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https://github.com/jstrieb/urlpages

Create and view web pages stored entirely in the URL
https://github.com/jstrieb/urlpages

css html javascript url web-development

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Create and view web pages stored entirely in the URL

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README 

        
# URL Pages



[jstrieb.github.io/urlpages](http://jstrieb.github.io/urlpages)



## About



- Create web pages in the simple, fast editor

- Share code that others can edit and modify

- Clone web pages with the bookmarklet (under active development)

- "Publish" web pages instantaneously

- Published links never stop working and ~cannot be taken down~ function as

  long as this site is trusted and extant

- No dependencies

- No signups

- No tracking

- No hosting

- No cost

- No commitment

- A few hundred total lines of clear, well-documented HTML, CSS, and JavaScript



Read the Hacker News Discussion

[here](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20317840)



## Encrypt



It is now possible to encrypt URL Pages using [Link

Lock](https://github.com/jstrieb/link-lock). This static, distributed web

application uses AES in the browser to encrypt the URL without transmitting any

data. The encrypted link is then stored in a Link Lock URL, which, when

visited, can only be unlocked with a password.



## How it works



As hinted by its name, URL Pages works by storing the entire contents of a web

page in the URL.



Thus, as long as the URL exists, so does the page it points to. The rest of the

URL Pages program is responsible for translating between web page code

(HTML/CSS/JavaScript) and an "encoded" URL.



- The **main page** takes encoded data from the URL, decodes it into regular

  web page format, and displays it to the user

- The **editor** encodes user-created web page data as a link that can be

  shared

- The **bookmarklet** takes a page that already exists and encodes it as a link

  that can be shared



When the main page is visited, the data is encoded in the URL using base 64

encoding via JavaScript's `atob` and `btoa` functions in conjunction with its

`encodeURIComponent` and `decodeURIComponent` functions. The encoded data is

stored in the

[hash](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/URL/hash#Examples)

portion of the URL.



In the editor, data is similarly encoded, except that the HTML, CSS, and

JavaScript portions are stored separately in one object that is converted to a

JSON string before being base 64 encoded.



The obvious downside of URL Pages is that the links get very long very quickly.

Luckily, some URL shorteners are able to accommodate fairly long URLs (shoutout

to [TinyUrl](http://tinyurl.com)). In a strange way, this effectively means the

link shortener is acting as the web host since it is responsible for storing

the record of the web page's data. For simple web pages (and even simple page

hierarchies), URL Pages have proven reasonably easy and effective to use,

however it quickly becomes infeasible to use for large sites or large embedded

images.



## Disclaimer



This just becomes a toy if I am the only one hosting a running version of this

repository. If you believe it has real potential, clone it or fork your own

version that addresses any non-fundamental problems you have with it, and host

your own. The only way this actually becomes robust is if there is no single

point of failure (i.e. my GitHub Pages)



Web pages in URLs are definitely not how things on the web were meant to be

done, so don't be surprised if trying to use URL Pages causes unexpected

issues. For example, sharing these links may cause chat programs, email

clients, and unsuspecting individuals to get confused, raise exceptions, or

complain. Likewise, copy-pasting these links may take a long time, if it works

at all. I've also noticed my browser running a little hotter while I've got 5MB

links in the URL bar.



Furthermore, URL Pages is very much a proof of concept, and should not be

relied upon for anything consequential.



Read the code and understand it before using so that you understand any

associated risks. The codebase was written with readers in-mind. Since the

codebase is intentionally short, it can be read and digested fairly quickly if

you have prior experience with client-side web applications.



I originally conceived this as a simple, static CodePen clone, but I felt the

"publishing" of pages as URLs was an interesting idea. So I decided to present

that aspect of it front and center, even though it wasn't really the point of

the project at the beginning. About a year ago, I had a proof of concept

version that I ended up using fairly frequently for sharing quick

HTML/CSS/JavaScript experiments (never as a means of seriously publishing and

sharing censorship-proof content). I found that if its use is limited to that

case, it is actually very handy and robust!



## Examples



The following examples were made and "published" using the provided [code

editor](http://jstrieb.github.io/urlpages/editor).



- My personal website

    - Code in the code editor [here](https://tinyurl.com/y64dmsqm)

    - "Published" version [here](https://tinyurl.com/y5w9ybk2)

- Bookmarklet setup page

    - Code in the code editor [here](https://tinyurl.com/y5r8y4v4)

    - "Published" version [here](https://tinyurl.com/y3lw36uh)

- A page with embedded images (no external image host)

    - Code in the code editor

      [here](http://jstrieb.github.io/urlpages/examples/embed-code.html)

    - "Published" page

      [here](http://jstrieb.github.io/urlpages/examples/embed-page.html)



The following examples were cloned from existing pages using the bookmarklet.



- My dad's food blog

  [here](http://jstrieb.github.io/urlpages/examples/food-blog.html)

- The entire [editor](http://jstrieb.github.io/urlpages/editor) encoded in the

  URL [here](https://tinyurl.com/y6nx5347)

- This GitHub project page

  [here](http://jstrieb.github.io/urlpages/examples/project-page.html)

- A cloned New York Times Article

  [here](http://jstrieb.github.io/urlpages/examples/nyt.html)



## Bookmarklet



Currently, the bookmarklet is very much in-development (read: mostly doesn't

work). Feel free to try it anyway by visiting the link below and following the

instructions.

- [Bookmarklet instruction page](https://tinyurl.com/y3lw36uh)



Code for the bookmarklet can be found in

[`bookmarklet.js`](https://github.com/jstrieb/urlpages/blob/master/bookmarklet.js).



The bookmarklet enables some of the most interesting and promising

opportunities for URL Pages. Namely: cloning pages for archival purposes,

sharing restricted information to bypass censorship, bypassing paywalls,

storing entire pages in bookmarks, etc.



## Related Projects



Since its original creation, it has been forked many times. Please open an

issue if you would like me to link back to a fork or mirror.

- One particularly improved version is JSPen

    - [JSPen](http://jspen.co)

    - [Post](https://medium.com/swlh/creating-jspen-a-codepen-like-editor-that-stores-pages-in-urls-b163934f06c8)

      about the creation of JSPen



Similar in some ways (though unrelated) to the following projects

- [itty.bitty.site](https://github.com/alcor/itty-bitty)

- [TinyEditor](https://github.com/umpox/TinyEditor)



## Project Status



This project is actively maintained. If there are no recent commits, it means

that everything has been running smoothly! URL Pages is designed to be 100%

backwards-compatible, so your links will never break.



Even if something were to happen to me, and I could not continue to work on

the project, URL Pages will continue to work as long as my GitHub account is

open and the [jstrieb.github.io](https://jstrieb.github.io) domain is online.



## To-do



- Improve the bookmarklet -- it's mostly unusable as of right now

    - Fix relative vs absolute linking

    - Maybe try embedding images

    - Import all `src`ed scripts directly

- Improve UI in general and editors beyond simple `textarea` (perhaps integrate

  Ace or CodeMirror)

- Make the buttons better/more efficient (don't update `href` on every key

  press)

- Figure out and publish max URL sizes for various URL shorteners

- Implement URL compression using

  [Brotli](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brotli) for shorter URLs

- Add option to "publish" pages using base65536 as suggested

  [here](https://github.com/jstrieb/urlpages/issues/5)

- Upload examples of multi-page sites (tree hierarchy)