I'm building a series of websites that have simple concepts but too many of the players have tried to make their product so big. I also used to live in a very rural area so my goal is to make websites that load fast even on very slow internet. I'm starting with Lynx.boo.
A linktree style website that lets you fully customize your CSS (and adds a bunch of classes to your links to help style them easier as well as very non-restrictive CSS you can do html{display:none;} if you really want to) and the features aren't locked behind yet-another monthly fee. I'll be adding analytic support when I figure out the best way to do it.
Also there isn't a user system (per se), you just confirm changes by email but you never register for the site and you won't be spammed. Please feel free to try to break the CSS (or anything) as much as you want. I think it's fairly robust but I would love any security vulnerabilities you see.
Thank you for your time!
I spent time teaching in Alaska and it made me really appreciate websites with small footprints.
Some time ago I trialed a bunch of classless CSS projects, paired with Hugo using the "classless-blog" theme, and these were my top picks, out of order:
- holiday: https://holidaycss.js.org/
- bamboo: https://rilwis.github.io/bamboo/demo/index.html
- fieber: https://fieber.hack.re/
- pico classless: https://picocss.com/docs/classless
- yorha: https://metakirby5.github.io/yorha/
- simple: https://simplecss.org/
- water: https://watercss.kognise.dev/
- bolt: https://boltcss.com/
- Lissom.CSS: https://lissomware.github.io/css/
All of them except yorha have light/dark modes, and all of them except yorha are IMO too light by default in light mode.
Anyway nice job!
the opposite is also true - just because you're using plain html and css does not mean your site must be super, super simple.
Its size in kilobytes varies depending on how many posts are displayed on the front page.
Like Upwork where the client rates and reviews the SW but the SW rates and reviews the client. New accounts on either side are treated more skeptically but also the power users are also more easily identified.
When backpages was shut down I spent a few days playing around with it but ultimately between the legal risk (which I'm fine with, generally), the social risk of being the guy who runs a SW website (even though I've never hired a SW before, myself), and the internal debate I had about trafficking (I was pretty convinced my system would protect girls from trafficking but I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I did actually enable someone to be trafficked.
I think you have a valuable website and I don't think enough people are willing to openly operate in this area.
The validation on the form page doesn’t require a valid url but when you hit submit the validation fails if the url is incorrect. When you click back to go correct it you can’t fix it because the submit button is still spinning.
Also requiring a title for a url doesn’t seem necessary, just use the domain as the title or the url itself if it’s empty.
Sorry don’t have any other feedback I stopped there.
Also I need to fix the submit button problem.
Edit: This has all been fixed.
Some additional feedback:
Still would be nice to just put in website.com and have it assume I mean https://website.com
- If a title is required maybe offer the option to just set the title as an emoji or something. This is definitely just my personal feedback I could be an outlier here.
- Once I submitted the email went to spam. I assume there’s not much you can do here other than become more established.
- After clicking the confirm link I’m taken to a page that says my changes have been confirmed and saved. I’d expect messaging along the lines of your page has been created along with a link to my page. Screenshot: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/leus6ntppsf9yihe6i1sb/Lynx.Bo...
- At this point the only way I found to get to my page is just to type in what I assumed was the url format into the browser: lynx.boo/username
Wrote the feedback as I went through it. Once I see the page itself I understand why a title is required and an emoji might not make sense. Love the super clean layout and simplicity though, I will keep this tool in mind.
I had this on the homepage but removed it. I'll add it back, I also want to add some examples of custom CSS so people can copy/paste.
I already have the code there to make people do follow. I was just going to make an automated program that saw people who generate traffic and put it into a queue to manually check.
If you put "Technology blog" and "Real estate portfolio" (for example) before those two spammy-looking links, it'd make it less viscerally offensive.
Lol. Thats how the site works. It asks you for a URL and a title for the link. It’s my page, my account, so I linked to my site when trying it out. C’mon. I’m not going to argue about it anymore. Y’all can keep downvoting me if you want to.
To actually address your comment: "my page" and "my account" are irrelevant. (You're not entitled to anything on someone else's server, except in special cases.) If you're linking those pages because you would like those they're relevant to to visit them, perception matters. If not… well, the perception of "spam" can lead people to treat your site as spammy. (Related: https://www.kjartan.co.uk/.)
Interesting.
You are both right!
I love that you posted the link. You made it easy for me to get the point of the site as I did not want to use my mail. You effectively lowered my barrier of entry and I thank you for that.
Buuut. You did do the equivalent of just hitting "asdf" on the keyboard. I just put in "my own site". That was not clear to me up front either. I "felt" it "spammy" as well.
While disclaimers are often overused this would however had been nice. "Here you go (just dumb links to my own site)". That would actually have encouraged me even more to visit you.
Someone on the Internet was wrong. Please, no knives :-D
Honestly, I appreciate @Cabinguy for taking the initative to show people how it works and if the price of admission is some links to his stuff all the better. Furthermore, this is exactly what it is for. I guess in some ways it IS spammy but that's sort of the point is the market your own links. Generally this url then gets put in your instagram / tiktok / whatever bio that only allows one link.
I like that @WizzWizz4 (the greatest of the WizzWizzes in my opinion) was defending the "sanctity" of my site but also probably more importantly to them this site. However, I just don't think it is needed here. As the website was used as exactly it was intended.
:) Maybe no one was wrong.
1) I'm entitled to pour custard on my head. Doesn't mean that will achieve my goals if I do it in an investor meeting. 2) Sadly, I'm not comparing your page to the positive aspects of Kjartan Poskitt's homepage. Look at the bottom row of links, and the analogy should become clearer.
I don't think GP means adding links is spam, they're saying the links themselves are spam (wt definition 2, content automatically generated for marketing purposes) because that's what they are.
They're saying it's crass (wt definition 2: materialistic, or 1: lacking discrimination) because the goal of TFA is to move away from the machine-curated overly-commercialized impersonal/mechanical web and bring back a web focused on human touch. Creating a list with those commercial, machine-facing pages misses that goal.
They're not saying it's bad - obviously the only way someone would view your link page is if someone posted the link page somewhere of interest to them, it's not like you're pushing it in their faces. In fact, I think they thought the juxtaposition interesting and metaphoric for current social forces.
It's possible that you are an SEO geek and find new SEO marketing pages exciting, and have a circle of friends you share marketing pages with, maybe over coffee, in which case the one who misunderstood everything is me.
Thanks for the example :)
And & isn't available to search literally on Twitter so if you want to see what people are talking about you without tagging you you can't.
I need to get better at it.
Admittedly, I just assumed most people would use it in their bios on social media and I also use it on a QR code.
It's a fair critique. I was going to make the logo a lynx but decided no images.
My favorite 'touch' is the in-situ text replacement for canceling an action.
1) I screwed something up (most likely) 2) Your email rejected it because it's some no name ip with no reputation.
But I'd have to check the logs.
It's the plan but I have a bunch of stuff that I hard coded in the final push that I would need to make into variables.
Www.myurl.com
For reasons unknown
Then I have to refresh and then I don’t want to do it again.
Edit: or better yet, a little bit of javascript to catch it first. I'm really trying to use the minimal amount of JS possible.
This seems like it could be abused pretty easily. Not necessarily insecure but I could get a lot of spam no?
It could be annoying but it seems an edge case to be abused.
It's added to the roadmap to investigate more.
maybe some combination of the <noscript> tag and then if so wrapping the buttons in <form> and making the buttons submit those forms?
Have a quick turn around time on the form. Let it be a server problem. Have a hidden field on the form set to "nojs". Let javascript set this to "js".
The server can then decide if this is a bulk edit or not. It can then decide it will batch approvals into one mail or wait a little longer.
Then you can optimize on what you find most clean and/or works best.
Have one form field for easy entry and turn around. Ten as you suggest? But what is the optimum number? 3? 20? And is it "clean" to have 20 form fields which the javascript version then will roll back into one.
So the non-javascript version will never be better. Somethings gotta give. But submitting a form can be superfast. And the page refresh will be super fast. Such is life without javascript.
And now I realize that I made an implied server optimization: Mail approval should in my mind be batched and dampened. 10 seconds might be enough.As long as new inpit is coming we can postpone approval anyway as the user is busy. Findong the correct number is the magic trick. Not too fast. Not too slow.
What's the point of delayed email sending? (Lol tried to find a way to ask that which sounds genuine, but they all read as annoyed me)
That said, I could probably have a session or something so that if you approve an email then I'll let you make additional changes within that session without additional approval emails. You're "authenticated" as it is.
you could expire the form to prevent this, or some other thing to prevent it so you're right that it's not a problem that will get hit as implemented but just something to keep in mind if things change.
But to explain the original idea:
Users can work in what sometimes might seem strange ways: A user can do multiple edits and choose to be perfectly fine not seeing the updates. The flow state is then simply doing the updates - then go to mail and do the approvals. In that flow it would be nice to only approve one mail which then covers all updates.
00:00 Edit A - Timer start 00:09 Edit B - Timer reset 00:18 Edit C - Timer reset 00:28 Timeout - send one mail for approval of A,B,C
The bulk update mail will then need a top link to simply approve all. And individual links below for each edit as mistakes might have been made during edits (if userfriendly :-)). A lot of work to to save a couple of mails - I know! But the things we choose to obsess over :-) It just might fit your definitio of minimalism.
People who want a fast turnaround of approvals one by one will be annoyed by this. But mail is "slow" and can be delayed anyway. People who want fewer clicks and mails will love it. Good design is then finding the optimum or choose who to champion.
Sub-optimisation. For sure!
So not important at all. And a very limited use-case. I just ran with the idea. As you succintly said elsewhere: This is like art. I will second that with a quote from The Dude: "That's just like, your opinion, man". Very true - and you should do you! I just hope I made clear what my impulsive idea was.
A little bit akin to how TN3270 works. Powerusers did crazy things working blindly ahead while awaiting the response from the mainframe.
The easy way to make it simple is do it as a form and then embellish it with javascript. Maybe counter intuitive but still. Let the javascript mangle the form so it does not look like a form and Bob is your uncle. By always using that pattern you easily end up with good usability and accessibility.
The same as with CSS. Make good content with nice semantic HTML. Then go crazy with super cool CSS.
But I am an old fart who hates Tailwind with a vengance. But I do acknowledge it get work done and many think it is great. So I will sulk in the corner and say that they are doing it wrong. Old man yelling at clouds.
Next: REST is great but misunderstood. I do not miss SOAP.
But know this: I love your sentiment and attitude. Nice job! Grumble ;-)
+1 to the other comment about not needing to name a link (be great if it grabbed the page title or allowed the url only.)
The confirmation went to spam.
Probably this is not the spirit of minimalism (but maybe the spirit of Unix), I would love to be able to augment this with other services: this stays a very minimal link hosting but it offers web hooks and an API key. This means if a link was added, I could self host with something that uses an AI to summarise the for example, or extract a screenshot from the page, or triggers something that adds it to my notes, etc… To me, this would be a great way for the web to be. Rather than companies trying to scale up around link sharing, or be open source and hope people will dive into a codebase.
I am trying to make it difficult for bots to create/edit lynx because spam etc.
I should note it on the site that the confirmation might go to spam.
1. Bare bones. Pure utility, any styling is simply for readability. Craigslist style.
2. Big, garish, bold; sometimes called Nu-brutalism or Sportsbrut.
I should note that each of these has very little, if anything, to do with the 20th century architectural trend, which focused on applying usage of basic shapes and raw materials at a large scale. On the web, the "raw materials" part is the only real connection to the origins of the term, with the first one focused on lofi design with basic tooling, and the second highlighting garish things you can do with basic forms.
Neo-brutalism is another trend to note; think of it as a focus on raw shapes with some niceties added on top to make things more interesting.
Links:
1. https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2020/01/split-personality-b...
2. https://medium.com/@sepidy/how-can-i-design-in-the-neo-bruta...
Great links
Both utterly pedantic quibbles that are completely intended to be ignored.
Good job.
Can't improperly reference that legendary script.
Barbarians
Truly minimalist: Accept the defaults. Whatever they are. Count your bytes.
Aesthetic minimalism: A non-serif font. We may have strong opinions here on which. I shall name none to avoid firey flames ;-)
By pointing out Times New Roman by name you do not imply minimalism. Rather a passive aggressive swipe at good old Times New Roman which I find too practical and beautiful to be lumped into nu-brutalism nor aesthetical minimalism. To show good faith I will let the missing "New" slide. Gentlemen shall be given room to misspeak. Happens to the best of us.
Mupen, Boa Constructor and Molend are good examples from an otherwise meh list at https://www.fontspace.com/category/brutalist.
A drab grey could be brutalist indeed. Maybe we can be friends after all! But truly! I beg your pardon! One true scotsman and all that jazz.
Pendatry to be ignored? No, no! That is not how pendantry works! You need to watch more Tim Traveller.
But good bait, fun times!
doh!
Just provide a text box which accepts a list of entries where each entry is just "title URL". That's what I expect from this being brutalist.
Notify line number with the link if text box contains invalid url.
You can disagree and think that the OP was letting the definition of "minimalism" and "brutalism" do too much heavy lifting.
But you rather imply that without javascript you cannot create a "winning" website. And ignored that the OP has a real point: Can we call a website minimalist if it requires javascript. It was not excluded that you could embellish (maybe a lot) with javascript. In the same way I would expect javascript to load async.
While I have heard your argument before it implies a really interesting design "smell". On that we might disagree. But it is there nevertheless.
Your curiosity implies that winner takes all. I agree that javascript has won. But I feel you imply that it is then ok for the victor to burn down the village. We forgot what made the web. The foundation is still html and not javascript. What I read as the "javascript attitude" makes is harder to transition away from javascript when that day comes.
Javascript is really great. Warts and all. But the "strong" proponents keeps forgetting the beauty in separation of concerns. On this point we can then have an honest disagreement.
I hope I do not come off too harsh. I genuinely wanted to address your curiosity.
I think the OPs pov is quite clear. So with your reaction I suspect we also disagree on JS0 and JSugar. That is again some bad voodoo on how to seperate concerns from people who looks at who is winning now and missing the bigger picture.
I don't take anyone's comments that this isn't their brutalism / minimalism to heart and any place I can use the feedback I will.
Some pages are loaded in under 1KB so for my definition I don't know how much more minimal I can practically be. Also I'm going to use spam fighting tech because this is a great tool for spammers. If I have to trade not having Richard Stallman using the site that's just a practical trade I'll have to make.
:) I think you have a really reasonable take here, thanks for spending the time to reply.
Right here :-)
That is HN itself! Have a look at the source. How little Javascript it actually needs and see how well it can work without. I even like the idea behind the sparse styling and layout it use but I still think the looks could be much improved.
It is not for all as some sites are too much on the app heavy spectrum. But the current mindset among developers makes this leak everywhere. So many sites are really poorly designed. That is interesting in the context of debating minimalism and how broadly that can be defined in context of Javascript requirements.
Too few does what Travis did and try to do something minimalist. And the web suffers for it. Agree or not with his design decisions but his sentiment is laudable.
You only have a hard time to find sites which does not work without javascript because that is the lazy easy way. Good design and engineering is ignored as it is easy to quickly mock up a react site. Accessability then comes as an afterthought. And no-one cares about long term maintenance.
So sure; good luck finding a site which works well without Javascript. But that is my point: It might be the reality but should not be what we strive for. Some prefer the status quo while others prefer the fight. It might be against the windmills but nevertheless the point stands.
yes
HN for a start ...
My site link of
> Avi Perl's personal site!
Shows as
> Avi Perl's personal site!
On the edit page, there's no link to my homepage where the links are shown. In fact, it wasn't obvious that that's where I needed to visit in order to see my links. It was a guess that brought me to my page.
The confirmation links are going to spam in Gmail.
Perhaps the confirmation page can have a link to redirect me to my edit page, or my homepage?
With a very long bio, on mobile, the last button is floating over your text on the bottom which doesn't look great.
On mobile, the text on the bottom of the page is also a bit off-kilter in its centering.
Idea: If each entry had its own short name, you could also operate as a URL shorter. If I could add "p" as the "short name" for my personal site, lynx.boo/aviperl/p could function as an alternative to tinyurl. Combined with an option to hide the URL from my homepage, I never need those services again. :)
What happens when you need to reclaim a URL for the site that someone has already set up as a user? As the owner of your about page, I guess I'll find out :D https://lynx.boo/about
1) Not rendering special characters (especially basic punctuation) is a rookie mistake. Good catch. 2) confirmation links will go to spam in pretty much all mail clients. I'm investigating more because I have all the things an email should but also it's on a no reputation ip and I would bet my neighbours don't have perfect records. But as part of the whole "internet the way it used to be" thing I'm not using these SMTP operators.
3) I noticed the issue with the footer last night before bed. Luckily that's an easy enough fix.
5) your saying the footer text is off centre? I'll have to look at why..
4) redirect to the page is going in today. Before I had it as an unstyled text notification but that was too minimal for me. I haven't added a bunch of logic yet.
(I accidently read those out of order)
6) funnily enough, I have a 90% finished "bit.ly but minimal" site that I started before this which has QR support and basic analytics but I ADHD'd into this idea. I'm going to launch that as part of this minimalist suite. That doesn't mean things can't be borrowed though.
7) Actually I think there are much cooler domains to snag. You can use single characters, you can use emojis, you can do a lot. I did reserve a handful but where would I draw the line? If you are purposefully exploiting it trying to pretend to BE LynxBoo we would have problems but otherwise I want to reward creativity and I hope people grab all sorts of fun names.
Another note: in the email, it's totally not clear what I'm "approving" which is not really a huge issue. But it might be nice to include the username in the email.
My website: https://www.orawalters.com/ My lynx: https://lynx.boo/ora/
Having personal experience designing in the context of / restoring brutalist architecture (the kind people live and work* in), I submit with gratitude that this tool misses some key aspects of the style:
1. No concrete used in construction, and therefore no concrete smell, aka "eau de mid-century Americana."**
2. No sense of impending arrest by secret police around every corner.
3. Does not require regular pressure washing to avoid looking like a set-piece from a post-apocalyptic horror movie.
* for certain values of "live" and "work" ** sans cigarettes
0 <https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/nasa_graphic...>
I know your comment is being funny, but I will note that brutalist design in websites is a different design theory than in architecture (though, I'm not specifically conforming to any design)
brutalistwebsites.com seems to interpret brutalism as "I use monospace, maybe I'm monochrome and I don't need to put much on this page."
My own idea for what brutalist web design should be: "I have one good CSS file which I include in my project. It looks fine and now I'm done worrying about the design."
I personally refer to my style as "Marketing Brutalism".
Have a goal for the end user (an action or an enlightenment depending on the sites purpose.)
Make it clear and concise.
Good enough is a feast. You just need to appear 51% trustworthy.
If you are IBM in the 80s and you've successfully promulgated the meme "No one ever got fired for choosing IBM" than you are already there.
This is of course assuming a blind exposure, and you've done nothing to get people to tie their identity to your brand, once a persons personality is wrapped in your brand you just have to shovel products in front of their face and their families faces during the holidays.
I had no trouble going from landing -> working link page. The confirmation email did go to junk mail, though that was already expressed/known. I marked it as not junk in case that counts for anything.
I found Linktree is very popular amongst creators on Tiktok for sharing their various profiles, but I always thought it would be cool to find or build a simpler alternative with a cleaner UI. You built it! I think TT and IG would be a good place to advertise too if you're looking for more users, since creators there often need a table of links under a single URL.
In other words, how much should people assume this'll stick around and be with investing time and habits into?
I suggest toning down the brutalist "look" just from 10 to 9. Two things you can do that will keep the soul of your site and make it more usable: - add system-matched light and dark mode, that 100% white is very aggressive and bright, too much so and is putting me off using it. - just bring the white and black in a tiny bit from 100% white and 100% black, make it a slightly softer grey and almost black. Again this is more about making it accessibile to eyeballs. Brutalist doesn't mean unpleasent afterall.
I also have a few PHP scripts to help me view the links https://eapl.me/links/all_links.php?tag=dev
It’s not the easiest thing to manage, so I'm thinking of more scripts to update or delete old links from the web instead from SSH like I do now.
nc apitman.com 2052 <<< /txt/feed
It is utterly trivial and totally useful.
Tables are pretty simple:
<table border=1 cellpadding=4 cellspacing=0>
<tr>
<td> <A HREF="https://www.google.com">Google</A>
<td> <A HREF="http://slashdot.org">Slashdot</A>
<td> <A HREF="https://www.ebay.com">Ebay</A>
I don't like the bookmark feature of a browser because if I switch browsers or use another computer, it's gone. The file gets backed up, too.
Aaaahhhnnd, I keep a spiral paper notebook on my desk for ... notes!
For increased brutalism, I'd suggest another color theme, though... needs moar gray.
Many others have said things I agree with.
I would make the submit button the higher button and make it a more compelling color.
The very first link I input was immediately erased because the button was red!
Thanks for sharing. I like the minimal design.