January 2, 2026
Back to basics, baby
A small collection of text-only websites
No pop-ups, no cookie nags: bare-bones web thrills minimalists, irks the rest
TLDR: Terence Eden shared a list of plain-text ways to read websites, cutting pop-ups and clutter for speed and clarity. Comments celebrate minimalism, debate what “plain” really means, and reminisce about printer-friendly pages, with developers suggesting simple add-ons like .json, .yaml, and .md to keep the web light and accessible.
Terence Eden just dropped a delightfully lo-fi list of sites you can read in pure text — add “.txt” to a URL and boom: no cookie banners, no pop-ups, no autoplay. It’s the web stripped to its underwear, and the comments lit up. Minimalists cheered. theandrewbailey bragged about “naked CSS” (basically letting the browser’s default look shine), while others swooned over speed and readability. Old-school fans got misty-eyed, remembering when every page had a printer-friendly option. Eden isn’t claiming this is “best,” just a choice for fast, simple reading. The list nods to tricks like adding .txt or .md, and Eden wants more submissions — emoji allowed, fancy colors not.
But the crowd split on purity. One reader crowned text.npr.org a hero — not “true” plaintext, but still blissfully light, especially next to ad-heavy news sites. Developer types chimed in: add “.json” or “.yaml” to get raw data, try “.md” (Markdown, a simple text format) for content-heavy pages. The rule here is text-only, emoji okay, no sneaky styles. Cue a friendly spat over what counts as plain: is lightweight HTML okay or cheating? Meanwhile, nostalgia lovers asked for short summaries by each link, like printer pages from back in the day. The vibe is fast, simple, readable — a tiny rebellion against today’s bloated web.
Key Points
- •The author serves their blog posts as plain text by appending .txt to any URL.
- •The article lists multiple websites with URL patterns to access text-only or Markdown versions.
- •Cited sites include Daring Fireball (.text), Gwern (.md or Accept header), and others with specific patterns.
- •Submission rules require MIME type text/plain and exclude HTML, multimedia, RTF, XML, and ANSI color codes.
- •The author invites additional contributions to expand the collection of text-only websites.