Blaze is an ultrafast search engine. The purpose of Blaze is to minimize the transferred data between clients and servers, allowing users to navigate the web in a minimalist manner.
One day, I exceeded my monthly data limit for high-speed browsing. As a consequence, my internet speed was significantly reduced. Consequently, web pages took an extremely long time to load, and I encountered timeout errors 90% of the time. It was at that moment that I contemplated a solution to this issue and conceived the idea of Blaze. Now, I can surf the web super fast and access the information I need even without a high-speed connection.
It's actually very straightforward. When you click on "BLAZE IT!", the URL changes to https://blaze.cyclic.app?q= followed by the query you searched for. This address is where the backend is hosted. When the site is accessed with the "q" parameter, a simple Node.js application retrieves the search results and generates an extremely lightweight version of SERP (Search Engine Results Page). From there, if you click on a link, it will be parsed and a page will be generated with only the content (I used the same library that Firefox uses to generate the reader mode). This makes it possible to navigate using only a few kilobytes of data instead of megabytes.
Yes, even with a poor internet connection, you can search for things and load pages extremely quickly. When you click on "BLAZE IT!" and select a search result, you receive a webpage that is only a few kilobytes in size instead of several megabytes. This makes it possible to load the page even under challenging connection conditions, effectively preventing timeout errors from occurring.
This project was born to address an issue with slow internet connections while allowing continuous web surfing. During development, I discovered several other positive implications. Browsing a lightweight and minimalistic web puts less stress on the phone's battery and processor. It is mostly free from ads, and it likely has other, albeit possibly minor, impacts on the environment (e.g., reduced battery drain, decreased need for frequent phone charging, and lower CO2 emissions). Moreover, Blaze can serve as an "emergency search engine" for browsing the web in challenging connection situations, and it can even be a lifesaver at times.
The code is open source, and you can host your hown version of Blaze, or contribute to it.
I am Danny, you can learn more about me on my website