For those, who do not know what the Gemini protocol is, think of it as a modern, light-weight HTTP alternative without CSS or JavaScript. In layman term, you could see it as Web 1.0 reinvented. It uses GemText instead of HTML. For folks who want to try it out, you can either install a Gemini extension for your HTTPs browser (which kinda defeats the purpose, as modern browsers are heavy), or download a dedicated Gemini browser like Lagrange. Here’s a few sites you can access in Gemini.
Personally, I love it, although I miss a few stuff, like for example, multimedia, streaming and stuff like that. The memory foorprint is very low, and pages are super-fast.
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I understand the sentiment, but… HTML and some light CSS is just as fast and much more accessible. It just strikes me as something that defines itself in opposition to “thing everyone uses” for no good reason.
It may not be particularly useful, but I welcome a challenge to the current status quo. The Internet is a powerful resource, and we’re still building on top of the first protocol that worked back in 1991 to navigate it. Gemini isn’t something I could see having any mainstream appeal, but it’s absolutely worth experimenting with alternatives to the World Wide Web. Having more than one functional open standard could help revolutionize the Internet in novel new ways.
I like it. Everyone these days seems to want web pages that are 5MB of dynamically generated junk.
My little website is just static hugo-generated stuff.
Sure, but you don’t need a completely new protocol to speed up websites, learn HTML and CSS and you can easily create fast pages for anyone to look at, not just those with a highly specific client.
What is the point of a competing standard to html/https? It works pretty well? And CSS and JS are a big part of modern websites (sometimes a bit too big of course, but still).
Https is lightweight too, if you just don’t add tons of CSS and JS dependencies?
Yeah. I don’t know Gemini in detail so maybe this is just me talking out my ass, but it seems like you could just make a minimalist web page and get the best of both worlds.
That said I honestly do kinda like the idea of a whole little community that is only minimal. Like the protocol is clearly totally unnecessary from a technical perspective… but maybe the thing it enables socially from being structured that way is the valuable part.
CSS and js are nothing to do with http. In fact neither is html really.
It’s just a protocol for transferring text.
I was an early adopter of Gemini and even hosted some stuff on there years ago, but ultimately I don’t see a point when things like gopher exist and Gemini is a wasteland when it comes to interesting stuff to browse. Though admittedly the concept of an encrypted gopher protocol is pretty nice to me. I feel a lot more of the old internet feeling on there, i.e everyone else using it is a like-minded hobbyist with no corporate overlords. But even then things like activitypub that we are using right now also have that so idk.
It’s fine, I use Lagrange to read it sometimes, and there’s a few gemlogs I follow. But it’s in a weird space of “almost HTML, so why not just do HTML?”
Gopher still works fine, and has more clients (I still use Lynx). I like the clean separation of menus (even if you use a lot of
iinfo lines) and documents. There’s a bunch of gopher holes still out here. I haven’t updated mine in a couple years, but when/if I move it over to a new server I will, as kind of a back-channel to the site & blog.Oooh I didn’t know about this! Does it have a search engine?
EDIT: oh I see there is! Shoulda clicked through before asking lol
this sounds like the name of an ARG
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You can use server-side forms to update pages, just like we did before front-end HTML became Flash 2.0.
Not possible. The Gemini protocol lacks anything like a POST method. The only way to provide user input to a Gemini server is through arguments encoded in the URL.
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Here’s a microblog service that’s built on Gemini that uses forms to get data from users. gemini://station.martinrue.com/
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It is open source! https://github.com/skyjake/lagrange
I like browsing it! You always find interesting people and writings about a wide variety of topics. It’s got enough users to have variety but not so many that it feels in any way corporate. It’s very much in line with the idea that limitations breed creativity. I’d highly recommend everyone download a decent browser and look around it a bit.
My only worry is that the Google Gemini AI thing will quickly suck all the air out of that name.
Why?
What problem does this solve over simple HTML/CSS pages?
Outside of a very specific niche I can’t see how anyone would choose this over normal HTML and HTTP/HTTPS, you’d need to run a new Gemini specific server to host Gemini specific files, created by Gemini specific softwares or Gemini specific developers, files that can only be read with a Gemini specific client.
This won’t happen outside systems with highly specialized requirenments.
The advantage is that it’s an obligate web 1.0 (-ish) experience. You aren’t clicking a link on a Gemini site that is going to take you anywhere crazy. There’s no tracking pixels and embedded content to get in the way.
It’s possible to attempt this by just following web 1.0 standards on your w3 site, and only linking to sites that do the same, and so on, but eventually there’s going to be a like button or an embedded video or something that ruins the experience. The web is messy.
Smaller spaces with constraints can be a lot of fun. Working within those constraints can breed innovation.
Sure, but untill web browsers support the protocol natively, it will never take off
This completely misses the point.
Why would you not want a broader adoption of the system?
because the point is not broad adoption, the point is not what features it supports, the point is the features that it doesn’t. It can’t track you, it can’t advertise to you (effectively), it’s meant to replicate that pre-corporate-enshittification feeling the WWW once had. The creators never imagined it would get as big as it even currently is.
I don’t understand why this would exist over noscript + using the websites you actually want to use. If you want to spend time on minimal websites, there’s no reason you can’t use html and http to do it.
it looks like this was a college student’s weekend hacking project and some people took it way too seriously and now have this social idea about how intentionally inferior tech is going to revolutionize… devolutionize? the internet. This is not snapchat. This is cave painting.
It’s just a tool for some some nerds to gatekeep content. Which isn’t a bad thing per se because it can lead to building new interesting communities, but it’s not really cool either.
Another one of those “solution in search of a problem” things. It really doesn’t solve any of the drawbacks of HTML/CSS, it just does the same thing in a different (way less supported) way.
