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.
So, who ever keeps Marks site up & running: thank you!
gwern 144 days ago [-]
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_navigationhttp://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 Tags, for all their virtues, which are why they have largely superseded categories, do not give you any good spatial analogy.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.
capt_chiss 144 days ago [-]
Agreed! I just read some of the story of his life told by his friend. Mark sounds like he was a top notch human.
I remember some 2010s websites offering a CHM version to download. Pretty neat for some things you might want to reference offline.
nejsjsjsbsb 144 days ago [-]
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.
notpushkin 144 days ago [-]
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.
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.
[^0]: http://www.rdrop.com/~half/Creations/Writings/Web.patterns/g...
So, who ever keeps Marks site up & running: thank you!
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.
Actually I'd go back to CHMs for docs. A modern reader would be good tho.
[0]: https://kiwix.org/en/
[1]: https://kapeli.com/dash for macOS, https://zealdocs.org/ for others
[927]: https://xkcd.com/927/