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.
The need to have a “responsive” layout and webdesigners. At work i see this happeneing a lot. Someone has a quick loading basic website, but it’s old and it’s sometimes complicated to use on phones. They hire a webdesigner to modernize it, to make the UI rearrange when you tilt your phone sideways and have a big menu on big desktop screens and a folded hamburger menu on small phone screens. They need touch support and want less reloads. Every requirement adds code and libraries. The result really has better usability and neat spinners instead of complete page reloads, but it initially loads a bit slower and has bigger components.
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?
Yes, if they were comfortable with stuff like pinch zooming the site a lot between actions on their phone, they would not need a modernized UI. Of course, there’s also peer preasure, ie. the competition having a cool redesign and getting more often linked to on social media, etc
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.
This is the wiki of an old game: wiki.spiralknights.com
As you can see, on mibile the text is hard to read and you have to zoom and move around a lot to navigate. It’s the same software as wikipedia, but an older design.
What responsive UI optimization does is it changes all of this into vertical scrolling and makes it readable right away. You just swipe up until you see what you wanted to. As you can see on the modernized en.m.wikipedia.org on mobile the search is right on top and the font size and zoom are easily readable. If you tilt your phone it auto rearranges some content for better readability. That’s what some people and designers want for sites nowadays.
I have used the search of that old game a lot and I tell you: It sucks when you miss tapping the search box and hit a button instead. It loads a different page and the server is often slow. I could prevent it by pinch zooming beforehand, so it’s more easy to hit, but it’s unintuitive. I usually forget to do it.
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.
Yeah, thar’s not a counter argument; just demonstrates the usability gains.
Btw, did you open the browser tools (usually F12) of a desktop browser and check if it’s the server response or the rendering, that takes long for you in the network tab? I’m asking, because for me wikioedia isn’t that slow.
Never looked into it but I’ll check.