Comment by 🚀 stack
Re: "Just out of curiosity: Do folks consider Gemini/gopher/…"
I suppose the web is WWW/HTTP technically
Mar 02 · 2 months ago
7 Later Comments ↓
🚀 lars_the_bear [OP] · Mar 02 at 08:29:
@norayr : "doesn't 'web' describe http world?" That's exactly my question. In a technical sense I think it does. But to a non-technical person, very likely "web" encompasses the whole of the Internet
And if you use a modern Gemini client, for example, the user experience isn't really any different from using a web browser. I don't think there's any real consensus on this.
i think the reason we have the term "small web" is less about http and more about the person-scale internet as a place (read: non-corpo, non-mainstream), so in that way it should include other protos. that said, years ago i liked to call it "small net", but idk how popular that name is today
That’s why I prefer the term "smolnet" than "small web". It is more inclusive of other solutions. People who use "small web" are either unaware that a life exists outside of the web and/or that there’s a difference between Web and Internet.
While Gemini/gopher are probably fringe, a key component of the "smol scene" is email and mailing-lists. Despites lot of people using it through a web interface, this is clearly not "small web".
v
But I understand "small web" and if "small web" could convince people to make web pages lighter and with less JS, that would be good (unfortunately, this is not the case. I’ve seen people calling their webpage "smallweb" while hiding all their content behind JS functions)
i wish there was an exact standard for what is the subset of modern html that is considered small. sorry for the offtop.
let's say old html didn't have audio/video src, that doesnt make browsers much slower, but even simplifies the web pages.
then browsers like dillo and netsurf would know which parts exactly is necessary to implement. and people would know which parts of html they can use so that smallweb browsers could show their pages properly.
but it is not a very pressing matter for me, i dont have hopes with web and slowly move whatever i can to gemini/spartan.
I think it's pretty obvious -- start with no css or scripting of any kind and stick to basic formatting. Then argue for a few years about what's acceptable.
there is "small web" the umbrella term that means a lot of different things, and then there is the series that is "250kb club", "512kB club" etc. of websites that are all small which you might like! webrings are fun; some are content-oriented, some are circles of friends, others like this have technical requirements.
https://250kb.club/
some people in my webring have very glittery sites that are definitely not small but are super expressive and i like that too. they feel a bit like personal art projects. this fits my idea of a "person-scale" internet: it's made by real people with hobbies, not businesses or social media personalities. small as in not trying to be big, not kB
🚀 lars_the_bear [OP] · Mar 03 at 07:52:
@norayr : "i wish there was an exact standard for what is the subset of modern html that is considered small. "
Well, there's this:
— https://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml-basic/
Original Post
Just out of curiosity: Do folks consider Gemini/gopher/scroll/nex/etc part of the "small web" movement? Or completely separate? The objectives seem to be similar, even though the protocols are different. I'm only asking because I'm trying to figure out how best to divide up the pages on my website.