
Text-only NPR - mrzool
http://thin.npr.org
======
ComputerGuru
My first, knee-jerk reaction was “God, that loaded fast!” even though I
already knew going in what to expect.

Text-only doesn’t have to be _ugly_ though. Once you embrace minimalism, you
realize that aesthetics are primarily a concept of white space and typography.
And neither one of those interferes with text only, thank god.

While modern CSS has been inching towards becoming Turing complete (is it
already now? I think so long as adding html elements via :before/:after
remains disallowed we aren’t there yet?), CSS’ biggest saving grace is that it
was a declarative and Turing incomplete.

Of course when the web first started, the idea was that it would serve styl
_able_ _but-unstyled-by-default_ content _and then the user would style it as
they liked_ so they could enjoy a consistent and customized experience no
matter what they were browsing. I don’t know many people that still customize
their Browser default style sheets (can you even do that in Edge, I wonder?).

I personally don’t because I appreciate the value in judging people (and the
content they produce) by how they’ve styled it (or haven’t, which can
oftentimes be preferable).

EDIT

OK, with the caveat that I'm not a designer and have been told I haven't an
artistic bone in my body, here's what NPR looks like with only some extremely
basic CSS applied to html, body, and a elements and no changes to the actual
HTML:†
[https://dev.neosmart.net/npr/1.html](https://dev.neosmart.net/npr/1.html)

And here's what it looks like with no changes to the HTML but with some
additional CSS styling applied to the various sections of the document:
[https://dev.neosmart.net/npr/2.html](https://dev.neosmart.net/npr/2.html)

The focus isn't "design" per se, but merely readability. Less harsh contrast,
fonts with better hinting, limiting horizontal eye travel, keeping content
from reaching the very edges of the screen on mobile, and making the size of
elements (and how much DOM real estate space they take up) match their
relative importance.

† A charset=utf-8 meta tag was added to the HTML since the NPR document was
served without a charset but contained UTF-8 encoded elements (instead of
their HTML-encoded counterparts)

~~~
niftich
The vision of CSS included the notion of alternate stylesheets and some
capability in browsers for the user to pick the stylesheet; as well as the
notion of user styles which sometimes supplement, sometimes override the page
author's style; all governed by the famous 'cascade' i.e. the resolution rules
that determine which styles get applied [1][2].

Firefox (perhaps under its previous name, I can't remember) initially provided
a statusbar-based UI to quickly switch styles, but it was removed [3] sometime
in 2004. After that, browsers, if at all, only provided a bare minimum UI to
switch stylesheets, usually though the application menu. Outside of hobbyist
circles, page authors stopped providing alternate stylesheets. User-applied
styles lived on in various ways: through addons, through alternate user-
agents, but tends to be relegated to specific audiences or passionate fans of
the capability; not a mainstream phenomenon.

EDIT: To experience this blast from the past, Mozilla has a sample page [4].
If the directions seem nonsensical, it's because the default browser UI now
hides the menu bar [5], demonstrating just how obscure this option has become.

[1] [https://www.w3.org/TR/CSS1/#the-cascade](https://www.w3.org/TR/CSS1/#the-
cascade) [2]
[https://www.w3.org/TR/CSS2/cascade.html#cascade](https://www.w3.org/TR/CSS2/cascade.html#cascade)
[3]
[http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=118119](http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=118119)
[4]
[https://developer.mozilla.org/samples/cssref/altstyles/index...](https://developer.mozilla.org/samples/cssref/altstyles/index.html)
[5] [https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/what-happened-to-the-
fi...](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/what-happened-to-the-file-edit-
and-view-menus#w_show-the-menu-bar-again)

~~~
flukus
On the plus side, I think things like firefox reader mode are finally
fulfilling this vision, just differently. Unlike custom css it's usable for
average people too, it just needs more options like allowing web designers to
turn it on by default, maybe some inline headers, etc. It's far from perfect
but I consider it the first step in the right direction for 20 years.

~~~
m3rc
Firefox's reader mode is incredibly useful and a vision of a much better
future.

------
rsync
I wish there was a easy-to-find-downloads-of-audio NPR ...

But unfortunately, like almost all media outlets, finding an actual link that
points to an actual mp3 file is very time consuming and difficult.

Here's an example ...

Let's say you want to download an episode of 1-A to listen to on an airplane.
The front page of the website[1] has "listen" links and also a "subscribe to
the "podcast"" link. But I don't want to "listen" and I don't want to
subscribe to anything and I don't use itunes (or anything like itunes).

So you click the link to the actual episode of the show[2] but once again ...
cute little "listen" link ... cute little "discuss" link ... but no way to
download a file.

So now it's getting frustrating ... but as a last ditch effort, you turn off
your brain and just type in "download 1-a episode" into google and come up
with this link[3] which takes you to a different website (npr.org) which has a
list of 1-a episodes (and our friend the "listen" button) but _also has a cute
little "..." button_ that expands into choices, one of which is "download".

[1] [http://the1a.org/](http://the1a.org/)

[2] [http://the1a.org/shows/2017-09-25/salman-
rushdie](http://the1a.org/shows/2017-09-25/salman-rushdie)

[3]
[http://www.npr.org/podcasts/510316/1a](http://www.npr.org/podcasts/510316/1a)

~~~
giancarlostoro
I hate to say it but you might want to reconsider your stance on "anything
like iTumes" there are really gread podcast specific clients out there that
are lightweight, and to the point, you will also be able to download episodes
for offline listening. I personally use Pocketcasts on Android. If you have an
Android phone the Play Music app is already a podcast app on it's own.

~~~
baldfat
I love PocketCast on my Android Phone.

Here is their web player -
[https://play.pocketcasts.com/](https://play.pocketcasts.com/)

They have download option on all the feeds.

~~~
giancarlostoro
Forgot to mention their web player. Definitely falls under not needing to
download / install anything extravagant. Also shows how worthwhile Pocketcasts
is in general.

------
jaytaylor
After seeing the CNN one and now this, it makes me want to create a
generalized service to turn any site into TXT format with the html2text [0]
golang package.

Will submit to Show HN if I get enough round toits ;)

[0]
[https://github.com/jaytaylor/html2text](https://github.com/jaytaylor/html2text)

~~~
jaytaylor
Here is the first pass; I still want to make it fancier so that links are
clickable, but for a quick first stab I'm pleasantly surprised with the output
quality:

[http://txt.gigawatt.io/](http://txt.gigawatt.io/) <\-- add URL here at the
end (GET parameters not yet supported)

Examples:

[http://txt.gigawatt.io/jaytaylor.com](http://txt.gigawatt.io/jaytaylor.com)

[http://txt.gigawatt.io/http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/26/politic...](http://txt.gigawatt.io/http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/26/politics/senate-
intelligence-committee-russia-facebook-ads/index.html)

Source code: [https://github.com/jaytaylor/txt-
web](https://github.com/jaytaylor/txt-web)

~~~
xena
I get mojibake when looking at my personal site:
[http://txt.gigawatt.io/christine.website/blog/voiding-the-
in...](http://txt.gigawatt.io/christine.website/blog/voiding-the-
interview-2017-04-16)

~~~
jaytaylor
Yes, that'll be fixed when I move to a text-based HTML output instead of raw
plaintext.

Thanks for the feedback and for trying it out!

------
stevewilhelm
It would be really cool if websites published their frequently changing
information in some kind of text based stream or feed. [1]

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atom_(standard)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atom_\(standard\))

~~~
niftich
In fairness NPR does in fact have RSS 2.0 feeds; they're separated by section
[1] -- for example, one for US News [2]. There's an 'assorted' feed [3] that
doesn't exactly mirror the homepage but shares a similar purpose.

The feeds only embed a line or two from the article, and link to the regular
(i.e. non-lite) site. Nonetheless, they exist; artifacts of a patchwork of
optimistic thinking about the future of the web that have largely fallen out
of the collective popular consciousness.

[1]
[https://help.npr.org/customer/portal/articles/2094175-where-...](https://help.npr.org/customer/portal/articles/2094175-where-
can-i-find-npr-rss-feeds-)

[2]
[http://www.npr.org/rss/rss.php?id=1003](http://www.npr.org/rss/rss.php?id=1003)

[3] [http://www.npr.org/rss/rss.php](http://www.npr.org/rss/rss.php)

------
dpflan
There was recently a post about text-only CNN too.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15210022](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15210022)

If there are more text-only versions of sites, it seems like it may be cool to
add a meta-view service in the style of HN or reddit. Is there an extant
service that would easily allow this?

~~~
projectant
There's this:
[https://github.com/textonly/news](https://github.com/textonly/news)

( and its own 'textonly' version
[https://raw.githubusercontent.com/textonly/news/master/READM...](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/textonly/news/master/README.md)
)

~~~
no_news_is
I'm assuming this is yours? If so, typo in your url for the CNN link -- line
instead of lite.

~~~
projectant
Thank you so much!

------
jason_slack
Oh the nostalgia. The year was 1994 and I was a sophomore in high school. I
downloaded Netscape via an FTP connection on my Macintosh LCIII. I opened it
up and um, where do I go? What do I do?

All webpages were text like this at the time. I feel like it was efficient.
You brought up a page and you read it. Now-a-days, for me, excessive graphics
and bright colors distract from the content of the page.

~~~
asciimo
Same. Yet it felt like a revolutionary innovation when I loaded NPR's in my
browser.

------
bdreadz
I want more sites to do this. Would be so wonderful.

~~~
ashark
I'd settle for an restricted subset of HTML _only_ as a light standard. Tables
and bold and h-tags and stuff are fine, it's CSS and Javascript that slow
everything down for (on ordinary pages) basically no benefit. Reserve boxes
for images but click/tap to fetch and show. Make always-show an option I
guess. Videos are well-marked links that open in some other program. Let the
user set some colors and sizes for basic text elements and call it a day. 99%
of the web would be better for the user in such a restricted format and we
could stop spending so much money peacocking up plain ol' websites.

~~~
carussell
[ _This post removed by author_ ]

~~~
KGIII
If you're going to link to those, you might as well link to the best.

[https://thebestmotherfucking.website/](https://thebestmotherfucking.website/)

~~~
stan_rogers
It's not. Really. Lower contrast, crowded lines and skinny fonts aren't making
things better. FOUC isn't making things better. The larger file(s) required to
achieve worse results isn't making things better.

------
isthisnagee
I really love these text-only minimalist news sites
([http://lite.cnn.io](http://lite.cnn.io), as another example). I read the
thin NPR and lite CNN almost daily, and I'd love to see a list of these for
other big news sites.

By far my favorite thing to do with them is customize them. I have a tiny
plugin that styles the pages so that they are visually consistent, and I
"fixed" the link issues in the articles so that when you click "Get the full
experience", it takes you to the article's full version, instead of the home
page of the regular site.

~~~
thoughtpalette
I wish they would've went with the same subdomain. I'd love if the lite.*
subdomain caught on.

------
astronautjones
Hope this trend catches on.

~~~
crispyambulance
It won't.

It is ugly and harsh on the eyes. There's nothing wrong with a minimal no-
frills aesthetic, but that doesn't have to mean literally ripping _all_
styling out.

Hundreds of years of typography, typesetting... and what do some people claim
to want? Naked html, default styling like a friggin' typewriter! Ugh!

~~~
CaptSpify
I'll disagree with you. We should be putting _our own_ styling on once it hits
our computers. There's no reason that we couldn't design systems so that the
client can style it to their preference.

Then you get the best of both worlds!

~~~
krapp
>We should be putting our own styling on once it hits our computers.

99.999% of people don't want to design their own custom CSS for every website
they visit, though. And the people who do could set custom stylesheets on any
site they like. Nothing really needs to change in that regard, the best of
both worlds is already here.

~~~
CaptSpify
but we could make it a lot easier. Imagine FF having a large list of
stylesheets to choose from, with a "try it out now!" button or something.

Additionally, If every site worked this way, you'd only have to set the
stylesheet once.

~~~
krapp
But the vast majority of people view the complexity of modern design on the
web as an extension of design in magazines - it's expected, and not a problem.
Users would rather that work is done for them then have to do it themselves.

What you're suggesting might make a nice browser plugin, though. Stylish but
with an integrated marketplace.

~~~
crispyambulance

        > majority of people view the complexity of modern design on the web as an extension of design in magazines...
    

Yes, because that's sort-of what it is!

There's a reason for styling. It makes things more legible, aesthetically
pleasing and more fully expresses the intent of the content creator. We have
different fonts and layouts for the same reason that buildings vary in design
and materials. All buildings could be made of cinderblock and in the shape of
rectangles but they're not, why do you think that is?

~~~
krapp
That's... exactly the argument I'm trying to make, here. Most people don't
want the web to be as stripped down and minimalist as the site posted here,
and asking them to style their own sites would go down about as well as asking
them to bind their own books.

------
fairpx
These text only approaches are fantastic. In fact, I recently designed the UI
for a conceptual Text-only Techcrunch.

Feel free to download the files and build something with it.

[0][https://hackernoon.com/redesigning-
techcrunch-1ecae542e6af?g...](https://hackernoon.com/redesigning-
techcrunch-1ecae542e6af?gi=c5d231b776ff)

------
nishs
Chrome extension that makes tiny (but worthwhile!) usability improvements to
the already great site:

[https://github.com/nishanths/thin-npr](https://github.com/nishanths/thin-npr)

    
    
      * Opens stories in expanded mode upon opening. No need to click 
        on the "Read more..." link each time.
      * Clicking the "text-only" footer link from regular npr.org 
        attempts to go to the corresponding thin page, instead of the
        thin.npr.org front page.
      * Articles have smaller line-widths for easier reading.

------
mikeytown2
NPR: 100,100 [1] CNN: 89,95 [2]

NPR's is better than any amp page according to Google pagespeed insights.

[1]
[https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=...](https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fthin.npr.org%2F)

[2]
[https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=...](https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=https%3A%2F%2Flite.cnn.io%2Fen)

------
schuke
It's interesting that I have to very consciously and deliberately tell my mind
that this page is very new, the stories are very new. Somehow my mind just
very strongly believes this is a legacy site.

------
agumonkey
Oh it's not even new, see
[https://www.reddit.com/r/minimalism/comments/zuj0o/nprs_text...](https://www.reddit.com/r/minimalism/comments/zuj0o/nprs_textonly_website/)

it was included in this list
[http://www.lesswaiting.com/info118.html](http://www.lesswaiting.com/info118.html)

That might be outdated since the comment is 5 years old.

------
advanced__pizza
I like this site and the flat cnn site so I built this:

[http://flatreader.herokuapp.com/](http://flatreader.herokuapp.com/)

I would love to grab article text, and display with no images, but I'm fairly
sure that violates redistribution laws.

Any ideas on features would be greatly appreciated. Cheers.

------
loxias
This looks glorious in w3m. Thank you NPR!

~~~
Endy
Looks great in Links too!

------
panarky
The ultimate single-page app.

They're still 107 characters away from purity, though:

    
    
      <script>
      if (window != top)
        {
            top.location.href = location.href;
        }
      </script>

------
tobinfricke
Reminds me of gopher. :-)

------
greggarious
So they had time for this but still haven't rolled out HTTPS?

~~~
throwahey
Can someone explain to me why a news website needs HTTPS? Barring pages that
require entry of financial information, why would you need to encrypt this
kind of traffic? Is people snooping on what news articles you read a real
concern?

Genuine question here.

~~~
bradbatt
So ISPs and government entities and others can't see what you're reading.

~~~
kxyvr
Here's a longer answer at superuser:

[https://superuser.com/questions/563851/how-isp-sees-the-
http...](https://superuser.com/questions/563851/how-isp-sees-the-https-
traffic)

But, yes, since ISPs may be getting into the business of analyzing and selling
our browsing habits, https limits the amount of information that they see such
as what particular page is viewed on a site. Certainly, that doesn't stop
other ways to track, but it's a reasonable one.

------
leggomylibro
Funny that it still has javascript.

Just a tiny scroll-up function, but still funny.

~~~
flukus
If I'm interpreting the javascript properly, it looks like it breaks the back
button by forcing you to the top of the page.

~~~
ameliaquining
No, the JavaScript has nothing to do with scrolling. Rather, it checks whether
it's inside an iframe, and if so, navigates the top-level window to its own
URL. In other words, it prevents you from embedding the site; if you try, your
page will instead redirect to it. However, in the modern era, this kind of
measure is neither necessary (because you can block iframing with CSP) nor
effective (because the parent page can sandbox the iframe).

------
ubik
I wish more sites would have these text-only fallback modes and that it was
standard practice. A tiny bit of css wouldn't hurt though.

------
tejasmanohar
It would be cool if there was a standard to identify the text only version of
a site so your browser could just prefer that.

~~~
jayflux
.txt Tld?

~~~
indiv0
You'd probably want it as a subdomain instead of requiring people to register
2 domains to support a thin version.

------
Fnoord
Just strikes me, immediately apparent: Whats With All The Capitals In
Headlines? German influence?

------
cup-of-tea
So what any website should look like if the user disables the stylesheet?

------
feelin_googley
Text-only NYT

    
    
         test $# -eq 1 ||exec echo usage: $0 section \> news.htm
        
         a="GET /services/json/sectionfronts/$1/index.jsonp HTTP/1.1";
         b="User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_10_3) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/44.0.2403.89 Safari/537.36";
         c="Host: static01.nyt.com";
         d="Connection: close";
    
         exec printf "%s\r\n%s\r\n%s\r\n%s\r\n\r\n" "$a" "$b" "$c" "$d" \
         |exec openssl s_client -tls1_2 -ign_eof -connect static01.nyt.com:443 -servername static01.nyt.com -tlsextdebug -verify 9 \
         |exec tr -cd '\12\40-\176' \
         |exec sed -n '
         /link\" :/{s/.* : \"//;s/\",//;s/.*/<a href=&>&<\/a><\/pre>/;};
         /title\" :/{s/ > / Section: /; s/.* : \"/<br><pre>/; s/\",//;};
         /lastBuildDate\" :/{s/.* : \"/<pre>/; s/\",//; s/\\n/<\/pre>/;};
         /pre>/p;
         '

------
napa15
You know what, I really like this. Even with a site like drudgereport which is
kind of text-like, it still feels like it's screaming at you. This is how news
should be to allow me to form my own opinions in my head. The presentation
might be slightly better with a google like description text underneath, could
be that I'm used to that though.

------
ruok0101
"online version of our monotone news reporting". j/k. I love it.

~~~
Decabytes
I've always loved minimalist websites and text. Typography was my favorite
style in my graphic design classes. Like Pixel Art I feel like these things
can be implemented very well but get a bad rap for being "retro" or "dated".

