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PuffinBlue

I managed under 1.5KB for a page that has an actual function, not just a test:

http://www.captiveportal.co.uk

And yes, that’s supposed to be a non-https link.

I think the entire site, including favicon, might be under 5KB. You can check here:

https://github.com/josharcheruk/CaptivePortal

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Were you aware of http://neverssl.com before making this? Though I guess your page is slightly smaller (687 bytes vs 1900 bytes compressed). http://captive.apple.com is even smaller though.

I didn’t know about neverssl.com. I think I would have still made captiveportal.co.uk even if I did because it was fun :-)

https://www.captiveportal.co.uk works and doesnt redirect to a non-https link, at this point its hard for normal users to go to an http:// link without their browser overriding them

neverssl.com solves this by redirecting to a random subdomain (for some reason that isnt clear to me near midnight)

a .co.uk equivalent is a great idea though, if it can be made accessible to users with hostile browsers

Most browser still don't have force https enabled by default, so without HSTS there is nothing preventing plain http.

both firefox and chrome do for me, trying https first even when i type http://. particularly if https was ever used for a domain in past which drives me nuts for local network domains. the only way i make them stop is to clear history

I’ll add it to the to do list. The current hosting won’t be around after next year so it’s getting moved in about 6 months to where I have some more control and I can probably implement changes needed.

  SSL/TLS/https (the padlock symbol) prevents this.

  This site will never use those technologies.

yet it has https? strange haha

The site is hosted in Fastmail - I think they must have enabled https or perhaps I missed that it was active when I put the site in there.

Huh! I didn't think Fastmail hosted webpages, so I thought this was an autocorrect mistake, but I see that they do indeed offer static hosting:

https://www.fastmail.help/hc/en-us/articles/1500000280141-Ho...

The purpose of the random subdomain is to ensure that the browser doesn't just show a cached version of the page.

Well, the function is not in the content so your website could even be completely empty. I would say https://cv.tdarb.org/ has more function.

Fair critique.

Interestingly, I surprised myself browsing the website you posted and others, clicking on every link, ready each new page before going back to finish reading the page I was coming from, jumping from link to link just as I remember doing 20 years ago. That is something I don't do anymore. Sure, I sometimes click on some links when I'm reading something, but I usually do it with a middle click (opens the link in a new tab) and continue reading the first article before closing it and seeing the new tab. And at this point I usually lost interest in the content I opened a few minutes before and just close the tab without reading. I was just wondering why I usually do this and why I didn't this time, and I realise that the reasons I open links in new tabs and don't consume them directly are : - opening it in a second tab lets it enough time to load completely, since everything is so bloated; - a website messing with your tab history or redirecting you 6 times before allowing you to get the content you were waiting for means that going back to my previous article will be a pain in the ass, and I'd rather play with two tabs rather than quintuple-click that back button just to find my previous article.

Anyway, that didn't happen here, because I subconsciously knew that every link would load before I could even think of it, and that none would make coming back one step a pain in the ass, and that was refreshing and maybe even made me nostalgic. But more than anything else, it allowed me to read with more focus than I remember having the last few years. So yeah, I love that "bare ones" design.

(PS: I also realise my comment is so long it could have been it's own blog post. Maybe I should start one...)

Is it really needed when browser (and linux distros!) have their own captive portal detection page ? (e.g http://detectportal.firefox.com/ or http://connectivity-check.ubuntu.com)

On desktop the automatic detection is pretty reliable. On mobile I find myself opening http://example.com with some regularity (the most common edge case is if a network with captive portal is configured to auto-connect, and I don't have a browser open).

example.com also works for that

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