Web Non-Standards and Other 2020s Headaches

Big Tech's grip on developer resources is so unthinkably tight that simply, new devs do not know how to build websites and apps that won't violate their users' privacy. But yeah, let's all wave our arms and spread the "Privacy is not Dead" meme.

The forthcoming content-packager app after reorganisation of the interface. In general aura it feels a bit like posting on an old-school forum, except the live preview is ever-present, and it responds instantly to changes in the Markdown. This view shows an HTML5 image block, which has SEO-viable markup and is inserted via an upload-style dialogue. Alternatively, images can be inserted via a shortcode or standard Markdown.

To keep you up to date on my forthcoming content-packager, whilst simultaneously bemoaning the state of the technological world, I'm stopping off for a quick rant on Web Standards. Far from promoting universal compatibility, as any Standards regime should, Web Standards - or Web Non-Standards, to dub them a little more appropriately - have succeeded only in making exclusion and digital dictatorship the default.

For anyone who doesn't regularly read this blog, I'm in the latter throes of building a radical desktop publishing app, which sits in the gap between a website-builder and a post-Microsoft word-processor, and is designed to take a hardline stance against surveillance giants. I've learned many things along the way, but perhaps more than anything else, I've learned that trying to maintain both competitiveness and compatibility in a piece of web-tech is near impossible. By order of ye interwebz' controlling forces.

Content-Packager Update

Take things offline and the dynamics totally change. The overheads disappear. No one needs to pay for anything. The subjugation stops, and it's Big Tech who are locked out of the party - not you.

Cyberquotes will provide a flexible means to cite interesting and funny people from ANY online platform.

In early June I documented a forthcoming content-packaging system, designed to run offline, cross-platform, with no software installation necessary. This has become a pretty serious project - for me at least - and I want no one to be in any doubt that the app is on its way. These things are fairly straightforward to codge up to an experimental standard, but crafting them into decent and widely usable apps is a lot of work for one person.

The single biggest challenge through the course of the app's development has been browsers' general reluctance to communicate with files when there's no server or authentication layer.

From the beginning, the goal with this app was to provide a real alternative to surveillance culture, rather than just whining about it on a blog. I honestly couldn't find one online platform that was a real solution. I'd dig up some tiny indie startup via Marginalia - proprietor assuring users it was all about independence and content. Then I'd find that self-same proprietor in dev land extolling the virtues of his Cloudflare CDN and talking about users like they were beads on an abacus.

Content Podding: How to Build Portable, DIY, Offline 'Blogs', and Why You Should

[UPDATE: I've since built an app to create content pods and other distributable writing formats totally offline. You can find out more and get the download links in Take The Web Offline With Lit.OTG.

I've left the original post below.

The Original Post...

"An HTML web page can be incredibly simple, and it can be created entirely offline with something like Seamonkey Composer. I'll move onto that shortly. In fact, I'll summarise the whole creation process."

A portable, offline version of the NRGCult post "I am Suing the Feminist Metal-Bending Channel".

Content creators… Imagine producing a website or blog without the involvement of any remote service. Imagine completing the whole process on your local drive, without any signups, without any terms, and without any conditions. Imagine being able to send your DIY website, or collection of web pages, directly to people of your choice. By email. Or on CDs, or on DVDs.

Content consumers… Imagine being able to read content in total privacy. Imagine that content being delivered to you in a format that doesn't allow your interests to be profiled. Imagine that content being futureproof and immune to censorship. Imagine being the gatekeeper of that content, so you don't have to rely on a bunch of massive tech companies graciously allowing you to find and/or access it.If these ideals appeal to you, then let me welcome you to the world of portable content.

Portable content is not attached to any specific web service. You choose how you want to deliver or receive it. It's extremely difficult for Big Tech to censor, suppress or ban, and it's totally impossible to interfere with when it's distributed on disc media at functions or in other offline situations.