Where do websites belong?

[glitchlynx]

I originally started making my website mobile friendly just for accessibility - some people only have a phone or only have a tablet and not a computer. I wasn't sure what I wanted my website to look like when I started it anyway, so why not accommodate different screen sizes? I think its been a good learning process, I know a little more html and css now than I would have if I'd been making my site with only one screen size in mind.

But even beyond accessability, I think mobile friendly sites can be an important part of the "web revival". I have my fairshare of complaints about smartphones, but they're here to stay. I figure if someone spends a minute browsing a personal website on their phone, that's one less minute they might have spent on a data hungry app or on social media. I feel much better mentally when I'm browsing webrings than when I'm scrolling through social media posts, so I want to do my part when I'm making stuff for my website to make that first option as easy as possible for other people who are deciding between the two.

That being said, there's a lot of really cool websites out there that would not translate well to a small screen. I wouldn't want to see all those sites changed to fit into nice and neat rectangles. Also, I do really like the emphasis on sitting at a computer rather than being constantly plugged into a smartphone that the 'web revival' tends to have. I'm not sure I'm explaining this well, but that emphasis seems to help things stay a bit more slow and intentional. You don't expect people to post all the time or reply quickly if you know that they have to make time to sit down at a computer in order to do it.

So I suppose my answer to the question is that it would be great if websites belonged only on the computer, but since they can and will be 'on the go' why not try to make cool, personal mobile sites?

[shevek]

there's a notion in this thread that everyone has a choice. a lot of people don't own desktops, and are stuck with a tiny screen on their laptop. loads of people don't even own laptops, and their sole method of experiencing the web is via a smartphone!

typically these situations aren't by choice, but are the result of things they can't control.

if you think walled-garden websites bad on desktop, they are much worse on mobile. old-web revival should be deliberately and explicitly inclusive of mobile users who want an alternative to those walled gardens. let them have that choice!
you do have to perform a certain amount of cost/benefit analysis to decide whether it's worth your time, effort, and perhaps money to improve the mobile-friendliness of your site.

but, in most cases, mobile-unfriendly design is also bad webdesign. the web is mobile-friendly by default (largely, some things are a bit awkward). you usually have to put in effort to change that.

I think this is something I see a lot in discussions around mobile friendly design (see also CRIS' post with the queer and trans youth) that I don't appreciate and feel like poisons the discussion for people who are in it or want to partake; there are usually appeals to emotion via referencing a small and/or oppressed group that has no choice but to do it x way, and it either overtly or covertly introduces the question to the reader "Do you *really* wanna exclude these poor people?", in some cases even introducing "Do you really wanna be on the side of the oppressor?" and it makes people arguing against having their site be mobile friendly potentially have to argue why they aren't a bigot for doing so. I think it introduces too high stakes and emotions for a discussion around personal sites that are started as a hobby by private people, which hold no vital information people cannot do without. I also cannot imagine people crying themselves to sleep feeling rejected and outcast by society because they have to zoom in or out on a phone. They most likely blame their phone if they don't know how web design works and that's that. If you only have a phone and can't have a laptop for whatever reason, coding your own site is going to be near impossible anyway, and this is just my personal view, but if anyone is just consuming websites without creating their own, are they really part of the web revival? Passive consumption is never revolutionary to me. Even if my site is accessible and convinces them, outside forces would keep them where they are.

This is the elitism I have talked about, because it is often presented in a holier-than-thou attitude for being the one graciously including an extremely fringe group that is posed as being wronged, while assuming there is no thought, effort or intent behind the design since it must be a lack of skill or simply 'bad' to do this. I understand if this wasn't your intention, but it came across that way to me, and I see this a lot outside of this forum.

i was browsing your website yesterday! i clicked that button and was relieved. i'm on desktop.

your site design is cute to look at, but overwhelming to get any information from.

i do think you could find a better middleground between form and function that isn't betterfuckingwebsite basic, still retains much of your creative vision, but also makes the site more generally readable and less overhwelming.

Thank you for checking out my site I am glad you liked the minimalist mode.

Just for context: That site didn't look that way until about.. 2 months ago now, I think. Its first version was extremely mobilefriendly! Coded with almost exclusively mobile in mind! It was something carrd-esque with sleek interfaces and fancy animations when switching between a home page, a gallery, and a contact page; basically all on the same page, just separated with clicks. But it was.. so goddamn boring. The sites I link now on my button page made me want something that isn't appealing so hard to the uber professional and clean web design, something that doesn't scream carrd or Squarespace, something that is truly me. So at this point, I have spent over 150h on this redesign. It was deliberate and everything in it is carefully planned.
The criticisms are definitely valid and I saw that myself, so that is why the sitemap, the greyscale mode and the minimalist mode exist. Because these issues are definitely there, but there is only so much I will compromise on with my creative vision. Now back to the thread topic!

While making these side-solutions, I have realized: we all have to leave people behind. Some intentionally, some unintentionally. No site is gonna be liked by all, and to assess mine, it may drive away people who hate the color pink, people who are on mobile, people very used to how social media and professional websites display content, people who have a type of colorblindness or are blind; it will also drive away people who are overwhelmed navigating smartphones and desktops alike, because both require you to click or tap on symbols in front of a background, and if they can't, they will have trouble with my site.
And I thought: Being able to explore my site isn't a required nuisance, it's a voluntary experience, and getting to know me or my information isn't a right people deserve equal access to, it's a privilege. It is not supposed to be passively scrolled through as easily digestible content to be reached equally by thousands, else I could (and should) have stayed on Tumblr. I am aware it may sound cunty, but I am saying it in earnest.

On the other side, I am planning to make a fanpage for a game and mobile will be very important there.

[arcus]

Mobile phones have had internet access since the nineties, predating CSS's initial release.

The old web used to be mobile and desktop friendly, especially in Japan; many sites were designed to work well on both desktop and mobile devices.

Pixel measurements were less of an issue back in the day, since screens did not vary as much as they did now. A lot of smaller devices didn't support CSS, and this was not a major issue, since CSS wasn't used to the same extent as it is now. While monitor resolutions did grow, people would put notices on their splash pages on what browser and resolution the site was tested on. A lot of sites would be broken on smaller screens, but not to the same extent I see with some indieweb sites.

Mobile accessibility goes hand in hand with general accessibility. Many people zoom and resize web pages, which breaks sites that don't use relative measurements. Even on PC, screen resolutions can vary.

Accessibility isn't as complicated as it seems. It's actually fun and a great way to think outside of the box when working on a site. It's also a good way to learn more about HTML and CSS.

For scaling and device compatibility:

• To make your sites scale up on mobile, add <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0"> under <head>
• Use relative sizes over pixel sizes when possible: em is good for text, vw is good for divs. 2em is twice as big as the default font size, while 1vw is 1% of the screen/window size.
• If you don't need to, don't specify a font size for your main text, browsers can specify their own default size.
• Use max-width for divs containing lots of text, set this to 500em or whatever.
• In general, think about your site in terms of ratios and proportions.

For screen readers:

• Use HTML elements for the layout of your site, screen readers use these to jump to different sections of a site: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element#content_sectioning
• Screen readers navigate by headers too, add <h1> for page titles, to <h6> for more minor headers: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/Heading_Elements
• Use aria-hidden to hide decorative text and images from screen readers: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Accessibility/ARIA/Attributes/aria-hidden
• Add alt text to images that are not purely decorative.

You don't need to do all of these, but these will help a lot.

For me that's not the goal! I don't want to grow visitor numbers deliberately, I want people to have to put effort into enjoying my site - scaring off mobile users is the goal! So when Im looking at analytics, Im interested in the people who are willing to put in that effort to get the experience that's intended.

This is the issue others have with the posts in this thread. Not the idea of making a website for yourself, but the idea that PC access is a matter of effort. And the intentional decision to have the site not work on more devices, for the purpose of gatekeeping, as opposed to it being a side effect. It's the same judgemental attitude people had against PC vs Mac users back in the day.

It's as much about dismantling other people's sites as it is about browsing them, and to do that you need the right tools. Those tools are code inspectors, a web editor, a keyboard, a good screen, a way to save and edit images, a way to test your site etc. (On the point of mobiles and chrome books - these things don't tend to fit well - although I did painfully make a site on an iPad once!)

It seems like maybe if we are discussing the kinda of spaces web revival sites are designed for, we should include the process of creating them as much as the process of browsing them 

I've made a site (mostly) on Android before. It wasn't that hard but doing it on a PC would have been a lot nicer. I couldn't get it to look right on mobile at all however, since it used vertical text. I'll try something similar some other time, now that I know more. I'm sure there's a way to get it to look right, at least horizontally.

I used a basic text editor and Neocities' editor. The banner I made on my laptop (it had issues charging, so I didn't code the site on it.) No inspection tools or anything like that. I did have a bunch of tabs open for tutorials.

I'll probably make a site on my phone again eventually. It wasn't ideal at the time, but that's mainly because I didn't seek out better tools.

I always assume people are in their computer den, or in their living room - it's always a quiet personal space - it's always a space that is suited to introspection; since the early days of the internet surfing has always been a hobby for introverts.

I did not know computer dens were still a thing. I do all of my browsing in bed. Even on my PC. Most people I know use their phones in bed, too.

I think this is something I see a lot in discussions around mobile friendly design (see also CRIS' post with the queer and trans youth) that I don't appreciate and feel like poisons the discussion for people who are in it or want to partake; there are usually appeals to emotion via referencing a small and/or oppressed group that has no choice but to do it x way, and it either overtly or covertly introduces the question to the reader "Do you *really* wanna exclude these poor people?", in some cases even introducing "Do you really wanna be on the side of the oppressor?" and it makes people arguing against having their site be mobile friendly potentially have to argue why they aren't a bigot for doing so.

That doesn't apply here. The posts here were talking about their own experiences. I can relate too, since I've gone without a PC for years, and I have a fair few other friends that don't have PC access either, for the same reasons. The issue isn't that sites are simply broken, but the attitude people have towards mobile users and the stereotyping.

However I find myself wondering if that's the only space for websites; can a website be designed for surfing while on a bus, or sitting in a park - can a website be designed to be browsed in social groups? Phones are waterproof now, what about a website that's only meant to be browsed while you're swimming? 

There used to be some exhibitions with websites actually, mid 2000s or so. I suppose geoblocking technically counts here too.

The concept of having websites experienced in a certain environment is interesting. This idea could work well in VR. JanusVR was (is?) focused on this, worlds are made with HTML pages, and you could browse sides within worlds.

While not space related, there also was a tea themed message board that only opened for a few hours every day. I was reminded of it when you started closing the forums on Monday.

To answer the question, websites belong anywhere and everywhere. It's called the World Wide Web, so why limit that? While people are free to do whatever they want with their sites, it should be at least common courtesy again to add a splash page with a notice on what monitor resolution and browser the site was tested on. Maybe an accessibility webring would be nice.

[dotmidi]

"Where do websites belong?"
IN THE TRAAASH!11!!!!1!   

[shevek]

That doesn't apply here. The posts here were talking about their own experiences.

Of course it does. The second you introduce this argument into the discussion, you change the dynamic and stakes. Not to mention it isn't just personal experiences, these were actual arguments that asked the reader to consider the particular group in regards to this topic.

This is the issue others have with the posts in this thread. Not the idea of making a website for yourself, but the idea that PC access is a matter of effort. And the intentional decision to have the site not work on more devices, for the purpose of gatekeeping, as opposed to it being a side effect. It's the same judgemental attitude people had against PC vs Mac users back in the day.

Is gatekeeping your own site a bad thing? Genuine question. What makes it a bad thing? I am gatekeeping my person, my apartment and other things from people in real life all the time. I gatekeep my private info from specific companies. I'd argue I am neither a charity nor an employer, so this is okay. I see specific demands by mobile users as entitlement attitude occasionally, and I think it doesn't take into account that not all audiences are welcome or the intended target group and if you're not, that's okay. The thing is, if you're neither selling anything nor showing anything off hoping to reach a lot of people, you have zero loss when someone can't access the site. So mobile users going "Well if you do it that way I won't look at it because it annoys me!" has no weight in that scenario. It's like bad customers who say they won't shop there anymore as a supposed threat. A person you didn't want there anyway will not stop by anymore is not a threat.

I don't know if this applies to other people too, but gatekeeping a website also has to do with safety and visibility to me. I think we've all seen what virality and popularity online can do to people's mental health and lives, and the less my site is visited and linked somewhere, the better; because the few links and visits by me and very few others it gets are intentional and from communities and spaces I see as more safe or less likely to harbor predators and leaks who lead others to it to laugh at. The easier something can be viewed on the go on phones, the more it works for the masses and can be quickly shared onto other spaces and dogpiled on, or explodes and suddenly, tons of people have demands and you're suddenly on a stage. This can happen anyway all the time, but making it uninteresting for specific groups, devices or hard to share or view lowers the odds. I don't want my stuff spread around to be torn apart and laughed at the Farms or Chans because I am queer or my ethical lifestyle choices are offensive to some. If you click around a bit on the Neocities top sites' sites, you'll find links going outward to their lesser or unknown side presences where they say how they can't be themselves on their main sites anymore because it's too popular. They don't feel safe anymore being who they are on their main sites so they do it elsewhere. I don't want that to be me.

We tend to forget that while mobile friendliness was maybe a thing already before CSS, we now have vastly more people on the net with us than at that time, and this affects what can happen to you or your content differently when it is viewed. I fully acknowledge it might seem like a huge jump to go from mobile visibility to virality, but I feel like it needs to be discussed, and becoming popular negatively as a target or positively is something that hardly can be foreseen.
 

[Melooon]

Where do websites belong?"
IN THE TRAAASH!11!!!!1!

Firstly, I should explain that this is a joke from the Minecraft server and I fully support the punk mentality of trash-centric web design

@arcus To be quite blunt with you (since you have been quite direct towards me) - what you're saying, while perhaps technically correct on many levels, comes across as creatively vapid. You're leaning on technological discussions and social arguments that don't actually lend themselves to any artistic output.

You kinda do get the point of this thread at the end when you bring up the websites within game worlds and website exhibitions! Those are great talking points! So why bury them under a wall of usability issues and gatekeeping callouts?

@shevek It sounds like you're saying more or less what I was trying to say, but you're wording it much better than me! I would say that obscurity out of fear of exposure is maybe not the best reason for obscurity - but it's also understandable. You're angle on things that open up discussions instead of shutting them down is really powerful though and I was thinking about it all day!


I doooo wanna say that while this mobile/usability discussion is good and I won't ask you to stop if you wanna chime into it. I didn't actually make this thread as a mobile discussion. I think I was more interested in thinking about the context of space as a creative driver of web experience, rather than social forces as a driver of web design. e.g. how does browsing and coding a website at a beach change the experience of the website?

[dirtnap]

typing wrong-handed today. i'm doing my best to clean up errors, so please forgive the occasional typo.

i realise i left many thoughts out the other day, some of which i was glad to see others have since expressed. very thankful for 🅲🆁🅸🆂's and arcus' posts in particular.

i found myself writing my previous post here the way i'd write a wikipedia article. questioning whether something is too POV, where it's verifiable.

i even wrote a couple of speculative, unverifiable statements, habitually tagged them [[cn]], re-assessed whether they added any real value to the post in light of their unverified status, and then removed them.

i'm not on wikipedia! i am free! this is largely string-of-consciousness and opinion-full.

but recently I started to wonder if maybe Im just outright wrong to assume the kinda space someone should browse my site.

yes. yes, you are.

I always assume people are in their computer den, or in their living room - it's always a quiet personal space

that is such an enormous assumption. you seem aware of that, but i don't think you realise just how unusual this is. mobile useers have already been discussed, and it can safely be assumed that they cand and will access the web anywhere and everywhere.

do you have a computer den? i thought they went out with the window tax (does ireland have that?) and rent increases and...how can you afford to have a whole room in your house no-one sleeps in?

where i live, space is expensive. and i don't even live in a major city!

i'm so used to seeing two-beds housing three people, one of whom sleeps in the living room, that i often forget there exist living rooms that aren't also someone's bedroom.

the idea that you can get solitude or privacy outside of your own bedroom is alien to a lot of people. the living-room-sleeper doesn't even get that!

a computer den! the sheer luxury of that idea!

and aye, plenty of people are browsing the web in their living rooms. ON THEIR PHONES. or maybe tiny laptops. are netbooks still a thing?

it's always a space that is suited to introspection

i cannot put my finger upon't, but there is something about this that feels...dishonest?

there's an implication here that broswing the web is an inherently introspective act; or at least that it lends itself well to introspection, and that this should be expected to be the norm or at least A norm for all webdevs and broswers.

maybbe i'm reading too much into it. maybe this notion feels spoiled by the knowledge that you think computer dens are still normal.

elitism. that's what's bugging me.

This is the elitism I have talked about, because it is often presented in a holier-than-thou attitude for being the one graciously including an extremely fringe group that is posed as being wronged, while assuming there is no thought, effort or intent behind the design since it must be a lack of skill or simply 'bad' to do this. I understand if this wasn't your intention, but it came across that way to me, and I see this a lot outside of this forum.

(where did you talk about it? i re-read your first post here and see no mention of elitism)

this imagined sentiment is the exact opposite of what i would call elitism in webdev, and at least in this thread. your sentiment, as expressed around the imagined one, is elitism. especially this line:

If you only have a phone and can't have a laptop for whatever reason, coding your own site is going to be near impossible anyway,

the idea that there is a "right way" to do or experience something, and that failing to do it this way inherently produces an inferior product (webdev) or experience (broswing).

saying things like "i don't like to do it this way," "i would find this impossible," i cannot imagine wanting to do that" is harmless. those are opinions, an attempt to share your own experience.
(example statements only, not pulling from anyone's posts here)

taking these opinions and then defining them as the default experience is elitism; it redefines anything not stated as correct as deviant or wrong in some way.

you may find it impossible to write html on your phone but a lot of people don't. if you can type on it, and then put that typed data online in the format of a .html file, you can make a website on it.

neocities' in-broswer ide makes that even easier. i could write a webpage on my wii. after reading this thread, i feel inclined to try.

I also cannot imagine people crying themselves to sleep feeling rejected and outcast by society because they have to zoom in or out on a phone.

that is a wildly dishonest misrepresentation of mobile users' needs and i would like to hope you're aware of that.

i used to have an old blackberry, back when those were really common. i don't know if it was the first blackberry. i loved its proper keyboard (a huge step up from my nokia brick's t9 keyboard) and, relative to said nokia, huge screen resolution.

also, it could connect to the internet! and i could read my email on it!

i used it for email, more than i did for texting (and at the time i was a heavy texter). i discovered its web browser entirely by accident (its features had...not been explained to me when i acquired it. it didn't come with a manual) and was first confused, then fascinated, then delighted.

its css support was limited. its js support nonexistant. it handled iframes and other forms of embedded content poorly.

but i could browse the internet on it, at a time when the public library computer was my only other means of accessing the internet.

i kept that blackberry for a long time. i was using it up until a few years ago when i finally realised i didn't need it any more because i had a computer. it had for some time only served as a sort of instant notification that i had gotten an email. a thing that grew less useful and more disruptive as time went on. so i yanked the battery one final time and have never used a mobile, for email or otherwise, since.

that was, uh. some time ago now.

but before it became obsolete to my uses, before i had a computer and easy internet access, that blackberry was the only way i could access the internet with anything even resembling privacy or freedom.

as it got older and i failed to replace it, it grew more and more incongruous with the designs of the websites i was visiting. more and more websites just didn't work. some would show some vague notice about my browser being out of date. some would show a placeholder line "this website requires javascript, please enable and re-load". some would just show a blank page with no explanation.

but reddit continued to work right up until i stopped using that blackberry.

i could actually up- and down- vote posts, though because of no js support it had to refresh the page each time. i assume it sent votes via POST.

strangely, reddit on desktop doesn't do this if js is disabled. maybe a change made between my use of the blackberry and now. maybe it served a low-fidelity version of the page in response to whatever useragent blackberries send. now, if js is off, you just can't vote. i've tried fucking with my useragent to no avail, so i think they've simply dropped support for no-js voting entirely.

reddit was designed for desktop, for big screens with lots of sidebar space on either side.

yet, it worked just fine on my shitty tiny blackberry screen that could barely even show colour correctly!

no, i wasn't crying myself to sleep over awkward page layouts or mis-sized elements.

but my web browsing was largely trapped on the Big sites: reddit, twitter, livejournal, et cetera...tumblr was the least-good experience but it was functional for browsing. i had to send posts by email, though, and i'm glad they didn't remove that feature until after i stopped needing it.

smaller sites were very hit or miss. some were remarkably functional, some were such a disaster i just gave up.

not all devices have full css support. fuck, my current broswer is missing some newer css rules and i'm glad of it because i know i'd have to add to my "shitty webdesign practices" userstyle to neutraise them.

not all devices or browsers have js support. *gestures at signature*.

not everything even handles iframes well!

melooon has at least one webpage that's just a single iframe imported directly from neocities, and nothing else. i do question why you would create a webpage that is a single iframe containing an entire other webpage you also have direct control over. either import the html directly or link directly to the page as it exists on neocities. what's the benefit of the iframe there?


mobile-frienliness, i am going to re-iterate, is not just about phones, and is instead simply making your site function on a level better than none on as many devices, broswers, and resolutions as is feasible.

some websites are difficult or impossible to use with these missing features (espcially js. frontend javascript is a plague that should have died out when backend scripting languages became more robust).

I'm not into reviving any form of old web - When I say web revival, I mean a constant revival - reviving today, and then again reviving tomorrow

what are you trying to say? what are you reviving if not the old web? how would you define "web revival" if not "reviving the way the web used to be before walled gardens"?

I want people to have to put effort into enjoying my site - scaring off mobile users is the goal! So when Im looking at analytics, Im interested in the people who are willing to put in that effort to get the experience that's intended.

i think this is the root of my frustration with the idea that mobile users aren't to be welcomed.

owning a computer isn't a mtter of "putting in effort".

they're very expensive, moreso than smartphones in most cases. maintenance costs are often much more expensive, too.

they also take up a lot more space than phones. even a small laptop is bigger than a phone.

desktops are much more difficult to transport, and even laptops are heavier and harder to carry around than smartphones.

i hate smartphones. i don't own one, and i refuse to. i won't speak if i'm in the same room as one. i refuse to use them, even borrowed. i won't even pretend to entertain someone who wants to show me something on their smartphone. get that shit out of my face.

but i'm also capable of understanding how vital they are to so many people. my hatred of smartphones extends to and focuses entirely on myself. i don't want to be near one. i'm perfectly comfortable with others using them to access my sites, or to talk to me.

also! good news! i specifically put in effort to NOT get the intended experience! i made a userstyle that fixes some of my greater issues with this place before i even made an account, while i was still browsing, and then a couple more afterwards.

currently i'm browsing with my monitor set to greyscale, a thing i do sometimes when i'm feeling particularly overwhelmed by the absurd amount of colour on the web.

yeah, half the time when i'm browsing the web i'm not even seeing colours!

my browser also has a togglable extension that prevents all new images from downloading, allowing only those already cached to display. this is very useful when it rains and my network slows to speeds where measuring in mbps suddenly makes a lot more sense. there aren't a lot of zeroes when it rains!

do you owe anyone access to your site? no. you don't owe anyone jack shit.

but also, what is "the experience that's intended"? which site specifically are you talking about? i think knowing that would change the conversation significantly, as you seem to maintain a few sites.

I'm not a service provider

yes you are. this is a forum that you made and are maintaining. its existence, my ability to post this very message, is a service you are providing.

until you delete everyone's accounts but your own, you are a service provider.

and it's a good service and that's very much why i'm frustrated by your sentiment that everyone who doesn't have their own fucking dedicted computer room in their own house can sod off!

honestly your forum is fairly simple and pretty mobile-friendly so i wonder why you even have this attitude. i don't really have anything to criticise about the way your forum works because...there's not really anything that would significantly disrupt a mobile user's experience.

The thing about a personal site is that it's personal; it's a selfish project (and I mean selfish in a positive way, it's a space for the self). The radical and exciting thing about creating my site was that I could make it how I wanted, for me - screw everyone else - screw every rule of good design - they are not the point or the goal! I'm not a service provider, a company, some web guru, or on a moral quest to help or save anyone - I just wanna have fun!

despite all i've said here, i feel much solidatiry with this sentiment.

i believe it's wise to question rules; to ask what value they provide and what it costs to follow them; whether following the rule is worth that cost.

breaking rules for the fun of it, for the sake of seeing what will happen, is good too. it allows you to (re)discover the necessity of the rule; or to (re)discover that the rule is unnecessary or excessive.

i think more people should, in general, do things entirely for themselves. create something because they think it's a good idea, because they want it to exist, or because they want to see if it's even possible.

the author of the post after dirtnap's reply name looks something like this to me:

Code

🅲🆁🅸🆂

looks like that to me, too!

(i might look into the links browser...)

The only thing that I certainly would like to achieve with a website now, is to be the cause of the 51st extension of dirtnap's browser.

good luck! i encourage you to try. at this point, creating something that would necessitate a new extension to my overburdened browser would require some serious ingenuity.

i want to see what you can do, because right now, your website is....3 pages? am i missing something?

hit the character limit. more to follow.

[dirtnap]

i end with a rant that's more selfish than anything, and focuses more on art than technology:

i exist in a venn diagram of ideologies (everyone d0es), and crust-/gutter-/anarcho-punk are a large and influential circle in that digram.

i'm very contrarian, just generally. if i see that someone wants something done a certain way, i am overwhelmed with the urge to do it any way but that.

when a website tells me i should view it a certain way, i will go out of my way to view it differently, even if i was in fact already viewing it in the intended manner.

and for that reason, i now contradict myself and say: if you really want mobile users gone, why stop at making your site kinda janky on mobile?

be creative in your exclusion! use media-queries to make a huge div overtake the entire viewport that just says "your screen is too small, get a bigger one".

redirect all users from a mobile useragent string to a page that tells them to come back when they have a computer.

no, this isn't satire, i'm serious. you want to mix art, anarchy, and web revival? be direct. be bold. do something a corporate site would NEVER do: literally tell mobile users to fuck off.

some considerable time ago (brief aside in which i lament in the immuate linearity of time) i joined a minecraft server run by the admins of a fan-forum i had been a member of for a long time.

joining the server prompted me to download and enable the server texture pack. it had lots of fandom-focused textures for a variety of decorative blocks like clay and lapis that gave us more explicit options for creating fandom-focused builds.

it also made mesas look surreal, but what texturepack doesn't tbh.

the prompt was asking me if i wanted to install the texturepack, not telling me i had to. and enabling it once installed was still up to me.

it was possible for the server to require me to install and enable the server mods in order to access it. this i was glad to do because those mods were cool!

it was not possible, and as far as i know is still not possible, for a minecraft server to outright require use of a texturepack in order to access it.

i turned the pack off. i used my favourite texturepack, which i've been using since discovering it and have been manually updating with new textures over time.

quite a few people admitted that they also did not use the server pack. most of them used minecraft's default textures.

when i explored other people's builds, i would sometimes switch the server texturepack back on if things looked. odd. i learned to recognise the use of certain block as an indicator that the builder had the texturepack on, and probably expected others to as well.

but other builds looked better and more cohesive with default textures, and it was quite clear that those builders did not have the pack on.

i built things that looked good with my own texturepack. i managed to encourage a few other server members to install it to look around my builds. some kept it on because they liked it; some kept it for offline play but used the server pack or default textures for the server.

the server admins created a massive build that fully utilised the server texturepack. i'm pretty sure a lot of their texture choices were made explicitly to support that build, which they exported from a private server they shared between themselves only.

access to this build was gated by the admins. they were admins, they could do that. (actually anyone could do that, they used the golden shovel landclaim mod with locking doors and grief protection).

they insisted that you had the server texturepack installed and enabled to get in. a thing they tested by holding various objects, including admin-only items like the invisible block, and asking what they were holding. answering correctly granted access.

and once in, i thought more than once about switching to my other texturepack. but i didn't, because what they had built was incredible, and it was only incredible with the server texturepack. a part of me found it...controlling, to insist that your build only be explored with the right pack on. but i also understood it, because i wished i could do the same for my own builds, wished that the textures could be embedded in each block as placed by the user.

i still wish that were possible. it would make servers a lot more interesting.

i have since built some absolutely colossal things. i would love to put them online somewhere for others to explore – but only if they would have the correct texturepack installed. and i can't enforce that, so i've never put my biggest minecraft builds online.

so, i understand the urge to control the environment in which someone views your art.

but, uh, that kind of depends on the nature of the art and what the person viewing it is doing.

because even with the "wrong" textures my builds are architecturally very cool (if i do say so myself). there's a lot to them. they're massive. whole cities, each room in each building furnished. massive cave networks with huge underground forests. giant mushrooms, plant sculptures...

really, do i have to insist on the right textures? the shapes the blocks form have artistic merit even if all block share only one texture.

are old roman sculptures, robbed of their paint by the passage of time, being viewed incorrectly because they're all white or grey now? the sculptures themselves are still incredible works of art. different now, transformed by time, but no less enjoyable.

and on the subject of art. here's something that's been floating around my mind since i first read that melooon views his websites as works of art:

if this forum is a work of art, am i am posting this to your website, does that make me a collaborator? am i now a contributor to your web corpus?

therefore, are all posts here a part of that art? are we all now members in a massive collaboration?

if i think about it that way, it's pretty awesome. an art project depicting the nature of the web, of web culture, a documentation of sentiments and experiences on both the old and new web. that's a really remarkable way of creating art: with html, with words, and with the opinions of (at time of writing) over 600 people.

There used to be some exhibitions with websites actually, mid 2000s or so.

bring these back!! i can see this being a great thing to do with melonland specifically. give each subforum a "next thread" and "previous thread" button, and a "random thread" button. embed these buttons at the bottom of every page on every thread.

embed monitors in the gallery walls behind oldscool wooden frames, each one hooked up to a different melonland subforum, with a giant scroll-wheel embedded to the side.

hook three big buddy buttons to the next thread, previous thread, and random thread buttons, and place them below the frame.

and behold! all of melonland is in an art exhibition, possibly the first such exhibition to feature the entirety of a forum.

the more i think about this the more i become convinced it's a good idea and should be done.

[Melooon]

@dirtnap I think you get it 

i do question why you would create a webpage that is a single iframe containing an entire other webpage

First to answer this technical question - this is a workaround for a limitation of my frame URL fix script, it cant render off-site paths 

As for everything else!

if this forum is a work of art, am i am posting this to your website, does that make me a collaborator?

Yes! the forum is an artwork and you are a participant in it! I could be pretentious and say that everything is an artwork etc etc, but this forum literally is intended to be one; by hell or high water I want to get us all in the Louvre someday 

You went on a journey with this post, and I enjoyed reading along with you, and it helped me put into words some of the things I haven't been able to explain yet. You started in the mundane reality of web design, economic issues and mobile accessibility; but as your progressed you started to break free; by the end, you weren't in reality anymore; you were in a dream of an art gallery that only exists in your mind!

I love how everyone has jumped on the term "computer den"  I didn't actually know why I included it in the first post, but I knew it was important! Of course, I don't have a computer den (although I know some elderly people that do) - but the computer den is not supposed to be a real place, it's a dream room - it's the prosperity and success and contentment that we all hope for.

be creative in your exclusion! use media-queries to make a huge div overtake the entire viewport that just says "your screen is too small, get a bigger one".

I could totally do that; but it's not really my style, I'm not direct in that way (though maybe I should be). The thing is, like I said above, my ideal context or the ideal place to view my site.. it's not a real place or a real device.. it's like that computer den and your art gallery, it's a dream space - simply put, I'm not super interested in the real device that actually views my site or doesn't; I don't find that important
Maybe that's why I keep going back to beaches and the sea, because those are dream-like too - I care about the dream that's experienced as someone explores a site; like nighttime dreams, inconsistency is often what makes it interesting.

So when you ask, what do I mean when I say web revival - I mean a web of revival; a revival of ideas, of perception, of waking up and going to sleep, of people's will and spirit to dream of unknown places and other worlds. It's impossible to ever be revived, it only lasts for moments, but those moments are worth it  Finding those moments is not something you can just browse too, it takes the kind of effort you had to put in to write this post!

You seem to misunderstand a lot about me, but that's ok I'm still trying to figure things out and totally agree that being a contrarian is the best way to be! Also, I love the bug buddy button!

[arcus]

@arcus To be quite blunt with you (since you have been quite direct towards me) - what you're saying, while perhaps technically correct on many levels, comes across as creatively vapid. You're leaning on technological discussions and social arguments that don't actually lend themselves to any artistic output.

The impression I've got in this thread, (and elsewhere around the indie web,) is that it's overly difficult to make a site that's both accessible while being focused on visual art, and that internet access started with smartphones and goes against the ideals of indie web movements. I wanted to clear that up, while leaving some resources for anyone that's interested in accessibility but are unsure, since it does come across as being complicated.

Code is art. Working within limitations is an art. Making a site with accessibility in mind is an art in itself. It makes you look at your site from different perspectives, and inspires. It's not about recreating an experience one to one, but rather giving it the freedom to transform into something new, yet just as good.

I recommend making a site that's accessible to different screen sizes and screen readers. Not for other people, but yourself. It's fun and it makes you see web design in a new light.

social arguments

This was inevitable with mobile phones being a major part of the discussion. Mobile use is more of a question of "who are sites for?" and not "where do websites belong?" for the majority.

You kinda do get the point of this thread at the end when you bring up the websites within game worlds and website exhibitions! Those are great talking points! So why bury them under a wall of usability issues and gatekeeping callouts?

With long posts, I format my posts to have replies at the bottom, with anything I want to note that's not specifically directed at anyone at the top. Then I have the most relevant post to the topic at the bottom since it's easier to skip to that.

With the gatekeeping callouts, I didn't intend to make accusations, but point out the tone and impressions that came across with those quotes. I'm genuinely sorry about that.

The point of my post was not that everyone has to make their sites accessible, but rather it opens new doors to do so. Not just for visitors, but for webmasters.

[TheFrugalGamer]

I have to say the attitude against making sites mobile-friendly seems very strange to me. I worked as a web developer professionally for years, and I had accessibility drilled into me at every turn. It's still part of my design philosophy even now, because to me accessibility is a form of equality. It ensures that anyone can access the information I'm putting out there regardless of where they're from, who they are, or what senses they're relying on, and that's what I want. I want to share with anyone who's interested, and I make no assumptions about where that person will be coming from.

There are naturally some inherent restrictions in some of the types of art I share--my music can only be listened to by people who can hear, my visual art can only be appreciated by people who can see them, etc.--but these are just part of the medium I've chosen, and I have to accept that. I've even made some changes to my site based on consensus opinions I didn't really agree with, because almost everyone who spoke up didn't like the way parts of my site worked. I didn't feel that it was an issue myself, but I trust that if a group of people says they're running into difficulties that I don't see, I just have to take it on faith that those are real. So I tweaked things here and there, and everyone is much happier now.

@dirtnap I think your story about the Minecraft server is very interesting! There's a juggling of responsibilities there and a give-and-take between all the users and their expectations that I think is a really complex and telling way of showing how gatekeeping can work successfully. Sometimes we choose to wall things off for artistic (or other) reasons, and this demonstrates that this can be fine if we accept the consequences for that, and remain aware that there are going to be limitations. If we want to create art that is only supposed to be viewed a specific way, we need to make peace with the fact that sometimes people aren't going to view it that way. This is something that I think all artists are forced to face eventually, though sometimes they do it kicking and screaming (not referencing anyone here specifically. I'm thinking about some very high-profile people who have made headlines making dumb mistakes!).

@shevek what you said about wanting to remain obscure really worries me, because that's not necessarily something you can control. There's a saying in the tech community: Security through obscurity is not secure. Meaning that relying on protecting things by keeping them secret doesn't ever work. The web is designed to be open and freely accessed and copied by anyone, at any time, and nothing we do will ever be able to change that. If you're concerned about what you put out there falling into the wrong hands, you should be doing more to protect it--keep it password protected, keep it in a protected server, keep it offline, etc. I  completely sympathize with anyone who wants to remain secure, and I also want that for myself, but I don't put anything up without asking what would happen if it "got out there," because there's nothing I can do to stop that happening. I have all sorts of art that I've never even shared online because I don't want to risk it being copied or stolen. Nothing stopping anyone from doing that once it's public, so I keep it safe.

[shevek]

@shevek what you said about wanting to remain obscure really worries me, because that's not necessarily something you can control. There's a saying in the tech community: Security through obscurity is not secure. Meaning that relying on protecting things by keeping them secret doesn't ever work. The web is designed to be open and freely accessed and copied by anyone, at any time, and nothing we do will ever be able to change that. If you're concerned about what you put out there falling into the wrong hands, you should be doing more to protect it--keep it password protected, keep it in a protected server, keep it offline, etc. I  completely sympathize with anyone who wants to remain secure, and I also want that for myself, but I don't put anything up without asking what would happen if it "got out there," because there's nothing I can do to stop that happening. I have all sorts of art that I've never even shared online because I don't want to risk it being copied or stolen. Nothing stopping anyone from doing that once it's public, so I keep it safe.

I know, you don't have to tell me this - I am very into privacy and data protection. However, we are not talking about sensitive info here as in sensitive art, selfies, or journal entries that would be compromising or embarassing; we are talking here about normal identifiers and information that is important to me and can be shared, but will cause assholes to be assholes. To illustrate: I am not putting my lesbian identity or the fact that I am dating a trans woman behind a password protection and I shouldn't have to. I want it to be there because it helps people understand who I am and visibility is important in the fight for rights and finding likeminded people, reminding others they are not alone out there. That doesn't mean I want to invite as much harassment as I can possibly amass. Keeping my internet presence lowkey reduces the chance of becoming a target of hate speech. This is what I was getting at. I am out, I am proud, but I don't need any more messages about how someone can change my freak mind, lol.

[TheFrugalGamer]

I know, you don't have to tell me this - I am very into privacy and data protection. However, we are not talking about sensitive info here as in sensitive art, selfies, or journal entries that would be compromising or embarassing; we are talking here about normal identifiers and information that is important to me and can be shared, but will cause assholes to be assholes. To illustrate: I am not putting my lesbian identity or the fact that I am dating a trans woman behind a password protection and I shouldn't have to. I want it to be there because it helps people understand who I am and visibility is important in the fight for rights and finding likeminded people, reminding others they are not alone out there. That doesn't mean I want to invite as much harassment as I can possibly amass. Keeping my internet presence lowkey reduces the chance of becoming a target of hate speech. This is what I was getting at. I am out, I am proud, but I don't need any more messages about how someone can change my freak mind, lol.

That makes sense--didn't mean to seem pushy! I just got a bit worried and I think my inner parent came out, lol. I sincerely hope neither you or anyone else ever has to deal with any of that!

[shevek]

That makes sense--didn't mean to seem pushy! I just got a bit worried and I think my inner parent came out, lol. I sincerely hope neither you or anyone else ever has to deal with any of that!

No worries you were still right for bringing it up and I fully agree with your point. One of the things I ask myself nowadays when putting something online is how I would feel if my coworkers found it. With my stuff right now, I would feel a bit awkward at best (in the sense of adjusting to them knowing more about me now), but nothing would be embarrassing, destroying our work relationship, or getting me fired, and that's so important

Edit: to add something to steer it back to the topic, uhmmm... I think it would be interesting how website creation would potentially be shaped when sitting somewhere really busy, like a busy Starbucks, vs. Thoreau'ing yourself to some isolating location.

[starbreaker]

I had a long-ass post but forgot to save it as a draft before posting in case my login had timed out, so half of it disappeared. So I'm going to write something shorter:

I think websites belong everywhere. I think that as long as my website is built with valid, standards-compliant HTML then any device and browser that implements the standard and supports UTF-8 text encoding should be capable of rendering it. Whether said device is a desktop, a laptop, a smartphone, a Commodore 64, or an over-engineered toaster running NetBSD is irrelevant to me. I want you to be able to read my website no matter what device you use. Hell, I'd encode my pages as ASCII instead of UTF-8 to support and even broader range of devices, but I like typographers' quotes and accented characters when appropriate and traditional 128-character ASCII encoding doesn't support any of that.

But that's the CERN aesthetic, not the GeoCities aesthetic. So while anybody, anywhere can access my site on a broad range of devices my site's personality shows mainly in my writing, and not in the layout or visual effects. I'm willing to make that trade-off. You might have other values, and if you design accordingly that too is valid.