Skip to content
playhtml-icon
playhtml
playhtml
rhizome microgrant
Settings
Share
Explore

icon picker
Distribution & Templates

GOAL: make playhtml spread across the internet by making it fun to surf the web again.

Our strategy relies on grassroots distribution across the web by having more and more sites incorporate playhtml interactions with sublte attribution back to it. See mmm.page’s attribution for inspiration. To do this, we have to:
Collaborate / engage directly with high-profile websites on playhtml interactions to get exposure to their audience base
Create infrastructure and templates that are easily customizable and a good first step into playhtml interactions.

Current Context

playhtml’s current community straddles those who care about a more human-focused internet (mostly hobbyists and website enthusiasts) and those who keep up with the latest developer tools. playhtml has received really positive and emotional reception from sharing it online and everyone I’ve showed it to. Comments include feelings around breaking their mind about what you can do on the internet and how it feels like pure magic. However, only a few people that I know of have created sites using playhtml, even as I’ve been doing more to promote and encourage this.
My hypothesis is that the disconnect between what kinds of experiences playhtml enables and what kinds of experiences we’re used to on the internet proves to be too big of a hurdle for people getting started. When they see what you can do with it, they are very excited about the possibilities, but I don’t think they know exactly what to use it for, given how different it is from what we normally experience. The end effect of integrating playhtml is also often unclear in the simplest cases because you don’t see what other people see on their computer when they visit your website. So making something communal (like a button on your website) will not be immediately apparent how it changes the experience (which is something that is incredibly prized in the development of websites).
playhtml is only successful if it reaches a broader community and influences our culture for using the internet. The rise in popularity of multiplayer video games and collaborative creative tools like Figma provides a suitable foundation to reach people who are questioning how the internet might look different if it were more multiplayer and shared by default. The collective yearning for more third spaces in physical communities and a general dismay in how our devices affect us also inform a base need that playhtml can speak to.

Collaborations

partner with friends and web creator
partner with indie web website making services
do one-off, seasonal popups to mimic real-world pop-up culture and build spread?
reach out to the indie web:
https://www.hellomei.dev/home
⁠
⁠

Mechanisms

We should take inspiration from the interactive elements that are most popular and initially desired for people when they create a social website
more richer, expressive versions of answering these questions
who was here? visitor count
what did they do? upvotes, reactions → wear on elements, touch heatmap, etc.
ghost cursors
fingerprints
wear and tear (how do you show this?)
interactions that enable visitors to leave something that fades away over time
“X days since site has been opened / closed / touched / maintained”
“This site has consumed 523 minutes of attention”
cursor distance traveled, scroll distance traveled
number of links clicked
how did they feel? guestbook / visitor log
who is here? cursors / live chat
Different time scales:
current page
open page
page recently opened
page closed for a while
color traces (ala kinopio)
an aura or gradient (incorporated into background of site)
an ephemeral image of the other person fades in and out as you get close to them (ala Sky or other video games with this)


Other Outreach Strategies
community hackathon
library of references + store
Store & Gallery
⁠
(this is what i’ve been trying with my list of
100 playhtml experiments
⁠
)
integrating with popular websites and partners
neal agarwal, matt webb,
(future) integrate with AI to make it easier to create your first playhtml elements?
Who are important communities to reach?
internet enthusiasts who don’t identify as developers (”html energy,” no frameworks, programming as a way to express themselves)
hobbyist developers building small tools (programmer by trade, uses React or another modern javascript framework)
creative agencies who are contracted to build company and professional sites (sanctuary.computer)
new media art folks who want to make interesting art experiences (NEW INC)
programming and design students (what would a syllabus around communal web experiences look like?)
video game designers and enthusiasts (the
internet is one big video game
⁠
)
strong-knit communities who have a desire for small gathering spaces for their own use (DIY nextdoor)
Want to print your doc?
This is not the way.
Try clicking the ⋯ next to your doc name or using a keyboard shortcut (
CtrlP
) instead.