Curating my corner of the Internet with a freehand web editor

I opened this website on a laptop and it was a very satisfying read.

I immediately noticed that the page uses full width of the screen; that there are no distractions in the form of ads, newsletter popups, unintuitive scrolling, or the like; and that the increase in information density was without compromising readability. Embedding social media content as screenshots is a nice touch too.

An efficient way to prove your point.

> our collective web experience frustrates more than it excites. It is a whiplash feed of ephemeral 'content' interspersed with ads and walled within 3 or 4 platforms with web-accessible front-ends (social media, newsletters, Discord channels). They'd all love for you to switch to the mobile app, though.

> We can't expect to turn back the clock and have everyone writing HTML by hand again, not when we're all accustomed to typing text and uploading media via carefully manicured, intentionally minimal user interfaces.

There are days when I feel like I'm the last person left who hand-codes personal websites for pleasure. Though I refuse to believe this is true!

Then again, I doubt there's a freehand web editor that's ever been built that can cope with the sort of crazy I was building back in the day (and, against all probability, still works!)

⇉ A brief Ákat lexicon - http://rikweb.co.uk/kalieda/wakat/index.php?page=lexicon

⇉ Vreski wards system - https://vreskiwards.rikweb.org.uk/index.html

⇉ Ewlah maps - https://rikweb.org.uk/map/

> Too much knowledge of code is required to create a hand-made website. Building one shouldn't be any more difficult than making a PowerPoint [presentation]

I like this. I also wish designMode were more of a discoverable, easy-to-use feature in popular browsers.

Hosting (and DNS etc.) are still a pain though, and usually cost money.

> an abandonware WYSIWYG web editor called Hotglue

> Hotglue is a fascinating open-source "anything goes, WYSIWYG" website making tool

But it's open source (GPL), so anyone could revive (or un-abandon) it!

Shameless plug for my startup’s freehand web editor https://hatch.one. You don’t have to throw back to hotglue if you want to create your own site visually with tremendous creative freedom.

I don't think people have actually stopped we just don't know how to find them, at least I don't.

How did people find them in the old days?

Does anyone else want a "search engine" that is just a database of websites crawled and you can query any combination of fields and filters you want?

Also for me the issue in starting a personal website has always been the server and public IP adress (I'm into the diy).

I don't think it is the software that is the blocker for people doing this. It's not like it was easy in the old days - if anything it is easier today to create a personal-if-bland site on one of the many free WYSIWYG editors that use templates (I know the article mentions this) yet they don't. And let's face it search engines were utter trash until early-google arrived so it's not like you could count on your site being easily found (...and some may argue the current utility of search engines - or lack of! - puts us back where we were pre-google era anyway...)

I think there are some other reasons - I don't know which one(s) (if any) are most true or not:

- maybe people still are doing it but we just don't see it now the net is so much larger? Look at Gemini protocol et al - people are doing things but not in a necessarily eye-catching way

- maybe video is the kids' new HTML? There is some weird/creative stuff on tiktok etc al. Even getting photos let alone 4k video into a computer was hard in the early/mid 90s.

- it just went out of fashion

- the novelty wore off

- people see the internet as a utility these days, and take it for granted

- everyone is spending all their time trying to bootstrap a Like-OpenAi-But-For-Ride-Hailing start-up instead

Tl;dr - motivated individuals will build something if they want to, but I think the motivation has gone. I don't think it is because they feel constrained by templates

While I’m sympathetic to the aims of this manifesto, I can’t help but see the paradox of “free hand” being antithetical to html, a format that chose semantic over aesthetic, and legibility over expressiveness.

I hand code my business website by hand, fun and it's actually fast once you know what are you doing. Best thing is you can actually optimize everything properly by building things to be exactly as needed and make fine refinements. Even with animations and stuff, it's total weight is below 1MB (854Kb).

But this is not for everyone, not only the lack of knowledge (which is fine, not everyone has to write their websites manually) but also lack of interest. Great for tinkerers to deal with the challenges and make it do.

When I hear someone talk about their “corner” of the internet, I always think about what that means geometrically or topologically.

Is the internet a shape made up of ALL corners?

> We can't expect to turn back the clock and have everyone writing HTML by hand again, not when we're all accustomed to typing text and uploading media via carefully manicured, intentionally minimal user interfaces.

I mean, I do it. That was always allowed! You've been able to write as much or as little HTML as you want since the Web was invented.