Ignoring the security implications, I miss kb large old raw html websites that loaded instantly on DSL internet. Nowadays shit is too fancy because hardware allows that, but I feel we’re just constantly running into more bugs first and then worry about them later.
Edit: I’ve thought more about it, and I think I just missed the simplicity of the internet back then. There’s just too much bloat these days with ad trackers and misinformation. I kinda forgot just how bright and eye jarring most old UIs were lol.
You know what I miss? When information was condensed instead of spread out to insert more ads. When software willingly gave you all the options you could ever need instead of removing most of them because “people might get confused”. When website took up the entire screen instead of a mobile wide strip in the middle because “it can be scary for people”.
Fuck everyone who keeps lowering the bar of tech literacy just to appeal to the general public.
I literally have a vertical monitor to avoid the middle strip of text problem. It especially sucks for higher resolution monitors, it just feels like so much wasted space on the left and right side of the article.
The most used e-commerce platform on my country does this for the map for in store pick ups when selecting where the package is sent. The map is basically a long vertical strip and the actual map area occupies maybe 10-5% of a 1440p monitor.
Drives me nuts every time I have to use it
This is very true on anything above say 1080p and 100% scaling. I have 2x 1440p monitors and the strip of text in the middle is… way too prevent. That said, I have no idea how you would fill my monitor with useful information and have it scale. I’ve embraced running four columns of windows most of the time. Sometimes it’s two columns on one monitor and a full screen something on my other.
If I’m doing documents, it’s basically columns so I can read it like papers. But then one day I just decided to turn a monitor into one big column. Turns out finding wallpapers for it is pretty easy too because mobile wallpapers work.
Yep, this is all a matter of window management. Having a 2000px wide column of text is terrible for readability.
I run a 4k tv as the equivalent of four monitors. Normally I have four windows, but sometimes I use a whole half of the screen for an IDE. Some apps like Spotify I run at one eighth of the screen.
Click next after each paragraph of the story so I can load more ads! And by paragraph, I mean one <p> tag per sentence.</p>
I miss the time when UI was utilitarian. None of that rounded corners and fancy themes nonsense. Function over form.
Ignoring the security implications.
There are literally none with basic html.
It’s when you started adding shit like Shockwave, javascript and the like, all massive security holes, things got dicey.
Plain old HTML, none what so ever.
But over plain HTTP without encryption (not HTTPS) was definitely not secure.
So is ASP, PHP, javascript and everything else.
And has nothing to do with HTML.
HTML is not HTTP.
Most of the issue with loading times are the billion ads and trackers. There are sites I visit that load instantly with Adblock on but extremely slow without it.
looks at dependency list
Try this: https://makefrontendshitagain.party/
Also wiby.me. (hit “surprise me”)
There isn’t a day I don’t think about how annoying the modern web is. Fancy crap, GDPR, a trillion frameworks weighing 1mb+ each, a ton of useless extra info for SEO and whatnot. All to see the pure information I initially seeked saying “yes”. Which could’ve been a 1kb site.
Maybe you’ll appreciate https://spacehey.com/
Everything is a transpiled Rract SPA loaded with trackers …want to read your neighbors blog? Suck these hundreds trackers …
I instantly hit the Firefox Reader Mode button or turn on Brave’s accessibility reader. They cut all the crap out of most websites. Bonus is they often remove paywalls.
I set this as my home on chrome
It should load some older websites at random each time it’s opened
That’s an awesome idea
There’s another: https://thebestmotherfucking.website/
Wow that was a beautiful journey
A prophet in these troubled times.
I’m still the old school developer that refuses to build JavaScript only sites. I build sites html first, and add some JS here and there to add some bling. But I never make it a requirement
I just learned about https://neocities.org/, seems up your alley
What would stop an individual or company nowadays to build a pure html website? Isn’t this what a “static site” is?
Isn’t this what HUGO and Jekyll produce, only a little bit prettier?
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So essentially what you are saying is getting in between people and smaller, simpler and faster loading sites is convinience and other people?
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I don’t have any real knowledge of html but I have a vague memory about reading an article where it was mentioned there was a very simple way for a website to “ask” what was the available resolution and fit itself to it in human friendly format.
When comes to manually zooming in or out - especially when on a smartphone - on a webpage, I admit I prefer it. It had a very short learning curve and it transmits a cleaner feeling of interacting with the website instead of having whatever it may be running behind the scenes shifting and adjusting the focus to some random point I have no interest on.
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You mention wikipedia and that is one site where regardless being essentialy text, pages can take immense time to load.
I respect the efforts to make things more accessible but there is the feeling that much more effort goes towards fluff and eye-candy than real, tangible, improvement.
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It’s obviously not got everything, but Gemini is a protocol that really harks back to web 1.0, and there’s a real fun niche going on there. Worth a check out:
You might be interested in htmx. While not fully as simple as html it tries to avoid the issues that come with large complex structures that SPA style websites often utilize
