Did I Just Say I Like HTML? 2020-06-20

The thing you are reading was "designed" with HTML and CSS. HTML looks like this:

<p><span class="articlecontent">This is the stuff I type in my article.</span></p>

... and CSS looks like this:

.articlecontent {
  font: 18px monospace;
  line-height: 1.5;
  color: lightgray;
}

The HTML stuff is generally "the words you see" framed by some codes that identify those words as being within certain blocks of text. In the case above, the block of text is identified as "articlecontent". The CCS stuff is a way of defining how those blocks of text will look. In the case above, it sets out the font and colour of the "articlecontent" text. In general, HTML and CSS are not things that typical computer users are interested in. They just want to click on the link and see cute dog photos.

Don't step on the dogmines!

Now some folks simply have no desire to share their thoughts digitally. They may want to present cute dog photos publicly, but not write lengthly posts about how making web pages works. While maybe a little disappointing, that's how it is. Those who do want to share their thoughts digitally often still don't want to know how all those stupid little codes work. They probably use what is referred to as a WYSIWYG editor to present their content. All too often that editor is part of a content management system like Wordpress. All too often, that content is also buried under a blanket of turd scented ads, tracking, scripts, and junkware. That stuff makes your browsing experience less enjoyable, even if the people who love that stuff tell you that it makes your browsing experience richer and more awesome. They're lying. Seriously, they are.

That is why this web site looks different than most. It doesn't have a big flashy movie playing in the top banner, it doesn't have fancy animated menus and share buttons that pop out of different places, it doesn't send your browser to various ad hosting servers, and it doesn't have some invisible way of making your browser mine bitcoins for me. It is just a presentation of information and hopefully some comedy thrown in there to keep you from falling asleep of closing this browser tab. Some might say that my web site is boring and useless. Those people are empty husks of human beings.

Over the years I have occasionally searched for a better way to present this information, but haven't really seen anything that makes sense to me. Some old-schoolers like the idea of Gopher, which is definitely light, not very well suited to ads and scripting, but also not functional enough to make the content look good. Recently I have had another look at Gemini, but it suffers from the same lack of functionality that makes Gopher harsh. I'm not asking for a reproduction of anything as crappy as modern web pages, just the ability to style or justify text, add in an image, and maybe even embed a video. I'm okay with boring presentation, but a simple wall of almost completely unstyled text is just too unreadable. The way Gopher and Gemini link to "other places" is also significantly limited when compared to HTML. And don't tell me that I'm not old school enough... I was one of those BBS goofs before you had ever known the Internet existed. In fact, I was a BBS goof before most of the people who ever read this were alive. BBS admins loved to gussy up their boards with colour and even pictures.

Anyways, the problem with modern web pages is not that they use HTML and CSS. The problem is that browsers and wanker developers have allowed that text management mechanism to be flooded with garbage like javascript, ads, and flat out junk. So I think what I am going ot take away from today's adventure is that maybe instead of looking for an HTML/CSS replacement, I might be better off just looking for pages that have non-turdy content. I was already going through this list of Gemini servers and found some [HTML based] stuff that I thought was much better assembled than your typical Wordpress site. Hmmm, maybe that is a rather low bar eh? Anyways, I found Freedombone which is not necessarily related to light information sharing, but is rather interesting looking.

So, does anyone know of any awesome no-bloat sites I should check out?