Comment by HidyBush | Hacker News Reader

Comment by HidyBush | Hacker News Reader

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I might be extremely old fashioned, but this is not the web I would want to be revived. This inaccessible mess of "artsy" html and css, images and gifs and sound bits.

The web I want back is the original one: hyperlinked text documents formatted using a standard language. I want my browser to basically be an e-book reader, where I can choose any font, spacing and formatting that I desire so any content on the web is exactly to my liking and I don't have to waste time figuring stuff out.

If you truly want to show me an image just upload it to your server and simply hyperlink it in your blog post. My browser will decide if and how to show it. Do I want a visual experience? Set the browser to automatically download every image and display it. Do I want to just read text without distractions? Set the browser to show me a download link without loading the image.

People who want their sites to be "works of art" or something should just create beautiful PDFs using a professional publishing suite or use a game engine to make a truly interactive experience. If you want your personal website to be a DOOM map where you access your pages by killing monsters then please don't push it into my browser but make it a dedicated offline experience.

Have you seen Bartosz Ciechanowski's interactive, educational articles? They're sometimes posted here on HN, e.g., [1] and [2]. They'd be impossible to realize if your browser were merely an "e-book reader", and they go way beyond text documents and pictures, so PDFs are out. And their reach would be miniscule if readers were required to download some offline program to view them.

[1] https://ciechanow.ski/mechanical-watch/

[2] https://ciechanow.ski/internal-combustion-engine/

I couldn't disagree more, but I think you are describing Gemini[1]

[1]: https://gemini.circumlunar.space/

This exists, it's called RSS and it is very likely almost all of the sites you regularly visit support it at least partially.

> ...don't push it into my browser but make it a dedicated offline experience

They didn't push it into your browser. You pulled it when you chose to visit their server. Sure you used to be able to set a few things like font and background color, but the website author/administrator has always had more control than the client.

> ...so any content on the web is exactly to my liking and I don't have to waste time figuring stuff out.

This never existed. Already in the mid-nineties we were arguing about how to do navigation and other things the user had no control over, and they were complaining they couldn't figure it out.

Just curious, how old are you? In your 50s?

I'm wondering if, like music and fashion, people just have nostalgia for a certain era of things.

Me, I prefer the geocities era that I grew up with.

It has a certain charm but I am kinda glad the animated construction gifs and nonsensical navigation menus (if at all) are gone.

I got online in 98 at age 15, I 100% grew up with this and took part - and I absolutely support people publishing stuff just for the fun of it, but I was kinda glad when everything started a bit more readable in the early 00s. Hell, I have no problem with the ugly backgrounds, just all the BLINK and pink on blue text and the gifs...

I think it's not about age but about aesthetic, im at least two decades off from my fifties and I definitely prefer hyper fast, minamilist design. I also prefer to curate my own experience especially with the web

Companies don't pay designers megabucks so that you can just rip their carefully crafted sites to pieces. Besides, there's Reader in Firefox and Safari which does just what you want.

So you didn't read the content did you? At least one part of what the author describes is exactly what you say you want. Go ahead, give it another try.

I use a reader mode extension to remove all the cruft.

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