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Ask HN: What are some of the best text-only websites?

35 points by anoncoward111 ↗ HN
Hi,

I've spent most of 2018 either in very rural areas, foreign countries, or in "throttled-mode" on my US-based prepaid mobile plan.

My phone's processing power is really excellent, but of course the bottleneck with modern websites is the tons of pings back and forth over the network and the huge image sizes.

Please, take pity on me and send me some links for great websites that offer a text-only service or some other form of lightweight browsing.

Of course, Wikipedia, lite.cnn.io, and outline.com are life-savers :)

32 comments

[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 63.9 ms ] thread
davewasthere
This is where some sort of Lynx-browser-powered-proxy would be ideal.

I know it'd probably break several sites... but your average news reading would be hugely improved.

I will say that https://forums.whirlpool.net.au/ is one of the best community sites I know of. It's very lightweight, looks good, works incredibly fast. As a dev, I'm really impressed.

ssh_lynx
> This is where some sort of Lynx-browser-powered-proxy would be ideal.

No need to go into any of that trouble. Just install ssh on your phone and connect to any box with lynx/elinks/etc.

Works like a charm and is real snappy over any wireless connection.

If you are short of a box to ssh into, sign up for any of the providers of free shell accounts.

There are of course also a lot of native text only browsers like Instabrowser if you prefer an app. Then there are browsers using compression and proxies like Opera Mini.

vram22
>sign up for any of the providers of free shell accounts

Recommendation?

achow
Reuters has a toggle button to switch of photos: https://www.reuters.com/commentary

And nowadays I find Reuters having very interesting informative writeups which rivals NYT, Guardian, etc.

refur_augu
slatestarcodex.com is endlessly interesting and thought provoking.
combatentropy
Have you tried just turning off JavaScript? A website often is a hundredth the size without it. This is because many use JavaScript to add iframes, images, videos, and more JavaScript.
hieloz
CNN lite: https://lite.cnn.io/en

Text Edition of The Christian Science Monitor: https://www.csmonitor.com/layout/set/text/textedition

News aggregator website:Readspike https://readspike.com/

5555624
My problem with CNN Lite is that there is no apparent way to sort the links. Right now, as I write this -- 0815, 20 August -- the top story is from 1100, 17 August. In fact, the top five stories are all form midday last Friday. The 10th story is from 17 July. Maybe sorting the links by date won't help much; but, it's a start.
panda888888
Not the answer you're looking for, but Reddit. Sure there are images and gifs, but the majority of the content is text. I'm not sure if there's a good way to see a text-only version (aside from turning off js) but if there is, it's a site I recommend.
anoncoward111
I would have been endlessly happy if Reddit worked, but on my current data plan, it hangs instantly :(
cupar
I think that i.reddit.com is the closest thing to a text-only version.
dokem
The catcher and the rye.
dammitfoo
Kinda off-topic but if you use Firefox on your mobile, you can install 'uBlock origin'[0] extension which will block pesky, annoying ads and trackers. Not that helpful with text-only sites but very useful with normal browsing.

[0] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock

phakding
To add to this, if you root your phone and install adaway you would be free from ads even in an app.
cm2012
You won't regret reading the online only book Worm, by Wildbow. Very light site and an amazing story. It has a huge online fan base for a reason. Warning: it gets dark.

https://parahumans.wordpress.com

kotrunga
A good news site that I've been telling people about is Legible News- only text and links. No images, ads, etc.

https://legiblenews.com/

There is also Wiby, the search engine for 'classic websites'. You can only submit a website if it is simple and meets the criteria (not a lot js / css). Whatever you find, add it to Wiby!

https://wiby.me/

oftenwrong
You can disable images in some mobile browsers (e.g. firefox for android) [0]. That significantly knocks down the size of pages. I have mine set to only load images when on a wifi connection.

If you can use a desktop browser tethered through your mobile data connection, you can use the extension uMatrix [1] to selectively block scripts, css, images, outbound requests, and more. This would allow you to turn most pages into lightweight, text-only pages.

[0] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/block-or-load-images-ov...

[1] https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix