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.
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?
Nothing. Warren Buffetts company Berkshire Hathaway has the most simple business’s site of all time.
https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/
The fault is a combination of execs wanting a slick site, marketing wanting a highly SEO scoring page, and Devs wanting to play with web frameworks.
Hey, they even have an old-school tracker-free static advertisement image on that page. Now that’s a classic.
I’d love to know how much they paid for it. Even part of the “message from warren” page too. Must have been a pretty penny. I bet a lot of pages would love to do static links in exchange for upfront fees similar to it.
Geico is owned by them, so they may not have to pay.
Today I learned. Good point, thanks. Wonder why they chose to highlight it over the others. Must have a good conversion rate comparatively.
Found this list of assets owned by Berkshire Hathaway to be more than I knew, especially at 100% ownership: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assets_owned_by_Berkshire_Hathaway
Table-based layout, that shit is ancient. We used to build websites this way >20years ago ^^ Mainly because IE was too stupid for anything else.
I distinctly remember when designers got a hard on for rounded corners and IE couldn’t render them. So we ended up making a 9 cell table for each element that was suppose to have rounded corners and loaded images which repeated themselves. Indulging IE users, which were plenty, was such a pain.
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I dont think that usability or acessibility gets so much in the way. It’s more about thinking webpages as applications instead of documents. Plain html is easier for screenreaders and larger fonts. You can also get responsive with very little css.
Simplicity is just not the goal anymore.
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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Never looked into it but I’ll check.