11 ms·

A page with no code

375 points by edent 4y ago

webscalist 4y ago
swf is all you need
- IYasha 4y ago
  big hug
pictur 4y ago
I think it's time to write a blog article under the name you don't need the internet.
- nicbou 4y ago
  That's a newspaper or a zine, isn't it?
  - layer8 4y ago
    It's a file on a portable storage medium.
- layer8 4y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_dead_drop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_dead_drop
jeffreygoesto 4y ago
Sigh. Wait until she learns about the static initialization order fiasco...
- jeffreygoesto 4y ago
  Oh my. Should have gone here... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34464993 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34464993
sshine 4y ago
> It’ll probably only work if you’re using Firefox This sentence both made me think: "Seriously; a page that only works in one browser?" and "Finally something that only works in Firefox, that'll teach those Chromers!"
- chungy 4y ago
  Does the page actually work for anyone? I'm on Firefox and as soon as I click the link from the blog, it's just forever loading.
  - eterm 4y ago
    Works for me (FF 109.0)
  - encody 4y ago
    Works for me on mobile Firefox 109.1.1
  - fortran77 4y ago
    Worked for me on Windows 11 Firefox 109.0 64-bit
  - IYasha 4y ago
    ff 50, linux, works.
    - avx56 4y ago
      Firefox 50 was released like a week after Trump was elected. They do have an LTS version if you just want stability: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/enterprise/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/enterprise/ Or it was just a typo I don't know sorry
      - IYasha 4y ago
        I just don't have the option to upgrade here. :-/
defanor 4y ago
Neat, but this part is a bit odd: > As a fan of CSS Naked Day and a firm believer in using JS only for progressive enhancement, I’m obviously in favour. ...And the page it is written on is slightly broken (images follow enlarged thumbnails of themselves) in FF with JS off.
- Dan-Q 4y ago
  Thanks; I hadn't noticed that. It's a side-effect from some terrible CMS plugin I thought I'd disabled. Fixing it now. Edit: Fixed! Thanks again!
pprotas 4y ago
Technically there is code on the back-end server, now make a webpage with no code at all
- dcminter 4y ago
  Is 'about:mozilla' close enough for you? (Firefox only obv.)
- oneeyedpigeon 4y ago
  An empty file is technically a webpage, right?
- El_RIDO 4y ago
  Would a webserver configuration file count? The code on the webserver minifies the CSS file and embeds it into a Link header - you could configure a webserver to respond with a generated Link header and no content to a certain URL. Here is an example configuration file for nginx: https://snip.dssr.ch/?7a4e21dde5f7916b#2aPagYEg3kuWg3YN8Q5oz1DF8wFMth8GsFrFAqCyn5T4 https://snip.dssr.ch/?7a4e21dde5f7916b#2aPagYEg3kuWg3YN8Q5oz... Though I would argue that the header-embedded CSS is still code, regardless how it is delivered.
- quickthrower2 4y ago
  base64 encoded url thingy
  - joshxyz 4y ago
    Thinking of blob urls lol
- still_grokking 4y ago
  Easy. Just use the nocode language for that. https://github.com/kelseyhightower/nocode https://github.com/kelseyhightower/nocode
  - Towaway69 4y ago
    I'm going wait until the Linux install script has been merged - https://github.com/kelseyhightower/nocode/pull/4967 https://github.com/kelseyhightower/nocode/pull/4967
msla 4y ago
The only part I don't get isn't even about the page in question: > My first reaction was “why not just deliver something with Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 and dispense with the invalid code, but perhaps that’s just me overthinking the non-existent problem. Yes, it's about the HTML-less plain text page https://no-ht.ml https://no-ht.ml which is UTF-8 plain text which browsers should be able to render. Does anyone here have deep knowledge, quotes from grimoires, or relevant strange tales?
- edent 4y ago
  I wrote about it at https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2022/12/you-dont-need-html/ https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2022/12/you-dont-need-html/ I tested with a bunch of browsers on mobile and desktop - some browsers forced a download of plain text and / or wouldn't render the characters properly. Some browsers assume the server is lying and think they know best.
  - conaclos 4y ago
    Thanks for the post :) I am wondering: why do you use the obsolete <plaintext> instead of <pre>? Why do you use the `ml` extension? By the way, I noticed some issues in the page: - trailing whitespaces - mixed of spaces/tabs - some wide characters such as ▽ seems to create aligning issues
    - edent 4y ago
      > why do you use the obsolete <plaintext> instead of <pre>? Because it is funny. > Why do you use the `ml` extension? Because it is funny. Also, it was free. > By the way, I noticed some issues in the page: The source is open. Feel free to correct those issues.
mftb 4y ago
Well, if it's not in the body of the response...
d12bb 4y ago
Finding the source in the header was obvious, but I can't figure how to decode that properly. I can see the rules for body{} and @keyframes{}, but no idea where all the text (the before/after rules) are hiding..
- ldjb 4y ago
  The header " The Page With No Code " is in the html::before content property. The first paragraph "It all started when..." is in the body::before content. The second paragraph "This web page has..." is in the body::after content. And finally, the footnote "* Obviously there's some code somewhere..." is in the html::after content property. I ran the decoded base64 string through a CSS beautifier; this might help: https://gist.github.com/ldjb/8c6b6d83f2acd3cef01fcf56b36d65f3#file-no-code-webpage-beautify-css https://gist.github.com/ldjb/8c6b6d83f2acd3cef01fcf56b36d65f...
  - d12bb 4y ago
    I found those in the inspector, sure. But I can't find them in the base64 encoded header. Edit: Nevermind. I tried like 10 different online base64 decoders before, till I found one wich didn't show just garbage (maybe they all hiccup on the emojis?), but even that one didn't decode properly as it seems. Either the eleventh one now told me the whole truth, or I should've used curl -i from the start instead of copy/pasting from Firefox's developer tools.
    - AlexGuo1998 4y ago
      > ... instead of copy/pasting from Firefox's developer tools. You may toggle the "raw" switch in the upper-right corner, or Firefox will trim the header like "jh6…W5n".
    - Symbiote 4y ago
      curl -SsI https://danq.me/wp-content/no-code-webpage/ | \ grep -i ^link: | \ cut -d, -f2 | cut -d\> -f1 | \ base64 -d The Base64 encoding is invalid, or at least not ideal, as the '==' padding has been removed [1]. Restoring it works: (curl -SsI https://danq.me/wp-content/no-code-webpage/ | \ grep -i ^link: | \ cut -d, -f2 | cut -d\> -f1; echo '==') | \ base64 -d [1] https://gist.github.com/Dan-Q/fc308a8a4aca2934312939f92eaa9d2e#file-_no_code_page_-php-L10 https://gist.github.com/Dan-Q/fc308a8a4aca2934312939f92eaa9d...
andrewmackrodt 4y ago
For non firefox users wanting to manually render the page, grab the base64 output from the link response header, e.g. - open developer tools, navigate to network and refresh - or run from a terminal "curl -s --head 'https://danq.me/wp-content/no-code-webpage/ https://danq.me/wp-content/no-code-webpage/' | sed -nE 's/.*base64,([^>]+)>.*/\1/p'" - replace the base64 into the below code: document.head.innerHTML='<style>'+decodeURIComponent(atob('Ym9...9IA').split('').map(c => '%' + ('00' + c.charCodeAt(0).toString(16)).slice(-2)).join(''))+'</style>' - paste the above string into the developer tools console and press return
- yardstick 4y ago
  Or, use a different browser just to view this page.
  - j2kun 4y ago
    Come on, this is Hacker News, not Yahoo Answers.
    - mike_hock 4y ago
      I mean, a hack that actually worked would be more impressive than a hack that doesn't generally work, except on one implementation.
    - ksec 4y ago
      Its funny you said Yahoo Answer and not Stack Overflow, Reddit or something similar. Haven't heard of the name for a very very long time.
dvdkon 4y ago
Good job! That's so clever it crashed my Firefox.
- still_grokking 4y ago
  A plain text document caused as crash? That sounds really strange. It works fine for me on latest Linux Firefox.
  - dvdkon 4y ago
    It didn't like me clicking around in the dev tools trying to figure out how it works. I can't reproduce it now, so I suppose it was a freak bug.
    - still_grokking 4y ago
      Oh, the dev tools?! Yes, there's something not OK in FF in this regard. As I've clicked around in the inspector my fan went on and FF did hang for one or two seconds. My best guess would be that it doesn't like such a "long line" (as it shows all the chars without line breaks in the inspector). Also last year FF crashed once on my box while using the dev tools. I was shocked as usually nothing crashes on this box, ever. So they have likely some severe bugs left in the dev tools, I guess.
lovasoa 4y ago
Related to https://no-ht.ml https://no-ht.ml : A few years ago, I wrote a small js library to convert HTML to unicode: https://www.npmjs.com/package/html2unicode https://www.npmjs.com/package/html2unicode
lovasoa 4y ago
To see the magic: curl -I https://danq.me/wp-content/no-code-webpage/ | grep -oP 'base64,\K\w+' | base64 -d
afandian 4y ago
I'm not clear which bit doesn't work on other browsers. Is it the use of a Style Link in the headers rather than body? Or the use of an inline stylesheet as a data URI? Or the styling of a document with no content? Although the combination is unusual, none of those seems particularly exotic.
- wildrhythms 4y ago
  Agreed, also in the MDN compatibility table it says it's experimental, but that Chrome supports it, so maybe there's a difference in browser implementation handling it? https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/Link#browser_compatibility https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/Li...
- azeemba 4y ago
  Link header seemed very exotic to me. I was very surprised to hear that that exists
  - javajosh 4y ago
    Same. And honestly its existence concerns me greatly, non-ironically.
    - afandian 4y ago
      Curious, what’s concerning? Links à la IETF RFC 5988 are pretty vanilla web stuff.
      - javajosh 4y ago
        There is nothing worse than believing something that isn't true. Imagine trouble-shooting a front-end issue, and not knowing about this. You think you know where all the CSS is coming from, and that it couldn't possibly produce the effect you're seeing. But actually you do not know where all the CSS is coming from. Adding subresources via http header is pure evil.
asim 4y ago
Can I just say. I wish web pages were actually programmable. Every time I put together a website now I think damn, look at all this content stuck inside static html. I wish it was in a database and loaded from there, even if that database was a simple text file or whatever else. The web needs some evolution that isn't react and next.js. Going back to pure text is killer.
- est 4y ago
  XSLT?
  - still_grokking 4y ago
    Frankly HTML5 isn't XML any more. Very bad move…
    - andai 4y ago
      Does anyone know why XHTML failed? I remember deriving some satisfaction from making my website XHTML compliant back in the day. Wouldn't it make it much easier to parse? Or does the motivation to "make stuff still try to work even when it's clearly broken" override that? (The same motivation gave us everything that's wrong with JavaScript, so I'm not sure I agree with it...)
      - chc 4y ago
        XHTML was not backwards compatible and was harder to write for essentially no benefit to most people. "It's XML" was basically the entire list of selling points, and that was just not a compelling enough proposition — in fact, for many people, that was negative value.
        still_grokking 4y ago
        > XHTML was not backwards compatible Sure? I think it was HTML4 that was not forwards compatible. XML is a subset of SGML, and HTML4 was SGML. XHTML was / is XML. So HTML4 parsers (as being SGML parsers) shouldn't have issues with XHTML. It's the other way around: XML parsers don't like HTML. So the attempt failed to change the default parsers to XML; as old webpages had than issues, and the web crowd didn't like to fix that. People wanted to continue to use the horrible SGML mess—only because nobody wanted to touch their HTML4. So Google created their own web "standards council" and ignored the W3C henceforth. The rest is history.
skeyo 4y ago
RIP screen readers
rav 4y ago
Does it also work if the response code is changed to HTTP 204 No Content?
- jwilk 4y ago
  It does.
osrec 4y ago
People can choose to avoid JS if they want, but a lot of users get a HUGE amount of value from JS. The web is an app delivery platform now, not just an information delivery platform. Plus, we have a lot of processing power on the client side, which should be utilised. JS, when used well is not a bad thing. If a site uses it badly, just don't go to that site.
- AviationAtom 4y ago
  I think PWAs are the future. The industry is just slow at getting to it.
  - robgibbons 4y ago
    It's not that the industry is slow. It's just hard to push PWAs forward when Apple is actively hostile toward web apps.
    - rabuse 4y ago
      Still waiting on iOS Safari push notifications to actually work...
    - brookst 4y ago
      Why haven’t PWA’s displaced native Android apps? That can’t be Apple’s fault, can it?
  - catiopatio 4y ago
    The only people who truly want PWAs are web developers and product managers that do not prioritize their users. Why learn anything new or spend anything extra when you can just ship substandard web crapware to users who have no choice (looking at you, Slack).
    - smhg 4y ago
      Isn't that like saying only big companies with specialized roles are allowed to provide app-like functionality? Among others, smaller shops and single-person companies surely benefit from one delivery platform if you ask me. Even if it's not perfect.
cheeaun 4y ago
https://css-tricks.com/using-css-without-html/ https://css-tricks.com/using-css-without-html/ (2010)
IYasha 4y ago
JS is SO overused and abused right now! It so happens that two months ago my cell ISP revamped their user page in such way that it no longer displays ANYTHING. No accounting, no payments, no traffic, not a single letter. On all of my browsers. Just because it (possibly) looks cool? Or money must be spent. Or whatever. And you can't file a complain - all you get is an AI chat bot. Of course it doesn't help bringing the site back of getting HTTP API. But it excels at annoying customers. Anyway, customer support was almost always useless: "Update you browser, buy a new device" is all they have to say.
- mrjin 4y ago
  Maybe a better solution would be "Find a new ISP"?
  - IYasha 4y ago
    Sadly, the other one did the same thing, almost simultaneously :(
Sephr 4y ago
I made some similar concepts using generated content via Link header stylesheets over a decade ago at https://code.eligrey.com/css/link-header https://code.eligrey.com/css/link-header For example, this CSS[1] resulted in a professional-looking 'blog post' layout complete with a header, subtitle, metadata, and footer when paired with a plaintext file. I've also used this functionality to directly add titles to non-HTML content such as images[2]. Unfortunately no extant browser engines support this anymore. 1. https://code.eligrey.com/css/link-header/lorem-ipsum-2.css https://code.eligrey.com/css/link-header/lorem-ipsum-2.css 2. https://eligrey.com/blog/title-image-files-in-opera/ https://eligrey.com/blog/title-image-files-in-opera/ (contains dead link to demo)
fijiaarone 4y ago
Content-type: image/gif
joshmarinacci 4y ago
You can do a whole lot with just 20 lines of modern JS.
- Dan-Q 4y ago
  No JS on that page either!
cableshaft 4y ago
Nothing loaded for me in Chrome. Just a blank page and the following warning in the console: "DevTools failed to load source map: Could not load content for chrome-extension://[removed]/sourceMap/chrome/scripts/iframe_form_check.map: System error: net::ERR_BLOCKED_BY_CLIENT" Which might not be related, not sure, and not awake enough to dig into it further. Did it not load properly for anyone else?
- jeroenhd 4y ago
  That error indicates something weird going on with one of your extensions. The guid tells you what extension is generating the error so you can disable it. I don't know why your browser is blocking a request to open the source code for one of your extensions. Maybe an extension trying to hide its own code? To find out what's causing this, disable all extensions and enabled them one by one until the problem occurs, I suppose. It'll be harder to find if your problem is caused by two different extensions, in which case you're going to need to test pairs...
dang 4y ago
Related: You Don't Need HTML - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33645398 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33645398 - Nov 2022 (32 comments) HTML is all you need to make a website - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33642490 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33642490 - Nov 2022 (153 comments)

A page with no code

375 points by edent 4y ago

webscalist 4y ago

swf is all you need

IYasha 4y ago
big hug

pictur 4y ago

I think it's time to write a blog article under the name you don't need the internet.

nicbou 4y ago
That's a newspaper or a zine, isn't it?
- layer8 4y ago
  It's a file on a portable storage medium.
layer8 4y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_dead_drop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_dead_drop

jeffreygoesto 4y ago

Sigh. Wait until she learns about the static initialization order fiasco...

jeffreygoesto 4y ago
Oh my. Should have gone here... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34464993 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34464993

sshine 4y ago

> It’ll probably only work if you’re using Firefox This sentence both made me think: "Seriously; a page that only works in one browser?" and "Finally something that only works in Firefox, that'll teach those Chromers!"

chungy 4y ago
Does the page actually work for anyone? I'm on Firefox and as soon as I click the link from the blog, it's just forever loading.
- eterm 4y ago
  Works for me (FF 109.0)
- encody 4y ago
  Works for me on mobile Firefox 109.1.1
- fortran77 4y ago
  Worked for me on Windows 11 Firefox 109.0 64-bit
- IYasha 4y ago
  ff 50, linux, works.
  - avx56 4y ago
    Firefox 50 was released like a week after Trump was elected. They do have an LTS version if you just want stability: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/enterprise/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/enterprise/ Or it was just a typo I don't know sorry
    - IYasha 4y ago
      I just don't have the option to upgrade here. :-/

defanor 4y ago

Neat, but this part is a bit odd: > As a fan of CSS Naked Day and a firm believer in using JS only for progressive enhancement, I’m obviously in favour. ...And the page it is written on is slightly broken (images follow enlarged thumbnails of themselves) in FF with JS off.

Dan-Q 4y ago
Thanks; I hadn't noticed that. It's a side-effect from some terrible CMS plugin I thought I'd disabled. Fixing it now. Edit: Fixed! Thanks again!

pprotas 4y ago

Technically there is code on the back-end server, now make a webpage with no code at all

dcminter 4y ago
Is 'about:mozilla' close enough for you? (Firefox only obv.)
oneeyedpigeon 4y ago
An empty file is technically a webpage, right?
El_RIDO 4y ago
Would a webserver configuration file count? The code on the webserver minifies the CSS file and embeds it into a Link header - you could configure a webserver to respond with a generated Link header and no content to a certain URL. Here is an example configuration file for nginx: https://snip.dssr.ch/?7a4e21dde5f7916b#2aPagYEg3kuWg3YN8Q5oz1DF8wFMth8GsFrFAqCyn5T4 https://snip.dssr.ch/?7a4e21dde5f7916b#2aPagYEg3kuWg3YN8Q5oz... Though I would argue that the header-embedded CSS is still code, regardless how it is delivered.
quickthrower2 4y ago
base64 encoded url thingy
- joshxyz 4y ago
  Thinking of blob urls lol
still_grokking 4y ago
Easy. Just use the nocode language for that. https://github.com/kelseyhightower/nocode https://github.com/kelseyhightower/nocode
- Towaway69 4y ago
  I'm going wait until the Linux install script has been merged - https://github.com/kelseyhightower/nocode/pull/4967 https://github.com/kelseyhightower/nocode/pull/4967

msla 4y ago

The only part I don't get isn't even about the page in question: > My first reaction was “why not just deliver something with Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 and dispense with the invalid code, but perhaps that’s just me overthinking the non-existent problem. Yes, it's about the HTML-less plain text page https://no-ht.ml https://no-ht.ml which is UTF-8 plain text which browsers should be able to render. Does anyone here have deep knowledge, quotes from grimoires, or relevant strange tales?

edent 4y ago
I wrote about it at https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2022/12/you-dont-need-html/ https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2022/12/you-dont-need-html/ I tested with a bunch of browsers on mobile and desktop - some browsers forced a download of plain text and / or wouldn't render the characters properly. Some browsers assume the server is lying and think they know best.
- conaclos 4y ago
  Thanks for the post :) I am wondering: why do you use the obsolete <plaintext> instead of <pre>? Why do you use the `ml` extension? By the way, I noticed some issues in the page: - trailing whitespaces - mixed of spaces/tabs - some wide characters such as ▽ seems to create aligning issues
  - edent 4y ago
    > why do you use the obsolete <plaintext> instead of <pre>? Because it is funny. > Why do you use the `ml` extension? Because it is funny. Also, it was free. > By the way, I noticed some issues in the page: The source is open. Feel free to correct those issues.

mftb 4y ago

Well, if it's not in the body of the response...

d12bb 4y ago

Finding the source in the header was obvious, but I can't figure how to decode that properly. I can see the rules for body{} and @keyframes{}, but no idea where all the text (the before/after rules) are hiding..

ldjb 4y ago
The header " The Page With No Code " is in the html::before content property. The first paragraph "It all started when..." is in the body::before content. The second paragraph "This web page has..." is in the body::after content. And finally, the footnote "* Obviously there's some code somewhere..." is in the html::after content property. I ran the decoded base64 string through a CSS beautifier; this might help: https://gist.github.com/ldjb/8c6b6d83f2acd3cef01fcf56b36d65f3#file-no-code-webpage-beautify-css https://gist.github.com/ldjb/8c6b6d83f2acd3cef01fcf56b36d65f...
- d12bb 4y ago
  I found those in the inspector, sure. But I can't find them in the base64 encoded header. Edit: Nevermind. I tried like 10 different online base64 decoders before, till I found one wich didn't show just garbage (maybe they all hiccup on the emojis?), but even that one didn't decode properly as it seems. Either the eleventh one now told me the whole truth, or I should've used curl -i from the start instead of copy/pasting from Firefox's developer tools.
  - AlexGuo1998 4y ago
    > ... instead of copy/pasting from Firefox's developer tools. You may toggle the "raw" switch in the upper-right corner, or Firefox will trim the header like "jh6…W5n".
  - Symbiote 4y ago
    curl -SsI https://danq.me/wp-content/no-code-webpage/ | \ grep -i ^link: | \ cut -d, -f2 | cut -d\> -f1 | \ base64 -d The Base64 encoding is invalid, or at least not ideal, as the '==' padding has been removed [1]. Restoring it works: (curl -SsI https://danq.me/wp-content/no-code-webpage/ | \ grep -i ^link: | \ cut -d, -f2 | cut -d\> -f1; echo '==') | \ base64 -d [1] https://gist.github.com/Dan-Q/fc308a8a4aca2934312939f92eaa9d2e#file-_no_code_page_-php-L10 https://gist.github.com/Dan-Q/fc308a8a4aca2934312939f92eaa9d...

andrewmackrodt 4y ago

For non firefox users wanting to manually render the page, grab the base64 output from the link response header, e.g. - open developer tools, navigate to network and refresh - or run from a terminal "curl -s --head 'https://danq.me/wp-content/no-code-webpage/ https://danq.me/wp-content/no-code-webpage/' | sed -nE 's/.*base64,([^>]+)>.*/\1/p'" - replace the base64 into the below code: document.head.innerHTML='<style>'+decodeURIComponent(atob('Ym9...9IA').split('').map(c => '%' + ('00' + c.charCodeAt(0).toString(16)).slice(-2)).join(''))+'</style>' - paste the above string into the developer tools console and press return

yardstick 4y ago
Or, use a different browser just to view this page.
- j2kun 4y ago
  Come on, this is Hacker News, not Yahoo Answers.
  - mike_hock 4y ago
    I mean, a hack that actually worked would be more impressive than a hack that doesn't generally work, except on one implementation.
  - ksec 4y ago
    Its funny you said Yahoo Answer and not Stack Overflow, Reddit or something similar. Haven't heard of the name for a very very long time.

dvdkon 4y ago

Good job! That's so clever it crashed my Firefox.

still_grokking 4y ago
A plain text document caused as crash? That sounds really strange. It works fine for me on latest Linux Firefox.
- dvdkon 4y ago
  It didn't like me clicking around in the dev tools trying to figure out how it works. I can't reproduce it now, so I suppose it was a freak bug.
  - still_grokking 4y ago
    Oh, the dev tools?! Yes, there's something not OK in FF in this regard. As I've clicked around in the inspector my fan went on and FF did hang for one or two seconds. My best guess would be that it doesn't like such a "long line" (as it shows all the chars without line breaks in the inspector). Also last year FF crashed once on my box while using the dev tools. I was shocked as usually nothing crashes on this box, ever. So they have likely some severe bugs left in the dev tools, I guess.

lovasoa 4y ago

Related to https://no-ht.ml https://no-ht.ml : A few years ago, I wrote a small js library to convert HTML to unicode: https://www.npmjs.com/package/html2unicode https://www.npmjs.com/package/html2unicode

lovasoa 4y ago

To see the magic: curl -I https://danq.me/wp-content/no-code-webpage/ | grep -oP 'base64,\K\w+' | base64 -d

afandian 4y ago

I'm not clear which bit doesn't work on other browsers. Is it the use of a Style Link in the headers rather than body? Or the use of an inline stylesheet as a data URI? Or the styling of a document with no content? Although the combination is unusual, none of those seems particularly exotic.

wildrhythms 4y ago
Agreed, also in the MDN compatibility table it says it's experimental, but that Chrome supports it, so maybe there's a difference in browser implementation handling it? https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/Link#browser_compatibility https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/Li...
azeemba 4y ago
Link header seemed very exotic to me. I was very surprised to hear that that exists
- javajosh 4y ago
  Same. And honestly its existence concerns me greatly, non-ironically.
  - afandian 4y ago
    Curious, what’s concerning? Links à la IETF RFC 5988 are pretty vanilla web stuff.
    - javajosh 4y ago
      There is nothing worse than believing something that isn't true. Imagine trouble-shooting a front-end issue, and not knowing about this. You think you know where all the CSS is coming from, and that it couldn't possibly produce the effect you're seeing. But actually you do not know where all the CSS is coming from. Adding subresources via http header is pure evil.

asim 4y ago

Can I just say. I wish web pages were actually programmable. Every time I put together a website now I think damn, look at all this content stuck inside static html. I wish it was in a database and loaded from there, even if that database was a simple text file or whatever else. The web needs some evolution that isn't react and next.js. Going back to pure text is killer.

est 4y ago
XSLT?
- still_grokking 4y ago
  Frankly HTML5 isn't XML any more. Very bad move…
  - andai 4y ago
    Does anyone know why XHTML failed? I remember deriving some satisfaction from making my website XHTML compliant back in the day. Wouldn't it make it much easier to parse? Or does the motivation to "make stuff still try to work even when it's clearly broken" override that? (The same motivation gave us everything that's wrong with JavaScript, so I'm not sure I agree with it...)
    - chc 4y ago
      XHTML was not backwards compatible and was harder to write for essentially no benefit to most people. "It's XML" was basically the entire list of selling points, and that was just not a compelling enough proposition — in fact, for many people, that was negative value.
      - still_grokking 4y ago
        > XHTML was not backwards compatible Sure? I think it was HTML4 that was not forwards compatible. XML is a subset of SGML, and HTML4 was SGML. XHTML was / is XML. So HTML4 parsers (as being SGML parsers) shouldn't have issues with XHTML. It's the other way around: XML parsers don't like HTML. So the attempt failed to change the default parsers to XML; as old webpages had than issues, and the web crowd didn't like to fix that. People wanted to continue to use the horrible SGML mess—only because nobody wanted to touch their HTML4. So Google created their own web "standards council" and ignored the W3C henceforth. The rest is history.

skeyo 4y ago

RIP screen readers

rav 4y ago

Does it also work if the response code is changed to HTTP 204 No Content?

jwilk 4y ago
It does.

osrec 4y ago

People can choose to avoid JS if they want, but a lot of users get a HUGE amount of value from JS. The web is an app delivery platform now, not just an information delivery platform. Plus, we have a lot of processing power on the client side, which should be utilised. JS, when used well is not a bad thing. If a site uses it badly, just don't go to that site.

AviationAtom 4y ago
I think PWAs are the future. The industry is just slow at getting to it.
- robgibbons 4y ago
  It's not that the industry is slow. It's just hard to push PWAs forward when Apple is actively hostile toward web apps.
  - rabuse 4y ago
    Still waiting on iOS Safari push notifications to actually work...
  - brookst 4y ago
    Why haven’t PWA’s displaced native Android apps? That can’t be Apple’s fault, can it?
- catiopatio 4y ago
  The only people who truly want PWAs are web developers and product managers that do not prioritize their users. Why learn anything new or spend anything extra when you can just ship substandard web crapware to users who have no choice (looking at you, Slack).
  - smhg 4y ago
    Isn't that like saying only big companies with specialized roles are allowed to provide app-like functionality? Among others, smaller shops and single-person companies surely benefit from one delivery platform if you ask me. Even if it's not perfect.

cheeaun 4y ago

https://css-tricks.com/using-css-without-html/ https://css-tricks.com/using-css-without-html/ (2010)

IYasha 4y ago

JS is SO overused and abused right now! It so happens that two months ago my cell ISP revamped their user page in such way that it no longer displays ANYTHING. No accounting, no payments, no traffic, not a single letter. On all of my browsers. Just because it (possibly) looks cool? Or money must be spent. Or whatever. And you can't file a complain - all you get is an AI chat bot. Of course it doesn't help bringing the site back of getting HTTP API. But it excels at annoying customers. Anyway, customer support was almost always useless: "Update you browser, buy a new device" is all they have to say.

mrjin 4y ago
Maybe a better solution would be "Find a new ISP"?
- IYasha 4y ago
  Sadly, the other one did the same thing, almost simultaneously :(

Sephr 4y ago

I made some similar concepts using generated content via Link header stylesheets over a decade ago at https://code.eligrey.com/css/link-header https://code.eligrey.com/css/link-header For example, this CSS[1] resulted in a professional-looking 'blog post' layout complete with a header, subtitle, metadata, and footer when paired with a plaintext file. I've also used this functionality to directly add titles to non-HTML content such as images[2]. Unfortunately no extant browser engines support this anymore. 1. https://code.eligrey.com/css/link-header/lorem-ipsum-2.css https://code.eligrey.com/css/link-header/lorem-ipsum-2.css 2. https://eligrey.com/blog/title-image-files-in-opera/ https://eligrey.com/blog/title-image-files-in-opera/ (contains dead link to demo)

fijiaarone 4y ago

Content-type: image/gif

joshmarinacci 4y ago

You can do a whole lot with just 20 lines of modern JS.

Dan-Q 4y ago
No JS on that page either!

cableshaft 4y ago

Nothing loaded for me in Chrome. Just a blank page and the following warning in the console: "DevTools failed to load source map: Could not load content for chrome-extension://[removed]/sourceMap/chrome/scripts/iframe_form_check.map: System error: net::ERR_BLOCKED_BY_CLIENT" Which might not be related, not sure, and not awake enough to dig into it further. Did it not load properly for anyone else?

jeroenhd 4y ago
That error indicates something weird going on with one of your extensions. The guid tells you what extension is generating the error so you can disable it. I don't know why your browser is blocking a request to open the source code for one of your extensions. Maybe an extension trying to hide its own code? To find out what's causing this, disable all extensions and enabled them one by one until the problem occurs, I suppose. It'll be harder to find if your problem is caused by two different extensions, in which case you're going to need to test pairs...

dang 4y ago

Related: You Don't Need HTML - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33645398 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33645398 - Nov 2022 (32 comments) HTML is all you need to make a website - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33642490 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33642490 - Nov 2022 (153 comments)