What do you guys think about https://ar.al/2020/08/07/what-is-the-small-web/? I'm not a big fan of "small" solutions based on big stuff like Node.js, and a protocol+format stack that changes a lot and doesn't "fit in my head".
1 week ago 路 馃憤 tm85, bitdweller, mischk
[1] https://ar.al/2020/08/07/what-is-the-small-web/
using javascript as the base technology for the "small web" is like using electric cars to save the planet ... you have already lost!
it may be a helpful migration tool for some ... 路 1 week ago
@cquenelle I agree. In many ways, it's better to share your own words using a server that is not yours. Something like Neocities is a much better 'solution' for personal websites, IMO. 路 1 week ago
I like the idea of people owning their own words, but I'm not sure that means owning your own web app. People will do whatever they want regardless of what I think is best anyway. 路 1 week ago
@mozz Yes, it talks about a more decentralized and non-commercial web but there's a big pile of technical terms. Maybe the idea is to target full-stack developers or people who want to build "app sites" (= professional programmers) first, then wrap it with a user friendly wrapper for laypeople. Plain text, gophermaps and gemtext are easy to grasp without need for a "framework" or programming skills, and Gemini already has several hosting "services". 路 1 week ago
@mozz interesting point 路 1 week ago
I agree with the sentiment, but I don鈥檛 understand who the target audience is for their site.js tool. You have to already be a web dev to make any sense of the documentation, and at that point why not just use the stack you鈥檙e already familiar with? 路 1 week ago
I used it for a while to just make some HTML files available from a Raspberry Pi to the world bia subdomain. I thought it was pretty neat, in that it works out of the box. All the little things you need work automatically, like certificates, for example. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think Node.js is big tech as much as linux or apache are big tech, I think. I didn't like that it wouldn't let you specify different sites/folders/virtual domains on a single process, you'd have to spin it up as many times as websites you wasnted to publish. All in all, it's perfect for someone to just spin it up and have a website live! 路 1 week ago
I have childhood memories from Geocities - all I needed was a WYSIWYG HTML editor (or a text editor once, I knew HTML). No CSS, no JS, no CMS, no background requests (just .html files with frames). I'm wondering why this tech stack and why this feature set, and not something more basic like a design+publishing tool for static, pure HTML websites "for dummies". 路 1 week ago
I think @aral recently joined station. I agree, I think there is a need for this. I may have found this right before Gemini. 路 1 week ago
Sorry if I didn't interpret your question/idea correctly 路 1 week ago
I'm quite much a roll-your-own type of person, but Node.js is a good platform for people new to selfhosting. It's far from good for production anything, but the basics are easy enough for beginners to understand. In short, I agree with your sentiment, but we need small and simple solutions to become more mainstream without being extended before we can get rid of things like Node, and under the current model of technocapitalism, this is not going to happen soon or easily. 路 1 week ago
Not my cuppa, exactly, but I recognize the need for this sort of project. 路 1 week ago