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Show HN: Ugliest.app – Ugly but good app platform

441 points| bloopbloop10000 | 5 years ago |ugliest.app | reply

155 comments

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[+] andygcook|5 years ago|reply
Made a quick ugly nostalgic website: https://ugliest.app/l/faf7f8c5-cd2c-47ab-9cb8-f6daf27f74d6/T...

Warning: May contain sound

Edit: Accidentally left the token on the URL I posted and got pwned... :)

[+] erichurkman|5 years ago|reply
This needs a 'Best viewed in Chrome 86 on iMac Pro' banner.
[+] pailander|5 years ago|reply
You're missing a visit counter.
[+] allenu|5 years ago|reply
Nicely done. Is it still possible to change the cursor appearance? Might want to look into that.
[+] doc_gunthrop|5 years ago|reply
The 8-bit Led Zeppelin really ties it together.
[+] snazz|5 years ago|reply
I appreciate the tasteful pwning as well! This is great.
[+] gadders|5 years ago|reply
Can you add a gif to let us know what webring you are in please?
[+] nobrains|5 years ago|reply
Please include the mandatory marquee
[+] zeroxfe|5 years ago|reply
This made my day. Thanks.
[+] solox3|5 years ago|reply
Heads up for the creator: putting everything under ugliest.app allows pages to read the same cookies across different "apps". If anyone plans to use the platform for production (which you appear to welcome), nothing substantial can be done.

I forgot what made github.com switch to github.io. Something similar but totally separate.

[+] t0astbread|5 years ago|reply
This is like Firebase but actually fun!

Jokes aside though, I think there's a real use-case for something like this: Small multi-user CRUD apps, most often for a confined audience that don't warrant whipping up some kind of web server software and deploying it to a VM or a lambda function or whatever. Just create some tables, write some markup and you're done. Share the URL, it's live!

You could also use it for stuff like simple form submissions in otherwise static sites (à la Netlify) or website hosting in general. Just have your static site generator spit out an ugliest.app bundle and deploy it using curl. You get some dynamic content generation for free!

Hopefully this does not sound insane but I think this idea of "something like Access, kind of, but on the web" is brilliant and necessary. I don't wanna tell you what to do but maybe open sourcing this would be beneficial? Judging by how fast you've been fixing bugs and adding features in the comments I figure the code is not a mess. People might just prefer contributing that one feature they were missing instead of writing their own web server for their tiny app.

[+] mxuribe|5 years ago|reply
> something like Access, kind of, but on the web

I do a little tech consulting on the side (mostly web dev, but sometimes just regular "IT stuff" too)...and I've had clients who i know would be a pain if i conduct the usual process for developing an app/website for them...and often (to save myself from headaches) try to look for a solution for them that is something like Access (or super Excel) but for the web...and haven't found one that is nicely balanced yet. This kind of thing - if it evolves a little more on the ugliness side - might eventually fit the bill. (To clarify: i have no care about the ugly aspect, but the same annoying clients who would benefit from this paradigm are the same ones who criticize apps because they're not "pretty enough"...So, there's that to consider.)

[+] tskguarantee|5 years ago|reply
Appears to have been flagged by google. Links are show Deceptive Site warning in Google Chrome on Android due to possible Phishing.
[+] teleclimber|5 years ago|reply
Dang. It's really hard to put something online that lets anybody be creative without someone coming in, using to do bad things, and getting the whole site blocked by google.

I guess nothing is going to change too since this conveniently serves to entrench the big platforms.

[+] movedx|5 years ago|reply
I'm getting the same thing on Firefox now.
[+] pmiller2|5 years ago|reply
Looks like it's back to normal now. I'm no longer getting this warning.
[+] throwaway894345|5 years ago|reply
This is cool, but it seems to be broken. I tried to create a table called `test`, but I got `something went wrong but we won't say what`. It's also not clear to me what to do with a table (I don't see any options to add columns or data).

EDIT: Maybe it's just being hugged to death. Just about every action is throwing the aforementioned error now.

EDIT2: This would be really cool if it were self-hosted (obviously without the auto-deletion)!

[+] tshaddox|5 years ago|reply
You have to click the Docs link to see how you can read from and write to tables using a template syntax and HTML forms.
[+] mst|5 years ago|reply
> I tried to create a table called `test`, but I got `something went wrong but we won't say what`

That means it got an error while running git.

[+] stefanmichael|5 years ago|reply
"However many requests per second we feel like serving"

probably closer to the truth of competing cloud providers than it has any right to be

[+] splatzone|5 years ago|reply
It’s a shame you’ve chosen to delete everything after 24 hours. I understand why though. Maybe just make no guarantee that the apps will stay live, so I can share what I make with friends?

I like the plain design, very austere and to the point. It would be good if your copy was just as blunt and frank, tell us why it’s good and why we should use it

[+] bloopbloop10000|5 years ago|reply
OP here— you make a good point about sharing with friends. Added a button to make apps last forever!
[+] hamolton|5 years ago|reply
> something went wrong but we won't say what

I think you got the big hug

[+] runxel|5 years ago|reply
I don't get it. Why has everything to be called an "app" nowadays?

All in all I have so many questions – Let's start with: "WHY, tho?"

[+] swatkat|5 years ago|reply
Safari on iOS 14.1 started throwing “Deceptive website” warning for the domain. It worked fine (i.e. no warning) an hour ago.
[+] wayne|5 years ago|reply
Ditto on Chrome with an all-red screen and "Deceptive site ahead".
[+] gnulinux|5 years ago|reply
I love this, but it doesn't look like server-side language is Turing complete. It can only read, write, and delete rows; branches on admin; and returns a random number. Is it possible to extend the language in a way defining functions, if stmt and for loops are possible?

Since it already has if, I wonder if I can branch on things other than "admin".

EDIT: I stand corrected, looks like using `range .. end` you can actually loop.

EDIT2: if also works:

    {{ if (rando 0 1) }}
     a
    {{ else }}
     b
    {{ end }}
prints a or b non deterministically.

EDIT3: I wish it supported operations like equality, addition, <, > etc

[+] bloopbloop10000|5 years ago|reply
It supports eq (==), ne (!=), gt (>), ge (>=), lt (<), le (<=).
[+] aabbcc1241|5 years ago|reply
It should be called webpage or website instead of app?
[+] exabrial|5 years ago|reply
Well it passes the Little Bobby Tables test... I created an app named "Robert'); DROP TABLE Students;--"
[+] lxe|5 years ago|reply
This sounds like a cool side project to implement when learning a new language/framework.