Taking inspiration from my Kindle, I’m hobbling together a browser for hyperlinked markdown documents. I’m writing it in Python, and using Pyglet as the UI.

Why?

Honestly. . . I’m tired of getting online and having everything vying for my attention. I just want to read. To read documentation. To read news articles. To read blogs again, instead of Facebook.

Pages where I set the styling. And there aren’t floating boxes everywhere. Where I’m not straining to see tiny Xs which need to be clicked with the precision of military marksman.

I’m tired of being fingerprinted and tracked from one domain to the next, like livestock.

I’m tired of a document standard so convoluted that Google’s the only company capable of implementing it in its entirety.

What’s your solution?

So, I’m combining the feel of a modern web browser with the simplicity of gopher, and a text styling somewhere in-between.

It doesn’t block ads, but it shouldn’t have to. Since most of its content will be in-line.

There is a query box at the end of the URL bar (think Firefox search box before they unified search and URL). Anything you enter into that box is appended to the end of the URL request as: ?q=query. Other than that, there’s no other way to send information to the server. No headers. No cookies. Nothing.

What do you hope to accomplish

I don’t plan to replace the web. More like. . . encourage people to blog again. Bring back directories (instead of search engines), where people can learn how to find their own information, instead of relying on what an AI tells them. Give documentation a space of its own. Encourage people to use other protocols to interact (email, FTP, Bittorrent). Lower server bandwidth requirements.

Basically, type out an email in Thunderbird to post to your blog, or post a classifieds listing.

My main goal is change how people use the web, from just logging onto Google and entering the information they want, to actually making them look for it and reason out how they got there.

So many people are asking Google for medical advice. Google is showing every single one of them custom tailored results. No one can tell what’s real and what isn’t. Whereas, if we went the card catalog (online directory) route, it’d actually force people to be aware of what they were doing and looking for. People wouldn’t be zombies online anymore.

So. . .

Do you think anyone would actually use it? 1.

Do you have any suggestions for it?