Top all-time · #3778
Lean Rada
Personal blog · leanrada.com/noteswebprogramming
Lean Rada's personal blog at leanrada.com covers web and programming. Since 2023, 20 different Hacker News readers have linked it 32 times, most often “Show HN: htmz – a low power tool for HTML”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-08-03, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (18) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link this blog mainly for HTMZ, a roughly 166-byte HTML and JavaScript technique offered as a lighter alternative to HTMX. It also covers CSS-only image placeholders, sweep-and-prune collision detection, and XSLT replacements.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 18 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Show HN: htmz – a low power tool for HTML8 people · 15 mentions · first linked 2024-02-19
- Inline rendering with document.currentScript2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-10-17
- CSS Sprite Sheet Animations2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-11-03
- AI art is not generative art2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-03-25
- /notes/css-only-lqip/gallery/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-04-03
What Hacker News says?
HTMX 4 is 41KB minified, why not use just plain HTML and a single inline 166-byte (sic!) onload handler named HTMZ? https://leanrada.com/htmz/
Comment linking /htmz/
on “Htmx 4.0”Submitted Show HN: htmz – a low power tool for HTML as a story · 1020 points
HN discussionEven better: https://leanrada.com/htmz/
Comment linking /htmz/
on “The Future of Htmx”Submitted Minimal CSS-only blurry image placeholders as a story · 470 points
HN discussionOfc if you really want to lose bloat, there's always Htmz https://leanrada.com/htmz/
Comment linking /htmz/
on “Please just try HTMX”Submitted Sort, sweep, and prune: Collision detection algorithms (2023) as a story · 340 points
HN discussionHTML already allows a lot of HTMX functionality with just 166 bytes of JS glue code, see HTMZ: https://leanrada.com/htmz You can make tabs, accordions, carousels, modals, popovers and even Pure HTML Out-Of-Order Streaming (PHOOOS) using only HTML & CSS: https://kodus.pl
Comment linking /htmz
on “Htmx 2.0.0 has been released”Submitted Rewriting my site in vanilla web as a story · 15 points
HN discussionYou deleted 500 lines of JS and added 44KB of (minified) HTMX. Better use HTMZ, which is only 166 bytes (sic!) and provides most of the interactivity: https://leanrada.com/htmz/
Comment linking /htmz/
on “Htmx 2.0.0 has been released”Submitted Htmz – a minimalist HTML microframework as a story · 4 points
HN discussionIn the gallery https://leanrada.com/notes/css-only-lqip/gallery/ there's a good example of what I mean - the bottom right image or 4th from the end. A completely different image in comparison to the gradient. As for the minimalism, I understand what you mean. But I understood the "minimal" part in regard to implementation, not usage. If we only mean usage, we can say the same about a lot of libs, that they are minim…
Comment linking /notes/css-only-lqip/gallery/
on “Minimal CSS-only blurry image placeholders”Submitted CSS Sprite Sheet Animations as a story · 4 points
HN discussionThe half blue / half green image still looks better with LQIP than BlurHash. I was getting ready to use BlurHash in my app, might try this instead! In fact, LQIP looks better than most of the BlurHash examples in the gallery ( https://leanrada.com/notes/css-only-lqip/gallery/ ); not sure if these were cherry picked or what.
Comment linking /notes/css-only-lqip/gallery/
on “Minimal CSS-only blurry image placeholders”Submitted Inline rendering with document.currentScript as a story · 3 points
HN discussionPart 2: https://leanrada.com/notes/sweep-and-prune-2/ Check out his other goodies https://leanrada.com/
Comment linking /
on “Sort, sweep, and prune: Collision detection algorithms (2023)”Submitted Htmz – a low power tool for HTML as a story · 3 points
HN discussionBetter than using HTMX - 48KB of JS - use my PHOOOS technique ( https://kodus.pl ) with pure HTML out-ouf-order streaming, pure CSS framework Spectre.css ( https://niutech.github.io/spectre/ ) and a sprinkle of 166B (bytes, not KB!) HTMZ ( https://leanrada.com/htmz/ ) for extra interactivity.
Comment linking /htmz/
on “Htmx, Raku and Pico CSS”Submitted Pure CSS single-page app routing · leanrada.com as a story · 3 points
HN discussion> You need to do click to edit, lazy loading, infinite scroll, a live search, or anything else that you’d normally be reaching for JavaScript to accomplish, you can now add HTMX to the stack, write a few more attributes on your HTML, get what you need done, and never have to use JavaScript. And what is HTMX? A 44KB-minified JavaScript library! So this statement is false. If you really want to be lightweight, use pur…
Comment linking /htmz/
on “Htmx and the Rule of Least Power”Submitted Simple live reload for developing static sites as a story · 2 points
HN discussionNowadays, it's easy for people to see the term "generative art" and immediately assume "AI art". It's kinda annoying, so I wrote this post https://leanrada.com/notes/ai-art-not-generative-art/
Comment linking /notes/ai-art-not-generative-art/
on “What Is Generative Art? (2022)”Submitted CSS Sprite Sheet Animations as a story · 2 points
HN discussionWhen I first learned that XSLT was going away, I got curious how to achieve the same thing in JS (client-side templating that happens during page load, without any "flash of content"). It turns out there's a very nice way to do it, by using inline scripts that append elements next to document.currentScript. Lean Rada wrote about it here: https://leanrada.com/notes/inline-rendering-currentscript/ and I wrote about it…
Comment linking /notes/inline-rendering-currentscript/
on “Chrome and Edge are removing XSLT: what breaks and what does not”Submitted AI art is not generative art as a story · 2 points
HN discussionYup. And it's good. My aspiration, though, it to migrate to https://leanrada.com/htmz/
Comment linking /htmz/
on “Ask HN: Anybody Using Htmx on the Job?”Submitted Compressing a Web Page into a URL as a story · 2 points
HN discussionIf we talk about simplicity, how can we forget about mighty jQuery? $('#searchForm').submit(() => { $('#resultsList').empty().load('/search?query=' + encodeURIComponent($('#searchInput').text().trim())); return false; }); Also, nothing beats the conciseness of 166-byte (!) HTMZ: https://leanrada.com/htmz/
Comment linking /htmz/
on “Htmx: Simplicity in an Age of Complicated Solutions”HTMX is not lightweight, its size is 44KB minified, whereas you can get similar behavior using 166-byte (sic!) HTMZ: https://leanrada.com/htmz/
Comment linking /htmz/
on “I Reviewed 1,000s of Opinions on HTMX”I mean you're not wrong: end of the day htmx is just some javascript written on top of standard vanilla javascript apis. It tries to handle things in a more html-centric, attributes-driven manner than script-oriented approaches do, but it's nothing too complicated check out fixi for our ultra-minimalist take on the idea: https://github.com/bigskysoftware/fixi Or, for extreme minimalisim, htmz, which repurposes ifram…
Comment linking /htmz/
on “htmx: Server Sent Event (SSE) Extension”You don't need HTMX, there is 160-bytes HTMZ: https://leanrada.com/htmz/
Comment linking /htmz/
on “API proposed by Chrome: Declarative partial updates”
