
The Mutable Web - rauhl
https://simulacrum.party/posts/the-mutable-web/
======
jamesjyu
_There 's also an aesthetic homogeneity to the big social media sites that
strikes me as bleak and depressing compared to the amateurish, handmade web
pages of my childhood. Different pages on the same website — even different
entries in the same journal — might look wildly different_

I touched on this in a recent post here: [https://www.jamesyu.org/blog/my-
journey-from-frame-maker-to-...](https://www.jamesyu.org/blog/my-journey-from-
frame-maker-to-painter/)

I empathize with the author on this, but I also appreciate that platforms have
designed their frames to prioritize content. This has resulted in an explosion
of creativity within the frame that we wouldn't have otherwise seen, because
the platforms have allowed more people than ever to express themselves, and
not just the folks who know how to hand code pages.

Homogeneity provided the consistency so that creators could focus within the
frame.

~~~
vishnuharidas
#offtopic - what CMS do you use in your blog?

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jamesjyu
Jekyll static site with a custom template.

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simulacrumparty
Well, not Jekyll, but similar. I built my own static site generator.

~~~
vishnuharidas
@jamesjyu @simulacrumparty I liked both! Simple and minimalistic.
@simulacrumparty Is your staticgen opensource? Like to have a minimalistic one
like that.

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md224
I believe that the web could be so much more if competition between platforms
was somehow decoupled from competition between UIs. It would be incredible if
every social network had a marketplace of competing UIs, allowing for rapid
front-end innovation.

Of course, many services provide APIs, so in theory this decoupling is already
possible, but the problem is that many platforms rely on advertising &
promoted content for their revenue, so they need to maintain control over the
front-end and therefore won't allow people to build alternative UIs.

I don't know how to solve the revenue problem. I just wish we could find a way
to have UI competition.

~~~
echelon
I really want to try this.

A new Reddit

\- but with the Wikipedia funding model

\- with Snapchat's ephemerality

\- an amazing API and all open source code

\- all submissions cc-by-sa licensed

Since profit isn't a motive, it would encourage the proliferation of new
frontends and clients. As well as really cool mashups (haven't heard that term
in awhile - probably due to increasingly closed ecosystems.)

Without having to save user generated content you can save tremendously on
servers. You don't have to scale other than enough to handle the fire hose.
Everything could reside in memory. Just Redis and Rust.

The content gets scrubbed after a week. No sharded storage is necessary. But
due to the license, others can persist content they like.

There's next to zero value in looking up old posts. I don't know why this
hasn't been done.

~~~
munmaek
> There's next to zero value in looking up old posts. I don't know why this
> hasn't been done.

I genuinely cannot tell if this is satire.

A lot of subreddits are bastions of information for sometimes very niche
topics. I frequently run into reddit posts that are 6+ months old but still
relevant to what I'm seeking knowledge about. Outside of the programming
sphere, posts from years ago generally still hold value.

Saving posts would imply that I knew what Future Me wants to look up, or
praying that someone was interested and cached it. Writeups/insightful
discussion would be completely wasted, and I would have to find -another-
website for potential caches of things relevant to what I'm looking for.

It would be like IRC where people delve into the same topics and arguments ad
infinitum.

If I wanted an ephemeral social network (like snapchat) I would use an
ephemeral social network, like snapchat.

~~~
echelon
> A lot of subreddits are bastions of information for sometimes very niche
> topics.

While I don't doubt that's the case, it's incredibly difficult to get at old
content due to Reddit's horrible search experience. I never look up anything
old there.

~~~
munmaek
Reddit's search has always been terrible.

site:reddit.com or site:reddit.com/r/nichesubreddit <query> is how I actually
find things. Lately I actually have begun to cache important things locally,
but I wouldn't assume anyone else is doing that for the particular topics or
niche subsection of a topic that I'm looking up.

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the_pwner224
Interestingly the images on this site did not load until I disabled my
adblocker...

In the uBlock Origin settings the second tab ('Filter lists') contains a list
of filter files, some of which are enabled by default and some of which
aren't. I checked the boxes to enable some additional filter lists -
everything in the 'Built-in' category except Experimental, and everything in
the 'Annoyances' category.

It's been a while since I enabled these so I don't remember what exactly all
of them do, but I rarely see a cookie banner or a modal popup subscribe
dialog, I think due to these extra filters. These extra filters also include
social blocking ones, which delete like/share buttons such as those from
Facebook and Twitter (these buttons are useless to me). I think one of the
rules in these extra filter lists is matching on your images, which are on the
path '/assets/images/tmw-twitter-xxx.png.' The uBO logger shows the rule being
matched as '/images/ _twitter-_ ' and that it is present in Fanboy's
Annoyances and Social Blocking lists.

Of course there's nothing wrong with the site, the images here are just a
casualty of a blocking rule. But it was an interesting 'bug' to find.

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TazeTSchnitzel
If you are nostalgic for the aesthetics of the web of old:
[https://cameronsworld.net](https://cameronsworld.net)

~~~
lanevorockz
On the age before SEO it was much easier to find what you wanted. That's the
nostalgic feel that I miss. Type the title of a research paper and get the
direct link to the pdf.

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l00sed
Great post! I completely sympathize with your nostalgia for a shared Web, but
I doubt a great many people know how to edit the appearance of pages they
visit. I like that you've included your own buttons for light/dark mode and
serif/sans. I enjoy customizing my apps' appearances (and it seems like more
and more are offering this feature); but I also think your blog looks
exceptionally clean and organized.

I don't completely hate Twitter's redesign-- it does include a night mode and
different highlight colors. I feel like-- as a professional installation art
designer, web designer, and an education in architecture-- I can spot the same
obvious pitfalls of the re-design you call out: mainly, phat text and a bulky
sidebar. However, it's clear you have a stronger-than-most design sense, and
are sensitive to these issues.

I wonder how the everyday user-- the consumer that uses (and does not make or
own) a platform-- feels about these features? How about someone who isn't
adept at web design? Who can't read small text or icons?

~~~
simulacrumparty
Thanks for the comments! I don't think the issue is ability so much as
inclination. People see the web as something to consume rather than
participate in so modifying a website doesn't cross their minds at all. I
think with a little rebranding and some tweaking for non-devs devtools would
be a fantastic way for anybody to start off slow, changing colors and so on,
and gradually work their way up to more complicated CSS concepts, or even JS.
I think if this functionality was right in front of people rather than being
hidden deep in a menu behind the name Developer Tools, it's entirely possible
people would take to it without much trouble.

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kaycebasques
Regarding overriding the styles of a site, this is another possibility:
[https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2018/01/devtools-w...](https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2018/01/devtools-
without-devtools)

Disclosure: Wrote that doc

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nihilismislove
Heavy Stylus user here, this is how I actually read the OP's article (I didn't
know what it was going to be about) -
[https://imgur.com/dWtQKLT](https://imgur.com/dWtQKLT)

~~~
simulacrumparty
Hey, that's awesome. It was important to me to design my website to be
amenable to user styling so I'm glad someone is taking advantage of it!

