Ask HN: Will anything replace the Web for simple hyperlinked text documents? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Will anything replace the Web for simple hyperlinked text documents?

8 pointssnazz7 comments

I really hate how everything on the Web has to be app-ified, for lack of a better word. I used to be able to just read content, see images, click links, and maybe type something into a form of some sort. Since then, it feels like the quality of my online interactions have dropped, as I find less content and more advertising, tracking and “apps”.

Since so many important things use websites (like my bank), I know that it won’t be going away anytime soon. However, I feel like I’m not the only one who is frustrated by how hard it is to get at the content.

Do you know of any complete replacements for the Web that focus on the basic hyperlinked text experience?

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How about using a terminal web browser like w3m or elinks? Of course, they're no firefox or chrome, but you might be surprised by the amount of features they have. They both have tabs, you can scroll with your mousewheel, and click on links with your mouse, they have context menus, etc. w3m can display images in the terminal as well, and they can be turned off if you prefer it that way.

It sounds like your beaf is not with the web but the current state of many websites.

If you want a simple web of documents then you can build one easily yourself. You can look at something like GitHub that allows you to easily publish a website made of simple markdown pages. It allows you to easily create simple or complex pages.

https://pages.github.com/

This is just an example.

> It sounds like your beaf is not with the web but the current state of many websites.

Those websites are a large part of the web.

> It sounds like your beaf is not with the web but the current state of many websites.

Those websites were enabled by various changes in what the web supported. As an example, think of how the web would be without AJAX. That'd be enough to kill most webapps.

You want to replace Web 2.0 with Web 1.0? Um... it's already there. There are ways to turn off JavaScript, CSS, and media. Note that accessibility tools for visually impaired users may do what you're looking for.

Personally I wish browsers had native support for displaying Markdown content.

My own personal favorite is RestructuredText.

Gopher.

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