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xhfloz

Re:WEIRD – a way to be on the web on Tuesday April 15, 2025 @04:03PM (#43697693)
Creator of mmm.page here. Let me know if you have any questions.

Re: laggy. I know... 1.0 introduced new features but also inefficiencies. The cost of working on something solo. Releasing a patch soon.

Show HN: 4 Years Later, mmm.page 1.0

https://mmm.page

Hi all,In 2021, I released the alpha version of mmm.page on HN. It came as a nice confidence boost during a particularly low point of the project, with 10,000 people signing up in a day.I've spent the past few years continuing to work on it. The vision [1] hasn't changed: what if people could treat websites like an internet canvas? Could that make the internet richer? More idiosyncratic?Much...

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Re:My solopreneur story: zero to $45K/mo in 2 years on Sunday September 24, 2023 @07:19PM (#37638094)
Hey! FYI haven't seen anything in my inbox yet.
Re:My solopreneur story: zero to $45K/mo in 2 years on Sunday September 24, 2023 @06:43PM (#37637882)
Left my job in 2020 to do the same. Nowhere near as profitable as OP, but now make enough to cover rent + basic expenses in New York. Crucially: I didn't want to do hypeman social media content that (a) sold the dream of solopreneur as a marketing tactic, or (b) added excessive noise into the ether.

I'm not saying Tony did either -- I haven't followed along -- but certainly a lot of people do. I can't fully blame the people who do, though.

Anyway. The project I've built [1] is still going, and I feel proud of it on merits of software: that it pushes the bounds, however slightly; that it feels good to exist in the world; and that I genuinely care for the people using it.

All that's to say: I think there's a software solopreneur path that doesn't involve excessive hype, gross self-promotion (some degree of self-branding is necessary though), while allowing you to work by principles and also explore interesting software problems.

Feel free to DM me [2] if you have questions, or are interested in bootstrapping your own project. Especially consumer-facing. I do have some writing online [3] that covers this too.

---

[1] https://mmm.page

[2] https://twitter.com/xhfloz

[3] https://woolgather.sh

Re:An Internet Canvas on Thursday July 27, 2023 @12:57PM (#36896520)
* Those hotkeys should work (follows Figma's example). * A very high priority. * Yeah... I plan to let people disable click (e.g. pointer-events: none) on elements, but automatically detecting transparent overlapping areas is a bit more work.
Re:An Internet Canvas on Thursday July 27, 2023 @12:54PM (#36896478)
Ohh. I misread this. I thought you meant auto-save the editor. Now my response seems glib. Absolutely -- I should at least warn people when they try to exit the drawing view.
Re:An Internet Canvas on Thursday July 27, 2023 @10:57AM (#36894571)
That is not an unfair assessment. Hopefully 1.0 irons out the kinks.
Re:An Internet Canvas on Thursday July 27, 2023 @10:49AM (#36894452)
TIL
Re:An Internet Canvas on Thursday July 27, 2023 @10:48AM (#36894436)
Currently working on the ability to copy and paste the underlying blocks into your own editor (with owner’s permission) —- big believer in popping the hood!

Long term dream is to have the HTML output look good enough that people can edit at both WYSIWYG and code levels.

Re:An Internet Canvas on Thursday July 27, 2023 @10:47AM (#36894412)
Mobile Chrome on what OS?
Re:An Internet Canvas on Thursday July 27, 2023 @10:35AM (#36894249)
Re:An Internet Canvas on Thursday July 27, 2023 @10:33AM (#36894220)
What's your device spec? I have November blocked out for optimizations.
Re:An Internet Canvas on Thursday July 27, 2023 @10:32AM (#36894203)
Totally. That is on my roadmap!
Re:An Internet Canvas on Thursday July 27, 2023 @10:31AM (#36894173)
Creator of mmm.page here — thanks all for the attention. I woke up wondering why traffic suddenly spiked...

I recently created a newsletter [1] to write and experiment more a la "An Internet Canvas." Feel free to give it a read.

You can also find me on Twitter [2], and support my project via patronships [3].

Oh, and go explore all the other sites people have made [4].

[1] https://woolgather.sh/issue/1

[2] https://twitter.com/xhfloz

[3] https://woolgather.sh/patron

[4] https://explore.mmm.page

Re:An Internet Canvas on Saturday May 06, 2023 @12:13PM (#35842723)
It could do with a heavy perf pass tbh. Haven’t had time juggling all the feature work, but it’s planned for 1.0. Mind letting me know what machine you’re on?
Re:An Internet Canvas on Saturday May 06, 2023 @12:01PM (#35842627)
Unfortunate compromise of not paying for font licenses — and google fonts is the most extensive collection of free fonts.

As for fonts — it’s unideal! Those initial fonts are actually just the glyphs subset of fonts so I can display their names in the font picker. It’s already somewhat cut down by separating the fonts into basic and all, as well as delaying the load a few seconds after initial load, but still a lot to fix up there.

Re:An Internet Canvas on Saturday May 06, 2023 @11:58AM (#35842601)
Not VC-funded :)

As to charging an (optional) paid plan, unfortunately, I have been bootstrapping this full-time the past few years, and because I can’t till my own land anymore, have to find the least terrible way of exchanging labor for money, such that I can pay for food and bills.

That being said, there is a free tier for this very reason, as I remember all the free services that got me started initially. Hoping to make this tier more generous once the project is profitable.

Let me know if you have other ideas. If I can (a) pay for business costs (accounting, APIs, hosting, etc), (b) pay for my bills, (c) attain a and b w/ incentives that align with my users and the principles of the project — I am all ears.

Re:An Internet Canvas on Friday May 05, 2023 @06:37PM (#35835949)
Oof. I take it that’s not a great thing.
Re:An Internet Canvas on Friday May 05, 2023 @06:32PM (#35835907)
The page shared here was a read-only version. The editable version is at: https://paper.mmm.dev

(But due to some iFrame hackiness, it doesn’t work in incognito.)

Re:An Internet Canvas on Friday May 05, 2023 @06:05PM (#35835669)
Thank you! Curious — how did you find out about mmm initially?
Re:An Internet Canvas on Friday May 05, 2023 @06:02PM (#35835643)
Thanks for sharing original link — had not seen that project before. I’ll refrain from commenting on their funding, but fyi is mmm.page is wholly bootstrapped (which has left a healthy dent in my savings over the past three years haha).

So if you enjoy the project, or want to support some of the researchy aspects of it, please consider upgrading!

I have another article in the works about the importance of independent funding models and slow growth incentives w/r/t organic social networks, and projects that necessarily require slow exploration as a community (not, in contrast, “spaces designed by committee”).

Re:An Internet Canvas on Friday May 05, 2023 @05:26PM (#35835342)
Oy. Author of this. Surprised to see this here. If you’re curious, recently launched beta [1] and also wrote up a “why” to the project [2].

Also: a StumbleUpon-like explore experience of pages created using mmm.page [3].

[1] https://twitter.com/xhfloz/status/1653740562648821760?s=46

[2] https://twitter.com/xhfloz/status/1631746024120221698?s=46

[3] https://explore.mmm.page

Show HN: Mmm.page beta – Drag-&-drop websites like an internet canvas

https://build.mmm.page

Creator of mmm.page here. After 2 years’ of tedious refactoring, mmm.page beta is live!The beta update brings an interface overhaul and a 90% rewritten codebase. In end-user-terms: premium plans, rich text, drawing, viewport resizing, private pages, custom HTML/CSS, domain names, sections, advanced styling (borders, opacity, etc.), server-side rendering, and an inordinate number of...

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