Show HN: Bigwords.page – Turn any screen into a sign. The URL is the app

265 points by SpeakingOfBrad 6 hours ago on hackernews | 92 comments

[OP] SpeakingOfBrad | 6 hours ago

I had the idea for BIGWORDS.PAGE when I wanted to display a message on a tablet that I had remote management control over, but no physical access. Configuring it to be a kiosk browser is easy, but how do I get the browser to show my message? So I made the URL be the message.

It uses a URL fragment to configure the message. Browsers don't send URL fragments to the server, so I never see your message. There's no backend, and no storage.

All parameters are documented, so generating a message link is easy. There's also a built-in editor to make it extra easy.

https://bigwords.page/#Hello,%20HN!&bg=ff6600&fg=000000&font...

There are a few extra features like slides, animations, and countdowns and timers. QR codes too. Not too fancy, but hopefully enough to be useful.

I know the uses for this are pretty niche. But it may be one of those things that you keep as a nugget in your brain, a tool in your back pocket. Not something you use often, but when you do it makes things just a little bit easier.

It's open source (MIT), and self-hostable if that's your thing.

Let me know what you think.

idw | 5 hours ago

Really nicely done

notpushkin | 3 hours ago

> The URL is the app

LLM-speak is a huge turn off to me (and a lot of other people here, from my interactions), so the fact that your submission title is AI-generated is... sorry, I have no words. I don’t even care that much about the code, but please write prose by hand, in your own voice, if you want us to read it.

Edit: rephrased the last sentence. Also, here’s my take on the title:

> Show HN: Bigwords.page – turn any screen into a sign, controlled by the URL params

dylanhouli | 3 hours ago

Wait how is "The URL is the app" LLM-speak? Genuine question, sounded fine to me when I read it, not sure what a better way to phrase it would be

rpdillon | 3 hours ago

It's LLM speak because it's wrong, but pithy. The app is the app, and it lives on the server. The URL just contains the content of the sign.

: dec0dedab0de | 3 hours ago
I thought they meant the outputted javascript is embedded in the url, like a bookmarklet. But looking closer, it clearly isn't.
: notpushkin | 3 hours ago
I’ve read it as “the URL is the UI”... sorry; I mean, you can change URL params (remotely) to control the app. It is a good idea perhaps (if you have the means to open a URL remotely), but evidently the title does not get the idea across. (Maybe I’m also wrong, I haven’t read the docs yet :)
: bryanrasmussen | 2 hours ago
it's marketing speech, following the rules of how to make memorable slogans that have been around for decades and in many different formats. Elevator pitches, explain it to me like I'm five, keep it simple, stupid, and so forth. It sounds like an LLM because LLMs learned from the digested wisdom of a million marketers. It may be an LLM produced it or it may just as well be someone who has cracked a marketing textbook some time in their life or hell, has watched the full run of Mad Men and thought, now what is a pithy way to express the selling point of this thing?
on edit: That said, I would probably have said "Turn Any Screen Into A Sign with Just A URL!"
: onion2k | an hour ago
It's LLM speak because it's wrong, but pithy.
That's all marketing.

notpushkin | 3 hours ago

“The [A] is the [B]” (and variations with “the” replaced with “your”) is screaming LLM to me. It’s been used by real people too, but it sounds very corporate, and is not something I’ve seen used to describe a personal project before LLMs.

2III7 | 3 hours ago

LLM apophenia is so widespread in HN that it's becoming quite sickening.

rdiddly | 2 hours ago

It must have been used by humans before LLMs, because where do you think they learned it?

: notpushkin | 2 hours ago
It has been used before LLMs. I have no idea why LLMs prefer it, though.
: ape4 | 2 hours ago
The network is the computer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Network_is_the_Computer
: seb1204 | 2 hours ago
All the marketing materials that got used for training. Marketing speak is not my cup of team.
: gwerbin | 25 minutes ago
It was always corny except in very specific cases.

rpdillon | 3 hours ago

Yeah, the issue here is that the URL is not the app.

This is basically a differently-shaped https://github.com/antonmedv/textarea

Cool idea, but agree that fixing actual mistakes in the title is a worthwhile use of time.

rendleflag | 3 hours ago

Let me guess, you saw the `–` and thought "Clearly no human uses the em dash. It must all be AI".

I looked over the website and their github page and saw no indication of AI usage. I'm not saying it wasn't used, but unless you have actual evidence, then please point it out.

IncreasePosts | 3 hours ago

OP didn't quote the part with the em dash, they quoted the part with the "The X is the Y", which is a common LLMism.

notpushkin | 3 hours ago

That’s an en-dash – and I use those myself. (I’ve experimented with em-dashes—brefly—but it doesn’t look good to my eye in English.)

It’s all by the vibes, I don’t have any concrete proof. FWIW, the comment seems at least hand-edited, so maybe it’s just this “the [A] is the [B]” trope that has triggered me. If the rest of it is readable, then I apologize, but still: that’s a bad title, please don’t use this – unless you’re writing a LinkedIn post.

---

Edit: here’s another LLMism example from another HN user: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49996255

rendleflag | 3 hours ago

I always get en and em confused. They are all just dashes to me :-).

The "Nothing else: no lists, tables, links, quotes, images or rules" is from the docs indicating that these things are not supported.

: notpushkin | 3 hours ago
> I always get en and em confused
Yeah, it’s somewhat a typography-nerdy thing :–) (gosh that looks terrible probably; edit: actually it’s surprisingly fine)
> indicating that these things are not supported
Of course, but it does sound a bit unnatural IMO. Then again, I’m going by the vibes here.
: xoxxala | 44 minutes ago
I, too, was confused for the longest time, but the secret is in the names.
En dash is the width of an “n”. Em dash is the width of an “M”, so a little wider.

GrinningFool | 2 hours ago

For me (not the OP) I see the patterns 'The X is the Y', 'Every X is a Y' (both of which are there) and llm-sense tingles. Add in Not A, B, C or Z and I'm increasingly convinced it's LLM generated text.

ajkjk | 2 hours ago

not that

okaleniuk | 3 hours ago

Donald Knuth once said "Jon Bentley probably hit the nail on the head when he once was asked why literate programming hasn’t taken the whole world by storm. He observed that a small percentage of the world’s population is good at programming, and a small percentage is good at writing; apparently I am asking everybody to be in both subsets."

Get off your high horse. Not everybody studied to write prose, not everybody was born American to begin with. If LLMs helps programmers get heard - good. That's probably the best usage for them anyway.

notpushkin | 3 hours ago

I haven’t studied to write prose either. I have studied English since when I was a kid, but I still make mistakes sometimes, and that’s okay.

LLMs turn your own voice into uniform corpo-speak. It is usually not an improvement, and it certainly doesn’t help you get heard – you’ll blend in with hundreds of other projects with the same-looking landing page, same tone of voice, same kilometres of docs that nobody read before putting up, and you’re basically playing a game of chance here. It’s like TikTok for programmers.

Ten times out of ten, I’ll prefer broken English over Claudish. Speak in your own voice. Don’t be afraid.

: GrinningFool | 2 hours ago
Indeed. I would much prefer to read someone's poor English over their fluent LLM.

bmacho | 3 hours ago

> If LLMs helps programmers get heard - good

It does not, it does the opposite. It gets the programmer ignored.

Comments like "don't say this, this is LLM-ism" are the things that help the programmer get heard, whether she isn't good at English or she was just lazy and used LLM to generate text.

ShinyLeftPad | 24 minutes ago

it doesn't help programmers be heard, it helps LLMs be heard. Just publish the thing with your own words, what matters is if they are genuine, not that they sound exactly like everybody else.

okaleniuk | 3 hours ago

I love it!

In fact I employed the same idea for the slide stack site I use for teaching. Not exactly "URL is an app" but "URL is a slide"

https://okaleniuk.codeberg.page/blackboard/_1.html?sequence=...

The same consideration applies. No backend, no storage, also no user data collection, no authorization, no hurdles in general. Everyone can use it.

NoDodgeQuestion | 2 hours ago

Curious, did you use AI model?

abejfehr | 2 hours ago

We had similar ideas! Except mine is less customizable, I never thought to add formatting.

https://github.com/abejfehr/bigtext

https://www.abefehr.com/bigtext/

: xd1936 | 50 minutes ago
Same! This solution is way more flexible than mine was.
https://github.com/leoherzog/ParameterPage
https://parameter.page/?title=This%20is%20an%20Example%20Pag...!

rinconrex | 2 hours ago

Great execution.

libertyit | 5 hours ago

Brilliant

Retr0id | 5 hours ago

> The URL is the app

We used to call them websites

iJohnDoe | 5 hours ago

Really clever! Definitely feels like positive hacker creativity. Thanks for making it open source.

adzm | 5 hours ago

this is actually awesome, i've had something similar on my todo list forever. thanks!!! https://bigwords.page/#%E2%9D%A4%EF%B8%8F

: mariotacke | 49 minutes ago
https://bigwords.page/#%E2%9D%A4%EF%B8%8F&anim=pulse ;)

totallygeeky | 5 hours ago

Really well done, can think of a few times this would have been useful in the recent past. Would be great for conferences in particular!

ceejayoz | 5 hours ago

Hook it up to voice control so I can put an iPad in the back window of the car and tell other drivers… things.

a3w | 5 hours ago

Won't it say

> You are a poo-emoji bomb-emoji #!! driver

: ceejayoz | 5 hours ago
I am exercising my Fifth Amendment right to silence at this time.

GoRudy | 5 hours ago

I had this idea ten years ago. Told my parents it’d be nice to say “have a good day” and my moms initial reaction was she’d say “** you”. End of that idea.

seb1204 | 2 hours ago

Ouch, life long child trauma created. No idea is good enough to impress mum.

: ShinyLeftPad | 38 minutes ago
i think it was the message she would put on the screen, not her reaction to childs invention

trallnag | 4 hours ago

I considered something similar with LED lights but I deemed it illegal in Germany

: w0rd-driven | 29 minutes ago
I thought of something similar to both. A display would be nice but car to car/peer to peer communication would work too. It'd be a nightmare though considering I know how depraved the internet is. It's not anywhere near as anonymous but I don't think people generally care as much as they probably should.

chrisra | 5 hours ago

I've used something like this on a phone to tell another car something was wrong with their vehicle.

pimlottc | 5 hours ago

The URL is the state but clearly there is an actual app here

: [OP] SpeakingOfBrad | 3 hours ago
You right. But I only had 80 characters to work with.

simlevesque | 4 hours ago

Suggestion: make it a GoogleTV / AppleTV app so users can set it up in a few clicks and transform any screen laying around into a sign.

[OP] SpeakingOfBrad | 4 hours ago

I think BIGWORDS.PAGE would be a great companion to a web browser app on those TV devices. I haven't found any good web browser for AppleTV, but if somebody has a browser/kiosk app that let's you send a URL from your phone, that would be really great!

: wiradikusuma | 4 hours ago
Unfortunately Apple TV doesn't support WebView. I'm procuring a second-hand device so I can test my app there. I'm thinking of rendering it on the server and sending a series of images. Not sure of the cost, though.

wiradikusuma | 4 hours ago

I built https://signagesync.app for my cafe. It can be used to create a video wall (combine multiple screens to make a bigger screen).

paul7986 | 4 hours ago

Site is blocked - getting an SSL warning on Firefox.

jonotime | 4 hours ago

Love this. Simple idea. Nice execution.

paulsmith | 4 hours ago

Who remembers https://bigassmessage.com/

yunruse | 2 hours ago

epilepsy warning for the 'MAGIC' style :(

megraf | an hour ago

Can epileptics drive to a movie theater and watch a movie?

: jedbrooke | 52 minutes ago
epileptics typically aren’t allowed to drive if there’s any risk of having a seizure while driving (depends on the type and severity of the epilepsy)
: pbhjpbhj | 49 minutes ago
That's an interesting question. What motivated it?
In the UK it depends, some epileptics aren't allowed to drive. Not all epileptics are photosensitive and not all movies trip people.

whycome | 4 hours ago

I love solutions like this. Make the URL the entirety of the data needed. Awesome

: below43 | 2 hours ago
I did a similar thing to share files via a URL :)
https://urlfile.app

PBnFlash | 4 hours ago

I use to try and coordinate game nights across the world, and a url with the Unix timestamp of the event and a countdown showing how many days and hours worked quite well.

darkstar999 | 4 hours ago

"Nothing else: no lists, tables, links, quotes, images or rules."

Claudish needs to be cleaned up.

moecables | 4 hours ago

Love this and I already have a use for this

sandymcmurray | 4 hours ago

Nice work! This is great.

T0mSIlver | 4 hours ago

I like that the fragment is basically argv for a static web app.

frankthecobbler | 4 hours ago

how to hide the Preview when sharing on messages? id prefer something more neutral.

[OP] SpeakingOfBrad | 3 hours ago

That's the OG (Open Graph) Image. It's an image built into the site that's used as the thumbnail for shares on social media and messaging apps. (More info on OG Images here: https://layerre.com/glossary/open-graph-image/)

How could I change the image to be less intrusive? I can't have it show an image of the message you're trying to share, because the server never sees that message. But can I make the default image nicer on the eyes.

: taoji1994 | an hour ago
Make the default og.png calm and generic, just the wordmark on a plain background, so the preview reads as "here's a sign link" rather than a big ad.

frankthecobbler | 4 hours ago

how to hide or change the gigantic preview when sharing on apple messages? id prefer to change it, the default is obtrusive

: slater | 4 hours ago
IIRC with any link thru Messages, before sending, you can press and hold it and it'll give u the option to send just as a text link

kinduff | 4 hours ago

I used to order drinks like this when the bar was full

1-6 | 4 hours ago

I like this site because it exemplifies DOTADIW, do one thing and do it well.

ulrischa | 3 hours ago

Cool project. But why not built with php so I can simply throw it on my running web server?

: pvillano | 3 hours ago
It's a static site.

KingMachiavelli | 3 hours ago

Completely different architecture, but would be amazing if another device could control what message (or photo, embedded video) is displayed.

There's a huge industry around digital signage and I've always felt it could be replaced with a simple Chromium kiosk + auto-refreshed webpage content. There's really no need for expensive HDMI connections or custom video streams when we already have browsers.

: w0rd-driven | 20 minutes ago
I worked for a company creating apps for Kiosks that used SiteKiosk. It was a tight sandbox around Internet Explorer on Windows. This was 2014. Browsers are highly viable but properly locked kiosk mode wasn't. We used custom enclosures for $$$ with micro ATX Intel. Now Raspberry Pi or smaller could run circles around those workloads.
That period was a fun time and one I think about all the time. The profit margins and costs have come down so much I don't know if an equivalent workload or company would stay afloat as long.

Zarel | 3 hours ago

I use a similar thing but designed to be as few steps as possible:

https://bigtext.k55.io/

j45 | 3 hours ago

This is a new project and a great place to start.

So many fun rabbit holes from here with the different ways to get this working (and keeping displaying) on a chromecast, etc.

pvillano | 3 hours ago

https://bigwords.page/#smol!%20!%20!%20!%20!%20!%20!%20!%20!...!

You seem to have the same bug I had when I first implemented https://screaming.saej.in/

In Firefox, scrollWidth includes spaces that extend into the margin, so it's possible for text to fit perfectly on the screen, but scrollWidth > clientWidth. Fix here https://saej.in/posts/screaming/

: [OP] SpeakingOfBrad | an hour ago
Thanks! Like a dummy, I never tested in anything but my own browser. I found a couple of other bugs as well that weren't obvious without Firefox.

pelzatessa | 2 hours ago

Damn, you triggered my old memories of clicking one of these on some old forum: https://disco.[EPILEPSY WARNING]fleo.se/hello

hidelooktropic | 2 hours ago

In the make one by hand section, you probably don't need to tell people %20 is a space. If they type it in naturally, the browser should encode automatically

: [OP] SpeakingOfBrad | an hour ago
Good call. Removed it.

antgiant | an hour ago

I did something similar years ago but for live satellite imagery https://earth.wooleys.us. I wanted to show my kids hurricane/typhoon imagery live. Worked great to throw up on a chromecast and let it run.

isaac-harvey | 31 minutes ago

This sort of incredibly simple, crisp idea is what changes the world. Great job!

mcrowder65 | 26 minutes ago

This reminds me of at a previous job people would leave their laptops unlocked. Security threatened people with yubikeys. So I used that opportunity to create https://butts.netlify.app so that any time someone left their laptop unlocked I’d go there and they’d be met with the word butts.

ShinyLeftPad | 23 minutes ago

Cool project and nicely done but "the URL is the app" is just meaningless and it sounds exactly like what an llm would drop in every other paragraph.