Metalsmith VS daedalOS

Metalsmith — the best customizable SSG

I use Metalsmith. Been happy with it. I build my site into a self-contained nginx docker image.

const Metalsmith = require('metalsmith') const markdown = require('@metalsmith/markdown') const layouts = require('metalsmith-layouts') const permalinks = require('@metalsmith/permalinks') const collections = require('metalsmith-collections') Metalsmith(__dirname) .metadata({ sitename: 'Website Name', description: "Website description.", generator: 'Metalsmith', url: 'https://metalsmith.io/' }) .source('./src') .destination('./build') // .clean(true) .use( collections({ projects: 'pages/*.md', reverse: true, refer: true }) ) .use(markdown()) .use(permalinks()) .use( layouts({ engineOptions: { helpers: { formattedDate: function (date) { return new Date(date).toLocaleDateString() } } } }) ) .build(function (err, files) { if (err) throw err })

I also started to move to hugo, but they didn't merge the pr [2] which would have helped in the transition. :(

The look is still similar to what it was in the beginning, in terms of colors at least.

[1] https://github.com/metalsmith/metalsmith

Metalsmith

A static site generator I've been enjoying lately (and using for my blog) is Metalsmith: https://metalsmith.io/

It feel like it's the best of both worlds, because it's simple to learn and customize, but there are plugins for the things you don't want to spend time writing yourself.

For example, I'm using plugins to: check for broken links, generate an RSS feed, and run a test server with automatic reloading.

But then I was able to easily add in my own code to handle relative links, generate Graphviz diagrams, and format dates.

One other recommendation: I hated almost every template language I ran across (Hugo's, Liquid, Nunjucks, EJS), but I'm thrilled with the simplicity of Handlebars (https://handlebarsjs.com/), although it is a bit limiting and the "block helper with parameters" syntax is strange (perhaps an indicator that I'm trying to do too much in the templating language!).

I believe Metalsmith [1] is trying that approach

[1] https://metalsmith.io/

I've learned so much while making this project into my personal website (dustinbrett.com). It's made me a much better web developer as I have tried to emulate a desktop environment with pixel perfect accuracy using CSS, HTML & JavaScript.

I'm very happy to announce that my personal website has once again been nominated for a Webby Award!

This has also been ported to the web via Emscripten. I host it on my website if anyone wants to play. https://dustinbrett.com/?app=SpaceCadet

Demo: https://dustinbrett.com/

As someone who built a website around this idea, I agree! The desktop metaphor is powerful. If anyone wants to check it out it's at https://dustinbrett.com

Very cool! It's always refreshing to see the "OS in the browser" projects that try and actually make something functional. I've been working on one myself for nearly 3 years now, called daedalOS (https://github.com/DustinBrett/daedalOS).

The WASM kernel idea is very cool and I hope one day to be able to add something similar to my project. I think you are onto something and I am excited to see your progress as you implement the GUI.

If you want some Browserception, my desktop environment (https://dustinbrett.com/) can indeed do this. But after a few levels in Chromium you need to add a random query string (/?a=1) to the URL otherwise it stops working.