wrong reaction to perverted progress.
But I get the overwhelming urge.
lmao, I remember starting web programming back in those days, as a teen, and wanting to add all sorts of silly stuff to my website. GIFs, a few JS and CSS tricks, etc. Then I learned PHP, and more stuff followed.
We take a lot of that for granted when we say we miss the simplicity. From the backend, it wasn't quite as simple.
Nowadays vanilla languages can do a lot more. I do wish we dropped some frameworks, though.
@cstross I definitely wouldn't mind going back to a world where most people didn't give a damn about whatever was happening on the internet, leaving the rest of us the hell alone. I don't think we can go back though; I don't think there are enough who want to do the work of decoupling from Web2.0/3.0.
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@cstross I remember 1996 with websites full of creepily moving animated gifs. I remember all these opening letterboxes sending out sprinkling stars or rainbows ... just to give a link for your email-ad. 😆