10 ms·

OP, thanks for making this, I bet it was fun to build. That being said, I want someone to do the opposite of what this does. Less chrome, less bytes over the w

by 0des 5y ago

OP, thanks for making this, I bet it was fun to build. That being said, I want someone to do the opposite of what this does. Less chrome, less bytes over the wire, less predictive search, less "flatness?", less timely, more timeless.

jbreitbart 5y ago
https://wikiless.org/ https://wikiless.org/ is probably what you are looking for. There are also extensions that automatically redirect Wikipedia links
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- animal_spirits 5y ago
  The only difference I notice between this and Wikipedia is that I can't hover over a link and get a pop-up description of the page. Is that all or is there more to it?
  - thih9 5y ago
    > https://wikiless.org https://wikiless.org - a free open source alternative Wikipedia front-end focused on privacy. No JavaScript or ads. All requests go through the backend, client never talks to Wikipedia. Prevents Wikipedia getting your IP address. Self-hostable. Anyone can setup a private or public instance. From: https://codeberg.org/orenom/Wikiless https://codeberg.org/orenom/Wikiless
  - TheNorthman 5y ago
    From the README [0] and code, I'd wager that the only thing happening is that JS has been filtered out, that the CSP rules are significantly stricter and that a dark mode has been added. [0]: https://codeberg.org/orenom/wikiless https://codeberg.org/orenom/wikiless
umvi 5y ago
Hear hear. I wish more sites were like HN - more text/information density, less CSS magic, less JS.
- cromka 5y ago
  And HN's favorite: more RSS.
myself248 5y ago
Oh dang, yeah. An extension that makes the whole web look and work like the default Mediawiki skin would be glorious. And _fast_. I miss windows having borders. Just dug up a registry hack (obscene that such a thing was needed) to force win10 to have window borders again, because I keep ending up in situations where I honestly couldn't tell where one ends and the other begins. They spent decades researching and building interfaces with visual cues, and we spent decades tuning our reflexes to them. Then some whim of fashion decided that hiding all those cues was "smoother", and I want to choke someone.
- Dah00n 5y ago
  >An extension But... that's the opposite of what was asked for. Adding an extension adds more of the bad. A patch for Firefox reader mode would be better in my opinion since the web itself won't become better.
- GhettoComputers 5y ago
  I just used win+ arrow keys, never missed the resizing.
  - amatecha 5y ago
    Whoa, I had no clue about these key-combos. So handy! Thanks!! For anyone curious, MS has a useful summary of how this works here: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/snap-your-windows-885a9b1e-a983-a3b1-16cd-c531795e6241 https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/snap-your-window...
    - GhettoComputers 5y ago
      No problem, I did it by accident, and you can also drag the windows to the corners and overshoot to have them, top is full, left and right is half that side, the link you posted mentions that, I am actually surprised you never accidentally discovered either. I have that in KDE as well.
      - 5y ago
marginalia_nu 5y ago
Got you, fam. https://encyclopedia.marginalia.nu/wiki-start.html https://encyclopedia.marginalia.nu/wiki-start.html (I built this mostly for myself, because I find it incredibly difficult to read text that has hyperlinks and images in the text)
- fallat 5y ago
  This is kind of incredible. Have you considered images just take up full width?
  - marginalia_nu 5y ago
    Half of cutting the images is a space saving thing. Wikipedia is a pretty big website, and (like the rest of my web presence) I'm hosting the mirror on a single small consumer hardware server. I'm keeping all the wikipedia pages as compressed HTML, and if you look at the sources you'll see it's very bare bones, most pages are like 50 Kb, yet the total is still 21 Gb. I don't think I have the space or bandwidth for selfhosting all of wikipedia's images. Part of this experiment is to illustrate just how ridiculously large page loads on a lot of pages. Even text-heavy ones like Wikipedia. If you compare the HTML payload alone of these two renditions of largely the same text, it's a 50x difference. The full Wikipedia page load exceeds 1 Mb, mine isn't even 10 Kb. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scamander https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scamander https://encyclopedia.marginalia.nu/wiki/Scamander https://encyclopedia.marginalia.nu/wiki/Scamander That's kinda ridiculous.
    - fallat 5y ago
      Gotchya. All good then. Excellent work and insight :) Have you attempted to convert them to plain text and serve those? Or is there no real savings there?
      - marginalia_nu 5y ago
        Would probably lose more than you'd gain doing that. The HTML right now is so clean you can read it without a browser, almost looks like it might be hand written, while still preserving things like formulas and tables (which do need a browser).
SilasX 5y ago
This. What's with the fixed floating headers? Like my screen real estate isn't scarce enough? And even if not, I don't like sites treating my desktop like a phone but blown up really big.
anonu 5y ago
Isn't this solution exactly same number of bytes over the wire?
disconcision 5y ago
not totally obvious to me what you mean here? at first glance this seems to have less chrome than the standard ui, and to be more timeless in the specific sense that it has a closer resemblance to a paper encyclopedia layout versus mid-00s web styling.
greggsy 5y ago
If you create an account, you can change the appearance to look a lot like OP’s, but a lot lighter and without the plugin. To be honest, while this looks pretty, it’s really just Wikiwand 2.0.
bawolff 5y ago
> less timely, more timeless. I'm not sure if this is a subtle reference,but one of the major competing skins for wikipedia is named timeless: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page?useskin=timeless https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page?useskin=timeless (its often quite popular among people using phones who find the official mobile website frustrating)
- 0des 5y ago
  Nope, just coincidence.
hnlmorg 5y ago
Normally I'd agree but in fairness to the author, they have fixed the table of contents. I always found it weird and annoying how the table of contents in Wikipedia is a tiny thing jammed at the start. It's so darn awkward to use.

by 0des 5y ago

jbreitbart 5y ago

https://wikiless.org/ https://wikiless.org/ is probably what you are looking for. There are also extensions that automatically redirect Wikipedia links

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
animal_spirits 5y ago
The only difference I notice between this and Wikipedia is that I can't hover over a link and get a pop-up description of the page. Is that all or is there more to it?
- thih9 5y ago
  > https://wikiless.org https://wikiless.org - a free open source alternative Wikipedia front-end focused on privacy. No JavaScript or ads. All requests go through the backend, client never talks to Wikipedia. Prevents Wikipedia getting your IP address. Self-hostable. Anyone can setup a private or public instance. From: https://codeberg.org/orenom/Wikiless https://codeberg.org/orenom/Wikiless
- TheNorthman 5y ago
  From the README [0] and code, I'd wager that the only thing happening is that JS has been filtered out, that the CSP rules are significantly stricter and that a dark mode has been added. [0]: https://codeberg.org/orenom/wikiless https://codeberg.org/orenom/wikiless

umvi 5y ago

Hear hear. I wish more sites were like HN - more text/information density, less CSS magic, less JS.

cromka 5y ago
And HN's favorite: more RSS.

myself248 5y ago

Oh dang, yeah. An extension that makes the whole web look and work like the default Mediawiki skin would be glorious. And _fast_. I miss windows having borders. Just dug up a registry hack (obscene that such a thing was needed) to force win10 to have window borders again, because I keep ending up in situations where I honestly couldn't tell where one ends and the other begins. They spent decades researching and building interfaces with visual cues, and we spent decades tuning our reflexes to them. Then some whim of fashion decided that hiding all those cues was "smoother", and I want to choke someone.

Dah00n 5y ago
>An extension But... that's the opposite of what was asked for. Adding an extension adds more of the bad. A patch for Firefox reader mode would be better in my opinion since the web itself won't become better.
GhettoComputers 5y ago
I just used win+ arrow keys, never missed the resizing.
- amatecha 5y ago
  Whoa, I had no clue about these key-combos. So handy! Thanks!! For anyone curious, MS has a useful summary of how this works here: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/snap-your-windows-885a9b1e-a983-a3b1-16cd-c531795e6241 https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/snap-your-window...
  - GhettoComputers 5y ago
    No problem, I did it by accident, and you can also drag the windows to the corners and overshoot to have them, top is full, left and right is half that side, the link you posted mentions that, I am actually surprised you never accidentally discovered either. I have that in KDE as well.
    - 5y ago

marginalia_nu 5y ago

Got you, fam. https://encyclopedia.marginalia.nu/wiki-start.html https://encyclopedia.marginalia.nu/wiki-start.html (I built this mostly for myself, because I find it incredibly difficult to read text that has hyperlinks and images in the text)

fallat 5y ago
This is kind of incredible. Have you considered images just take up full width?
- marginalia_nu 5y ago
  Half of cutting the images is a space saving thing. Wikipedia is a pretty big website, and (like the rest of my web presence) I'm hosting the mirror on a single small consumer hardware server. I'm keeping all the wikipedia pages as compressed HTML, and if you look at the sources you'll see it's very bare bones, most pages are like 50 Kb, yet the total is still 21 Gb. I don't think I have the space or bandwidth for selfhosting all of wikipedia's images. Part of this experiment is to illustrate just how ridiculously large page loads on a lot of pages. Even text-heavy ones like Wikipedia. If you compare the HTML payload alone of these two renditions of largely the same text, it's a 50x difference. The full Wikipedia page load exceeds 1 Mb, mine isn't even 10 Kb. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scamander https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scamander https://encyclopedia.marginalia.nu/wiki/Scamander https://encyclopedia.marginalia.nu/wiki/Scamander That's kinda ridiculous.
  - fallat 5y ago
    Gotchya. All good then. Excellent work and insight :) Have you attempted to convert them to plain text and serve those? Or is there no real savings there?
    - marginalia_nu 5y ago
      Would probably lose more than you'd gain doing that. The HTML right now is so clean you can read it without a browser, almost looks like it might be hand written, while still preserving things like formulas and tables (which do need a browser).

SilasX 5y ago

This. What's with the fixed floating headers? Like my screen real estate isn't scarce enough? And even if not, I don't like sites treating my desktop like a phone but blown up really big.

anonu 5y ago

Isn't this solution exactly same number of bytes over the wire?

disconcision 5y ago

not totally obvious to me what you mean here? at first glance this seems to have less chrome than the standard ui, and to be more timeless in the specific sense that it has a closer resemblance to a paper encyclopedia layout versus mid-00s web styling.

greggsy 5y ago

If you create an account, you can change the appearance to look a lot like OP’s, but a lot lighter and without the plugin. To be honest, while this looks pretty, it’s really just Wikiwand 2.0.

bawolff 5y ago

> less timely, more timeless. I'm not sure if this is a subtle reference,but one of the major competing skins for wikipedia is named timeless: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page?useskin=timeless https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page?useskin=timeless (its often quite popular among people using phones who find the official mobile website frustrating)

0des 5y ago
Nope, just coincidence.

hnlmorg 5y ago

Normally I'd agree but in fairness to the author, they have fixed the table of contents. I always found it weird and annoying how the table of contents in Wikipedia is a tiny thing jammed at the start. It's so darn awkward to use.