
Ask HN: What are some of the best text-only websites? - anoncoward111
Hi,<p>I&#x27;ve spent most of 2018 either in very rural areas, foreign countries, or in &quot;throttled-mode&quot; on my US-based prepaid mobile plan.<p>My phone&#x27;s processing power is really excellent, but of course the bottleneck with modern websites is the tons of pings back and forth over the network and the huge image sizes.<p>Please, take pity on me and send me some links for great websites that offer a text-only service or some other form of lightweight browsing.<p>Of course, Wikipedia, lite.cnn.io, and outline.com are life-savers :)
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danmg
[https://damng.github.io/hackernews-rss-with-inlined-
content/...](https://damng.github.io/hackernews-rss-with-inlined-
content/output.rss)

HN RSS feed with inlined/distilled linked contents. The 300 or so entries on
the feed becomes about 5MB (or about 1/5 the size of a single medium.com blog
post). The inlined contents from the article are just simple html with no
javascript or style sheets.

[https://codezen.org/canto-ng/](https://codezen.org/canto-ng/) is a good
curses, console rss reader.

------
dammitfoo
NPR : [https://text.npr.org/](https://text.npr.org/)

Harvard Law Review :
[https://harvardlawreview.org/](https://harvardlawreview.org/)

I'm also interested in more lite sites. Btw, your CNN link is not working.
Correct link is [https://lite.cnn.io](https://lite.cnn.io)

~~~
anoncoward111
Thanks!! I confused NPR's format with CNN's :)

There's always Drudge Report for anyone who prefers the "opinion" section...
:)

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IvyMike
I've spent many hours reading [https://yarchive.net/](https://yarchive.net/)

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kotrunga
A good news site that I've been telling people about is Legible News- only
text and links. No images, ads, etc.

[https://legiblenews.com/](https://legiblenews.com/)

There is also Wiby, the search engine for 'classic websites'. You can only
submit a website if it is simple and meets the criteria (not a lot js / css).
Whatever you find, add it to Wiby!

[https://wiby.me/](https://wiby.me/)

------
oftenwrong
You can disable images in some mobile browsers (e.g. firefox for android) [0].
That significantly knocks down the size of pages. I have mine set to only load
images when on a wifi connection.

If you can use a desktop browser tethered through your mobile data connection,
you can use the extension uMatrix [1] to selectively block scripts, css,
images, outbound requests, and more. This would allow you to turn most pages
into lightweight, text-only pages.

[0] [https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/block-or-load-images-
ov...](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/block-or-load-images-over-wifi-
firefox-android)

[1] [https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix](https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix)

------
cm2012
You won't regret reading the online only book Worm, by Wildbow. Very light
site and an amazing story. It has a huge online fan base for a reason.
Warning: it gets dark.

[https://parahumans.wordpress.com](https://parahumans.wordpress.com)

------
sjmulder
I’m keeping a list here:
[https://sjmulder.nl/en/textielhandel.html](https://sjmulder.nl/en/textielhandel.html)

There’s not that much out there, unfortunately.

~~~
lazyjones
[https://sjmulder.nl/en/textonly.html](https://sjmulder.nl/en/textonly.html)

~~~
sjmulder
Thanks, I posted that on mobile and didn’t notice.

------
combatentropy
Have you tried just turning off JavaScript? A website often is a hundredth the
size without it. This is because many use JavaScript to add iframes, images,
videos, and more JavaScript.

------
hieloz
CNN lite: [https://lite.cnn.io/en](https://lite.cnn.io/en)

Text Edition of The Christian Science Monitor:
[https://www.csmonitor.com/layout/set/text/textedition](https://www.csmonitor.com/layout/set/text/textedition)

News aggregator website:Readspike
[https://readspike.com/](https://readspike.com/)

~~~
5555624
My problem with CNN Lite is that there is no apparent way to sort the links.
Right now, as I write this -- 0815, 20 August -- the top story is from 1100,
17 August. In fact, the top five stories are all form midday last Friday. The
10th story is from 17 July. Maybe sorting the links by date won't help much;
but, it's a start.

------
davewasthere
This is where some sort of Lynx-browser-powered-proxy would be ideal.

I know it'd probably break several sites... but your average news reading
would be hugely improved.

I will say that
[https://forums.whirlpool.net.au/](https://forums.whirlpool.net.au/) is one of
the best community sites I know of. It's very lightweight, looks good, works
incredibly fast. As a dev, I'm really impressed.

~~~
ssh_lynx
> This is where some sort of Lynx-browser-powered-proxy would be ideal.

No need to go into any of that trouble. Just install ssh on your phone and
connect to any box with lynx/elinks/etc.

Works like a charm and is real snappy over any wireless connection.

If you are short of a box to ssh into, sign up for any of the providers of
free shell accounts.

There are of course also a lot of native text only browsers like Instabrowser
if you prefer an app. Then there are browsers using compression and proxies
like Opera Mini.

~~~
vram22
>Just install ssh on your phone

Which ssh app would you recommend?

~~~
crasch4
[https://termux.com/](https://termux.com/)

~~~
vram22
Thanks.

------
Digory
Someone asked a similar question on ProductHunt a few weeks ago (definitely
not lightweight)[0]. It introduced me to skimfeed.com, and wttr.in.

[0] [https://www.producthunt.com/ask/9071-what-are-some-good-
ligh...](https://www.producthunt.com/ask/9071-what-are-some-good-lightweight-
text-only-websites-you-use-regularly)

------
dammitfoo
Kinda off-topic but if you use Firefox on your mobile, you can install 'uBlock
origin'[0] extension which will block pesky, annoying ads and trackers. Not
that helpful with text-only sites but very useful with normal browsing.

[0] [https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock)

~~~
phakding
To add to this, if you root your phone and install adaway you would be free
from ads even in an app.

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panda888888
Not the answer you're looking for, but Reddit. Sure there are images and gifs,
but the majority of the content is text. I'm not sure if there's a good way to
see a text-only version (aside from turning off js) but if there is, it's a
site I recommend.

~~~
anoncoward111
I would have been endlessly happy if Reddit worked, but on my current data
plan, it hangs instantly :(

------
achow
Reuters has a toggle button to switch of photos:
[https://www.reuters.com/commentary](https://www.reuters.com/commentary)

And nowadays I find Reuters having very interesting informative writeups which
rivals NYT, Guardian, etc.

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lun4r
Hackernews! \o/

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jsahdeva
[http://goosh.org/](http://goosh.org/) \- Google command line.

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gumboshoes
Metafilter.

~~~
uptime
Great site, ask.metafilter.com as well

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dokem
The catcher and the rye.

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refur_augu
slatestarcodex.com is endlessly interesting and thought provoking.

