New in Labs: tiny.write.as

[karl]

What bother me is the lack of the option to disable is (I’m working on a PR to that ), this feature together with a smaller CSS will make a huge difference on page load.

[thmslld]

This is great! I will totally use this feature once it works with custom domains!

[jason]

Oh, I just realized something. Do you already know how you want to handle posts without a title? I use my main blog as a “micro blog” and would like to suggest to maybe abbreviate the first line with maybe 3 (or 5) words and an ellipses. If the first line is an embed, like a video or tweet (via iframe or similar), I would suggest to skip it and abbreviate the next line.

[matt]

@jason

My take on this is that it will eventually replace the convoluted CSS that there is right now, as it is historically/hysterically grown. Future customization could then be based on this new system. Which would make it much cleaner and easier to maintain.

That’s right, this is mostly a step on the way to something else.

@jason

Do you already know how you want to handle posts without a title?

We do handle titles here like we do in the rest of the app. So if you look at your blog’s metadata, you’ll see we automatically pull out a title for posts that don’t have an explicit one – and it’s close to the logic you’re describing. So we’re reusing that for the post titles here.

And to your earlier comment, images and embeds will be centered in our next update!

[jason]

@matt

We do handle titles here like we do in the rest of the app. So if you look at your blog’s metadata, you’ll see we automatically pull out a title for posts that don’t have an explicit one – and it’s close to the logic you’re describing. So we’re reusing that for the post titles here.

Oh yeah, I remember when it changed (to the better). The way it was done before was very long and I was thinking about creating a logic for it in my scripts. Then it changed all out of a sudden and was already the way I wanted it

@matt

And to your earlier comment, images and embeds will be centered in our next update!

Woohoo!

[matt]

Latest changes are out now!

• Support for custom domain blogs and *.writeas.com blogs
• Centered embeds
• Link to the “full” version from your blog’s footer

I’ve also added this to the Write.as Labs page, where you can now easily open the “tiny page” version of your blog.

[dino]

Wonderful!

[jason]

Nice! Activated! . Is it planned to make it configurable as the default view for custom domains in the next version? So, when I go to https://micro.jason.re i would get the tiny view by default? It makes it already so much cleaner

[jakelacaze]

This reminds me of blot’s essay theme. I imagine others would love this too as a theme, @matt.

[gypsymiles]

I like this tiny version… fast and to the point.

[jason]

Not sure if it is related, but since I have activated the tiny theme, some of the embeds, for example the youtube embeds, dont work anymore. For example visible here.

[jason]

@jason

Not sure if it is related, but since I have activated the tiny theme, some of the embeds, for example the youtube embeds, dont work anymore. For example visible here .

It looks like it might have been a coincidence with some other (unknown) issue, maybe something routing related with my Internet provider.

[selmakovich]

This is really awesome & cute! Thanks

[afr]

Hi, honestly I was writing a note on Pleroma to say how @matt was wholesome and how happy I was to have a pro account here, because I was going to ask for support for the Gopher and Gemini protocols, so it seems relevant to this topic. I’ve been on a 500 MB/month data cap between 2012 and 2014 and it still has consequences on my mental health. I think supporting these protocols could be enough to spare a significant number of users from checking their remaining data plan before being cut from the world for the rest of the month.

A suggestion to convert Markdown’s inline links to Gemini’s block style wouldn’t be more complicated than adding them as footnotes and duplicating the styling, starting with an uppercase letter. So instead of getting:

“Oh, by the way, I’ve posted <a href="https://honeypot.afr.social" pictures from my last trip to Hamburg</a>”

we’d get:

“Oh, by the way, I’ve posted pictures from my last trip to Hamburg [1]
[…]
=> https://honeypot.afr.social [1] Pictures from my last trip to Hamburg”

But this is just a suggestion and I don’t know how much complexity it would add to the WriteFreely software.

Thanks so much for everything, for the software, the platform, the communication…

[nicotiana]

I like this. Nice and sparse. Keep going, there’s more to cut! Imagine a world without Javascript and CSS entirely.

You might enjoy the Gemini project as well:

https://gemini.circumlunar.space/

[jehan]

I love the minimalist nature of tiny.write.as. It would be amazing if someone could create a write.as theme to reflect a minimalist blog that looked something like this: Blog | ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ Herman's blog

Any thoughts?

[matt]

Hey @jehan, there are some out there! For example: Riley’s theme.

[matt]

Just updated this a bit today with a new directory of all public writers, similar to the page you’ll find on Read Write.as.

We’ve added a directory of public writers on Tiny.Write.as, so it’s easier to...

[mnml]

I’m currently using Riley’s theme but I will really like to be able to use the Tiny Theme on my custom domain.

I really like its essentiality.

[domalhambra]

Just wanted to say that I really like the look and feel of tiny.write.as! I hope it can become a usable theme soon.