Patterns for Personal Web Sites (2003)(rdrop.com)
rdrop.com
Patterns for Personal Web Sites (2003)
http://www.rdrop.com/~half/Creations/Writings/Web.patterns/index.html
18 comments
https://web.archive.org/web/20250130063217/http://www.rdrop....
This was fun and interesting to read, and as an example of a Gift To The Community [^0] I wish it was well preserved and updated with new examples, as the ones linked are down.
[^0]: http://www.rdrop.com/~half/Creations/Writings/Web.patterns/g...
[^0]: http://www.rdrop.com/~half/Creations/Writings/Web.patterns/g...
Considering that this dates from 2003 and the author, Mark Irons, died over 12 years ago (http://www.zuckershack.org/mark/) I would consider this very well preserved. There are estimates that 38% of the sites that were available in 2013 are gone now (https://www.pewresearch.org/data-labs/2024/05/17/when-online...).
So, who ever keeps Marks site up & running: thank you!
So, who ever keeps Marks site up & running: thank you!
Oh wow. I was reading this site a year or two ago, looking for forgotten old web 1.0 ideas to implement in my website†, and I was impressed by its clean design for 2003 & surprised that so few URLs were broken - but also a bit annoyed by the statement that the book was abandoned and was not going to be updated.
Well. I guess he has a good reason to not update it.
† inspired by http://www.rdrop.com/~half/Creations/Writings/Web.patterns/f... , we've been adding 'modified' icons to new URLs. Aside from that, the big Web 1.0 UI feature I am missing is any good equivalent to 'breadcrumbs': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breadcrumb_navigation http://www.rdrop.com/~half/Creations/Writings/Web.patterns/v... They work in the website's own use of it, because it has a strict categorical design where there is a 'book' nested in a domain etc, and the examples given obey categories. But I've struggled to come up with a good equivalent for Gwern.net, to help the reader visualize 'where' they are. Tags, for all their virtues, which are why they have largely superseded categories, do not give you any good spatial analogy. (There is an argument for breadcrumbs within pages, however, and we've been thinking about a kind of 'browsing history' section which shows you each link or snippet of text you interacted with in chronological order, which might help.) Some of them are better off forgotten, though. I think it's become clear that http://www.rdrop.com/~half/Creations/Writings/Web.patterns/c... weren't good ideas.
Well. I guess he has a good reason to not update it.
† inspired by http://www.rdrop.com/~half/Creations/Writings/Web.patterns/f... , we've been adding 'modified' icons to new URLs. Aside from that, the big Web 1.0 UI feature I am missing is any good equivalent to 'breadcrumbs': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breadcrumb_navigation http://www.rdrop.com/~half/Creations/Writings/Web.patterns/v... They work in the website's own use of it, because it has a strict categorical design where there is a 'book' nested in a domain etc, and the examples given obey categories. But I've struggled to come up with a good equivalent for Gwern.net, to help the reader visualize 'where' they are. Tags, for all their virtues, which are why they have largely superseded categories, do not give you any good spatial analogy. (There is an argument for breadcrumbs within pages, however, and we've been thinking about a kind of 'browsing history' section which shows you each link or snippet of text you interacted with in chronological order, which might help.) Some of them are better off forgotten, though. I think it's become clear that http://www.rdrop.com/~half/Creations/Writings/Web.patterns/c... weren't good ideas.
Agreed! I just read some of the story of his life told by his friend. Mark sounds like he was a top notch human.
Interesting concept http://www.rdrop.com/~half/Creations/Writings/Web.patterns/d...
I remember some 2010s websites offering a CHM version to download. Pretty neat for some things you might want to reference offline.
I used to think creating a CHM was peak professionalism. I'm a mini Microsoft!
Actually I'd go back to CHMs for docs. A modern reader would be good tho.
Actually I'd go back to CHMs for docs. A modern reader would be good tho.
Yeah, I keep thinking that CHM was the peak format for offline docs. Today we have Kiwix [0] and Dash/Zeal [1] – both amazing projects, but somehow they feel more complex, and the formats they use aren’t as ubiquitous.
[0]: https://kiwix.org/en/
[1]: https://kapeli.com/dash for macOS, https://zealdocs.org/ for others
[0]: https://kiwix.org/en/
[1]: https://kapeli.com/dash for macOS, https://zealdocs.org/ for others
Is there a term for the situation that, when there's a dozen different products competing in the same space, there may as well be none?
I don’t think so, but there is a number. [927]
[927]: https://xkcd.com/927/
[927]: https://xkcd.com/927/
Choice paralysis, choice overload, analysis paralysis.
The other day I crammed some awful internal docs into zeal. It was a fun time, good format -- was able to reverse engineer it without looking at the specs in an hour or so. I wanted to be able to look at those docs having to remember exactly where they were every time.
[deleted]
hmmm, website isn't loading for me.
You can get the whole thing as a ZIP here: https://web.archive.org/web/20160912232844if_/http://www.rdr...
It is slow. Like geocities.
That's the "pattern".