> Notes are limited to 280 characters. The constraint keeps them quick to write and read, making room for one thought at a time.
No thanks.
I use Mastodon which has a 500 limit, and even that sometimes is not enough.
Saying shitty/toxic stuff can be done concisely. Giving a nuanced response is simply not possible. So people respond with jokes/sarcasm/counter toxic stuff. And the cycle continues.
Also open source.
Download your data
Export your account, notes, connections, and activity as a JSON file.
btw you can write comments yourself Natalia! In fact that’ll keep ya compliant, we’re human-to-human here
If you are going to limit it to short posts, maybe the length of a short post is the length to limit it to, rather than emulating the 2xSMS of every twitter clone?
Other than that, it looks really clean and neat - I just dont think being 280 chars adds anything other than resulting in people posting with pagination as per X 1/3.
Almost every twitter/x post submitted to HN has people labelling their posts as "X of Y" threads, using images as text, or using pro account posts.
You can see it yourself: https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=twitter.com Ive just looked at 30 and each of them exceed 280 chars by far.
"Microblogs, for example on Twitter..." https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/microblo...
"Some popular social networks such as X (formerly Twitter), Threads, Tumblr, Mastodon, and Bluesky can be viewed as collections of microblogs." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microblogging
That said, I'm not a social media user besides HN I guess.
My comment on the about page was that it needed more than 280 chars to communicate what the app is about - even the title + intro exceeds the limit.
If it is truly believed that 280 chars is enough to communicate an idea, then the about page should follow that philosophy.
I just wanted to give a bit of feedback as someone who reads them - and point out that on almost every twitter/bluesky submission to HN they are using ways to work around the 280/300 char limitations.
To play devils advocate - 500 also seems a bit arbitrary ;) If I were making a platform like this myself, I would go for a power of 2 that makes sense for storage/buffering. Maybe 1KiB including all meta, etc. You could comfortably fit a post the size of your about page, and all associated meta in that - even when serialised as JSON or something. I'd go from there and work backwards to come up with a size that has a real technical purpose.
The build (generation) step should be able to execute on/inside the browser runtime (using standardized APIs, not hardcoded against proprietary APIs that the NodeJS people invented).
See also <https://crussell.ichi.city/pager.app.htm>
> the [dependencies] used here were carefully selected because they do provide a benefit.
You're moving the goalposts.
The thing you linked doesn't meet the bar I'm aiming for, either for the resulting site or for the experience of building it. Astro helps me achieve those goals as part of this project, which is why I consider it a beneficial dependency.
> The thing you linked doesn't meet the bar I'm aiming for, either for the resulting site or for the experience of building it.
And now you're applying a standard that was never claimed to have been met.
There's a way this back-and-forth could have gone, which is right after I emphasize that "The simplest way to build a high-quality site" doesn't belong at the top of the page because it doesn't reflect what you're actually doing, then you say, "Oh yeah, I see what you mean. I went ahead and changed it to something that's more accurate and (a little less hyperbolic). I'm not trying to fundamentally throw out the experience that people who are already familiar with building sites with conventional NodeJS-based frameworks like Astro are used to. Just trying to make it a little easier."
Instead we got this.
:thumbs-up:
I'm going to spend more time contributing without so much self-promotion.
Thanks for the feedback.
The main thing that stood out to me was, unlike many other micro/minimalist blogging platforms, textlog has individual notes (as opposed to blogs) as the primary unit. I feel that this choice often makes it psychologically easier for users to post something quickly without getting stuck on managing their blog’s brand and identity. Nothing wrong with the latter, but it comes with a trade-off.
And I really like the visual design: very clean and minimalistic, but also pleasant.
Source: https://github.com/est/gitweets
Demo: https://f.est.im/
The site and data is self-contained as a git repo.
A git commit is a post. Blobs are pictures.
Comments are stored in git notes.
For those that never had an opportunity to see it.