This website is part of the HTML network experiment.
The HTML network or link network is a locally constructed web, created by persons linking to persons.
The experiment is about building a JavaScript app that crawls and indexes web pages connected by rel=friend links,
providing local discovery without central coordination and with all processing taking place in the browser.
To participate one must signup for web hosting or setup ones own server. From there on it's static HTML and a JavaScript client app.
A personal website defines a persons part of the network. A stable web URL where a person publish updates is called a channel URL. When a friend link a channel URL into their network, all the apps in the network will begin to display a snapshot in the update stream every time the channel changes content.
Updates can be HTML and CSS, images, video, or whatever one can come up with.
Channels that contain HTML describe a local view of the network by defining outgoing network links and other metadata besides body content.
The app aims to both help the users manage their channels and allow participation by any other means.
All channels are public, so any person who knows a channel URL or the channel URL of someone who has the channel in their network, can read the channel.
The system does provide some privacy. Since discovery happens without a search engines or other discovery services, channels are not discoverable outside the network.
To publish to the HTML network one must allow the web to read ones channel URLs by setting the
Access-Control-Allow-Origin: * HTTP header (or by using a hosting provider that does this automatically).
Some documentation is available at /local.html.txt. It is also possible to read the code. It's free software.
My channel URL is the index.html page on this website, where I test features of the app.
The HTML code of those updates, and their history, is also a way to learn about what the app can do.
To try out the web app, go to the web app and follow a site with rel=friend links (e.g. https://lofihi.fi) to get started
(or click this link).
The index.html page is where I post updates and experiment with web app features.
I have a RSS feed that is like an archive of the index page.
There is also an actual archive of pages generated from the RSS file.
Sometimes I write longer texts about the local.html web app:
This website is hosted on Cloudflare Pages. IP addresses and HTTP request metadata may be processed by the infrastructure provider as part of serving the website.
This website does not handle personal data beyond what is processed by infrastructure providers.
This website hosts a demo of the local.html reader app.
The app runs entirely in the browser. It processes data locally and does not transmit user data except when making requests to external sites.
There is a distinction between publishing and reading:
All content and relationships are based on publicly accessible URLs. As a result, relationships and activity may be inferred by others with access to the same URLs.
Users may choose to publish or link to personal information. The system cannot prevent such disclosure.
If a CORS proxy is configured, that proxy has full visibility into all fetched content and requests made through that proxy.