The idea is similar to that of parallel universes: (but to a lesser extent
of course): in a parallel blog, each post consists of multiple versions of
itself that co-exist within the same “plane of existence” (the URL of each
individual post). The sum of all these coexisting versions constitutes the actual
post that one might expect under a given URL.
Take the page you are reading right now as an example. There are multiple
versions of it, all coexisting under the same URL
(/posts/2020/08/parallel-blogs/). How can you access the other versions?
Just reload the browser. You may see a different version of this page, similar
to the previous one and conveying the same meaning (most of the time).
Few ideas are more overwhelming than that of the multiverse, and the mere notion that the universe may perpetually fork itself before the realization of every action—no matter how small—is fascinating. In some—poor——poor— way this site tries to implement that idea. One page, multiple versions. Some versions could contradict the others, some could be slight variations of the original(which one is the original?), , some versions could have grammar miztakesmistakes, some could be really goodbad, and some could make this site one of the top 500 sites on the web.
An easy way to do this is by wrapping different versions of text snippets
in <span> tags and hiding or displaying them or randomly. For example, the
next sentence could have two possible rendering outcomes:
My favourite book is <span class="v1">Foucault's Pendulum</span><span class="v2">Fictions</span>.
Outcome 1:
My favourite book is Foucault's Pendulum.
Outcome 2:
My favourite book is Fictions.
I don’t know how to generate random numbers with plain HTML and CSS, so I use JavaScript. If JavaScript is disabled, only one version is displayed (the one tagged as version one).
But wrapping every potential version of text in <span> tags with custom
CSS classes here and there is tiring, so I came up with a way to specify the
same but with fewer characters. This is what I’m doing now instead:
My favourite book is @{Foucault's Pendulum||Fictions}@.
It’s shorter and less distracting (for the writer). The <span> tags and
CSS classes are added automatically. While I could have implemented it in JavaScript,
I thought it was worth adding it to my static site generator
belbo.
Check out the source code
of this post to see the usage of @{||}@ in action.