On HN it makes sense to me, because a long link would interrupt the flow of text. So you do a footnote to make them go out of the way. Otherwise Wikipedia has a happy medium I think; footnotes are on the bottom where you'd expect, but they show on hover so you don't have to jump there and then back.

If only the Web had a way to make text clickable withtout showing the whole target URL.

I find inline links incredibly disruptive to my reading flow, the change in color makes my eyes start jumping around in the text. Wikipedia especially is absolutely hopeless, to the point where I've built a mirror that removes all inline links. (A page looks like this: https://encyclopedia.marginalia.nu/wiki/Hyperlink )

Just make it the same color. For me links on HN are underlined but the same color as regular text or a slightly dimmer gray if already visited. It's one of the first things I do when I install a new browser and if it's hard that browser doesn't stay installed long.

Just found this FF add-on [1], yesterday, which removes all links from a page. Works reasonably well. Can also invoke reader view after removing links and get the benefits there.

[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/nolinks/

Wouldn't a user script work just as well for this purpose? `document.querySelectorAll('a').for each(a=>{a.outerHTML=a.innerHTML});`

Sure, that works too. You still get the megabyte pageloads though, and you need to carry the script with you every where you go.

Looks good. A bit out of date though

Yeah, I think the there is a new data dump available, will rebuild the html files from that soon.

There must be other reasons, if it doesn't make sense technologically, no? Instagram also has the tech to show more than 3 images in a row, and Twitter could allow longer texts if they wanted so.

Sarcasm acknowledged

Hiding in the URL is a favorite feature for scams and pranks

The technology just isn't there yet.

The reason is that trolls like to post links to shock sites or a google search for something terrible. Even worse, you could get rickrolled.

Some day we will have native browser support for the full URL showing in the status field.

Oh no cried the scammers, how will we ever again trick people into clicking a link

window.status to the rescue! We must override the long scam URL there!

Just wanted to say, the best part was acknowledging the worst was being rickrolled. xD

I think endnotes are typically an awful idea, and the web can’t do footnotes. What you want is generally side notes. I think what I do on my website is a fairly good compromise for JavaScript-free operation, with a side column for notes on large enough screens, and the notes inlined on small screens. That wouldn’t be suitable for very long notes; such are often more suitable as appendixes, a variant on endnotes.

As for <details>, you run into the problem that it’s a block-level element; it’s dubious using it as an inline-level element, though it’ll probably work well enough (I say probably due to uncertainty about screen readers) despite being nominally invalid, given that it’s not an element that will automatically close a paragraph tag like <div> does.

I think links at the bottom is generally foolish, taking more effort for both reader and writer, and never do it that way, interspersing them in the text, usually surrounded by angle brackets as has historically been the way of delimiting URLs in plain text.

On my website, I ise margin notes for the desktop and "footnotes" for mobile, however said footnotes are displayed just below the paragraph in which they appear.

This avoids requiring both long scrolling and interactivity.

Do you think you could elaborate on how this works? It seems like a very ergonomic alternative to traditional footnotes.

Good question.

For my site, there are other options that I'd like to explore. Tooltips for smaller things (like definitions) maybe sidebar notes for large screen sizes, and inline notes (like show/hide inserting it between that line and the next) for mobile.

I'll look into those.

I like how the site being discussed implements footnotes with a hidden checkbox followed by <small> tag: https://john-doe.neocities.org/

> Why not leverage <details> and <summary> to show them in-place

Searchability. You want footnote content to be Ctrl+F-able.

A smart browser could understand footnotes and show them in searches.

You gotta dance with the browser that brought you though. Unless you plan to never publish you’ve gotta design the best interface you can with the constraints of your real users.