inessential by Brent Simmons

ScriptWeb for iOS Should Be a Thing

Back in the ’90s and early 2000s — before we forgot how easy and fun it is to code up a little site and put it up on the web — people used to make sites for the communities they were in.

It was like: “I know! Let’s put up a page! It will link to all the cool resources somebody interested in __ would learn from. We’ll update it now and again when there’s new stuff.”

Key point: it’s not a blog. It’s a directory, and often a single-page site. (There might be a few bullet points under a “What’s New” section, though.)

The best example that I know of was ScriptWeb — which still exists, though it’s no longer updated. It was all about Mac scripting, back in the early days of AppleScript, in the days of UserLand Frontier and MacPerl and HyperCard.

ScriptWeb was great. I started off my career as a scripter, and I went to ScriptWeb all the damn time.

So… where’s the ScriptWeb for iOS automation? I’m not going to do it, but somebody should!

* * *

If I were doing one of these sites these days, I’d store the source on GitHub, so that people could see revisions, and, most importantly, be able to make pull requests and file bugs for things they think should be added.

In other words: let the community help with the site. It shouldn’t be a big time commitment.