Minimal Web

A good sized readable font is a bit funny though. That line of text is very small on my phone and I presume most people today browse on phones. I can also imagine some phones with a higher resolution show this text even smaller making it completely illegible.

I'm all about minimalism so long as it doesn't hurt UX but these examples of minimalism always end up going too far. It's like it becomes a competition for minimalists - "look how much more minimal I am than you! Therefore I'm a better minimalist."

On the aspects of logging and analytics. Back in the dark-ages, before javascript was a thing, we relied on webserver logs and local database entries. Later came the infamous transparent pixel for cross-site tracking.

How many websites could suffice with such analytics today, I wonder? Has Google Analytics, and the likes, sold us on learned helplessness to support their own interests of getting cross-site data from everyone to power their advertising? Perhaps my idea of tracking value is stuck in the dark-ages as well…

I agree with a lot of these ideas but I do not get the obsession with short urls. E.g., why not make it easy for readers to see the date of when something was published?

In this case I cannot even see a publication date on the post itself (looking at the archive it says it is from December 26, 2012). I would personally prefer a URL like /2012/minimal-web/ rather than /w/.

This looks great. I'm building a blogging platform sharing much of this simplicity: https://lmno.lol My blog is at https://lmno.lol/alvaro

You can drag and drop your entire blog from a markdown file https://indieweb.social/@xenodium/112265481282475542

You can read blogs from anywhere, even terminal (no JS needed).

No need to sign up or log in to try it out. You can edit ephemeral blogs.

I haven't officially launched, but if you'd like to start blogging now, I'll be happy to share an invite code. Ping help AT lmno.lol.

The emergence of business aspect on the web was the main mistake IMO. But it's probably a common pattern in every space. It's true that it shifts focus on being viewed rather than expressing or documenting something you care about in the form you prefer. In the old days it was a natural average.. lots of websites from classical to weird, on all kinds of topics, without a lot of structure. Everytime there was a lightness aspect.

Add Google/SEO on top of that and everything starts to conform to shallow metrics.

I'd pay a bit every month just to have tiny, light, non marketed websites.

Mostly sensible, but...

a minimalist website should leave out: [...] tags or related posts

That's taking it a bit too far. Those are what make the web a web!

All of these requirements only apply to some hobbies blog. None of this apply in real world web applications, you need comments, related post to keep your users active and engaged, you need analytics to keep track of your progress.

I take issue with a lot of this advice, actually.

- The name of the site is not a necessity, the url makes it clear. Weird recommendation if you aim for a "pure reading experience".

- Having a comment section doesn't detract from the reading at all. It's after reading your content, and can then enhance the discussion. Fine if you want to leave it out, but encouraging discussion on Twitter instead isn't 'minimal'.

- Minimal images isn't something to strive for, visuals can greatly enhance your content.

- Short urls look nice, but just `w` as your slug is just confusing. No harm in normal length urls.

- Medium.com is used as an example, that site is 80% popups. Paul Graham's site is also awful to use (especially on mobile). Great content, hidden behind bad websites.

- Why would related posts, or even tags, be bad? Navigation doesn't have to distract, and is a tool for the user.

The author makes some fair points, nobody likes the bloat of the modern web. But you don't have to go "full minimalist" either, your website would be greatly improved if you change the #ffffff background with #000 text. It's the same with motherfuckingwebsite.com vs bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com; small changes can greatly increase the appeal, which will help your content get seen and spread. Like others mentioned, prioritizing a good user experience is probably what you want, not striving for minimalism.

No need to fetishize minimalism when you can target usability instead. Things can be too minimal but they cannot be too usable.

They probably may want to fix few things with their own design - https://imgur.com/a/xu9J1P3

> tags or related posts

Definitely can’t get on board with this one. There’s nothing stopping some basic hyperlinks be at the top or bottom.

When I find a personal site I tend to spend a lot of time browsing around as I enjoy reading posts where I enjoy the technical content and/or writing style.

Having some navigation aids means I get to see what the author considers related and important.

This could be limiting for more complex content: forms with autocomplete, sortable tables, image galleries with navigation and zoom, etc.

That’s fine - the project intends to support a minimalist UX after all. My point is that maximalist UX has user friendly patterns too.

Some of the most useful websites on www are those of math and com sc faculty - typically older generation - that has C code for their famous algorithm, used freely by millions. These guys couldn’t be bothered with formatting. Nor do we care.

I agree with most of this, but the idea should be extended to the authoring side, which is usually the opposite of friction free and minimal, so then the author is less likely to post. Thus I created my microblog CMS

Minimalism definitely simplifies things, but ditching analytics entirely could be risky, especially for growth. Server logs are nice, but they don’t give you the same insights into user behavior

Same point made in a more entertaining and less pretentious way:

https://motherfuckingwebsite.com/

The idea of minimal web is appealing from some angle, but people add all the non-minimal stuff because it works. If you want to have readers, it is silly to avoid making basic optimizations. If you don't care about having readers - why not just write a journal?

You shouldn't be setting any formatting like the font or column width for a "real" "minimal" website. The browser should be handling that, in theory anyway.

Can we have a search engine that only indexes sites like this and does not index any site that does meet the requirements listed?

can we get all these "pure web" people to put their content on RSS or some sort of "pure information hub" like wikipedia? HTML clearly is not the medium for this anymore, have you seen how bloated and NOT content-centric (anymore) the spec is?

Safari's reader mode declutters any non-minimal website.

Disagree. A popup asking for email (contact info) is an essential part of building and maintaining an audience. Blog posts don't exist in a vacuum.

It's as important as ever to maintain direct relationships with your audience.

Just publish a book then? Let people be creative with the web, why not?

Motherfucking Website[1] Law: Every year, someone reinvents a minimalistic, no-nonsense website concept / CSS framework.

[1]: https://motherfuckingwebsite.com/