8 ms·

Lightweight versions of websites without all the bloat

184 points by pmarin 8y ago

kgwxd 8y ago
I was unaware of reddit.compact, looks even better than old.reddit.
tmlbl 8y ago
This is fantastic. I have a thing for older laptops and many modern websites are too bloated to run on them. I might use some of these on every machine... why waste cycles when I just want to read?
- jaabe 8y ago
  I have a 2018 MacBook Pro, and reddit “lags” in safari unless I use the old version.
  - pmarin 8y ago
    On my netbooks I have been using the html only version of Gmail because it became faster than the modern web app.
    - andai 8y ago
      I use it everywhere now. It loads instantly, it's amazing. The only thing I miss is the auto categorization, I have to filter out all the newsletters with my brain now.
      - krrrh 8y ago
        You can also setup filters which are easy to do in gmail and work better than autocategorization.
    - giancarlostoro 8y ago
      I'm tempted to make the switch myself, is there a way to permanently force this? Otherwise I'm just going to use Gmail from Thunderbird, which can be a Behemoth but it's not as damn slow as that UI at the end of the day.
    - asark 8y ago
      It's faster on my 2018 well-above-base-config Macbook, too. Somewhere along the way the original promise of this whole AJAX thing—faster updates, no page loads—got lost. The page loads are usually faster for real sites in the wild, where we have two versions to compare.
  - jvagner 8y ago
    I have an older MacBook Air and reddit doesn't lag at all in Safari. Maybe it's something else..?
  - pxtail 8y ago
    This is off-topic but: reddit uses React to for building and rendering interface. Reddit is no.1 forum on the Internet,huge company with plenty of resources and top-notch engineers. So conclusion is simple and straightforward - it is not possible to write complex and at same time high performant app using React. Is there any mistake in my reasoning?
    - the8472 8y ago
      Not intending to defend react, but you are neglecting other possibilities such as that they have not tried, tried too little or that it's not important to their business and others targeting different userbases could succeed.
    - r3bl 8y ago
      Yes, your sample size is one. Netlify is also built with React and its homepage loads amazingly fast (<1MB in size).
      - pxtail 8y ago
        Are you sure that Netlify homepage uses react? I have react developer tools installed and it indicates no react presence on netlify's (very plain and simple - I mentioned complex apps in my initial message, but that is another thing) homepage. Another example could be Facebook which qualifies into "complex apps" category and at the same time is very well known for sluggish performance.
      - owenversteeg 8y ago
        Not sure if that's a typo and you meant Netflix or not, but did you know that Netflix actually gave a presentation about removing React from their homepage, and got an incredible performance boost from it? I suspect something similar in the case of Netlify, if you're referring to them.
    - root_axis 8y ago
      Without a definition for "high performance" the statement doesn't really say much. If we had a definition for it, we'd also have to ask if "high performance" was even a goal for the reddit team. As you stated, reddit is the most popular forum on the internet and it has continued to grow even with the new design so perhaps the performance concerns were considered premature. I know some would disagree based on their own issues with performance, but it's at least safe to say that most people using reddit don't seem to have a problem with it (if there is one thing redditers love its to complain loudly about why reddit is going to shit)
  - djhworld 8y ago
    The "new" reddit makes my 2015 macbook sound like its about to launch into space and the site really chugs in Firefox. Old reddit is smooth as silk. I honestly don't understand why they changed it.
  - thekingshorses 8y ago
    Try https://reddit.premii.com/ https://reddit.premii.com/ It should work/load quickly on a 7-10 years old computer with the latest browser.
incadenza 8y ago
CNN is night and day...
- bluedino 8y ago
  The regular CNN site isn't even usable in Lynx
car12 8y ago
I wonder if anyone here would agree to pay a small subscription fee, say $2/month, to get a text only version of websites. No to minimal images, no to almost minimal CSS flash/bloat/design. Pretty close to reading things on a newspaper.
- userbinator 8y ago
  Given that browsers can already do that (CSS off, reading mode, etc.) I don't think that would be a popular idea. Usually it's "pay to get more content that wouldn't be accessible freely".
- supermw 8y ago
  I wouldn’t pay for that but I would pay a hell of a lot more than 2 a month to have all major websites I visit properly redesigned to render in terminal based browsers (such as links or w3m) as first class citizens without weird formatting bugs or UX.
- didgeoridoo 8y ago
  I might pay $5-10 one time for a browser plugin that intercepts requests and redirects me from the heavyweight versions to the lightweight ones on this list...
- cmroanirgo 8y ago
  What's wrong with the various reader modes that Safari and FF already have? They're great at de-formatting a page to it's base article. No cruft. It's very newspaper style. (Chrome has reader plugins that can doing this too) Not sure what your $2 would be doing another than adding an actor between me and the page I wish to read. For privacy purposes, I'll be keeping well clear of such "solutions".
  - basch 8y ago
    Dont you normally have to wait for the heavy site to load before switching to reader?
tpfour 8y ago
Why is this the top voted story barely 40 minutes after submission? Are people really excited for 20 links, most of which aren't even "lite" websites? Every now and then there's an odd top story on HN which makes me wonder who actually reads this site. I guess I'm not hip enough!
- badfrog 8y ago
  I'd guess there's high correlation between people who want this and people who use emacs, which is a non-trivial portion of HN readers.
  - tpfour 8y ago
    Well I am interested in lite websites as well but this list contains about 20 links with roughly half that aren't "lite versions of websites". I am just wondering why this is the topmost story.
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    Don't know how one relates to the other, but I for one know a couple of web sites which UX would vastly improve, were they accessed through Emacs instead of the web browser.
- benj111 8y ago
  Perhaps you could interpret it as untapped demand for lightweight websites?
- manigandham 8y ago
  People also vote on the headline without actually reading.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  People probably upvoted prior to reading. I know I did, because the headline immediately told me I'll love the submission.
- dang 8y ago
  It's because HN readers have strong feelings against bloat, in software generally and especially on the web. Just mentioning that topic excites strong responses.
badfrog 8y ago
Does anybody know of a good browser extension to apply some default CSS to sites you visit? It took me just 4 lines to turn the CSS-free NPR site into something that I enjoy reading. Before and after: https://imgur.com/a/EJympO9 https://imgur.com/a/EJympO9
- mdibaiee 8y ago
  There is Stylus for Firefox and Chrome: Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/styl-us/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/styl-us/ Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stylus/clngdbkpkpeebahjckkjfobafhncgmne/ https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stylus/clngdbkpkpe...
- andai 8y ago
  font-family, font-size, max-width, what's the fourth one?
  - badfrog 8y ago
    line-height
- sogen 8y ago
  iCab lets you select from several stylesheets. Pretty cool
qznc 8y ago
I recently started a subreddit with a similar goal: https://www.reddit.com/r/SpartanWeb/.compact https://www.reddit.com/r/SpartanWeb/.compact Explanation: http://beza1e1.tuxen.de/spartan_web.html http://beza1e1.tuxen.de/spartan_web.html
- mdibaiee 8y ago
  This is cool! I would appreciate pull-requests to add these to the repository Otherwise I will take a look at them later on myself
  - qznc 8y ago
    Submitted a few I found fitting: https://github.com/mdibaiee/awesome-lite-websites/compare/master...qznc:patch-1 https://github.com/mdibaiee/awesome-lite-websites/compare/ma... There is no section for individual blogs.
- StavrosK 8y ago
  I had started a site with the same goal, but let the domain name lapse: https://lighten-the-web.netlify.com/ https://lighten-the-web.netlify.com/ It's open source, so feel free to make some PRs if you need a place to add resources or something to go with the subreddit.
Theodores 8y ago
The examples on the page are still fundamentally bloated. Take a look at the source of any example and you will find the regular div soup albeit not burdened by 106 cookies and 46 tracking scripts. The web has HTML5 elements and the CSS grid layout engine that can be made fully responsive with maintainable CSS variables to look excellent in evergreen browsers. However nobody is able to code up a page this way as there is so much technical debt in the way web development teams work and the hacks that can't be dispensed with overnight. Recently I tried to make a CMS form look pretty. The forms needed have to have the simplest markup, e.g. label followed by input, label followed by input with those inputs having HTML5 niceties such as placeholders and the 'required fields' being styled with simple CSS that is based on 'required=true' being on the input boxes. However, the templates had two divs and spans around the labels and two more divs around the inputs with a container div holding it all together, everything decorated with untold class tags. To make this look good and responsive in CSS grid I needed to get rid of all of it apart from the inputs and labels. If I didn't have confidence in what I was doing I would have just added yet more CSS and yet more complexity. Anyone can make stuff complex, making stuff simple and concise is an entirely different skill. None of the examples on this list have fully grasped what a modern web page should be like. It is as if nobody has taken the time to learn how to write content with the correct elements and then style it up for the evergreen browsers people actually use with modern CSS.
- bo1024 8y ago
  Any suggested resources or examples to learn from?
  - Theodores 8y ago
    I do not actually see a concise course out there that puts it all together. I am a big fan of Rachel Andrews, Jen Simmons and Lea Verou, however, at the moment it really requires some DIY effort to get everything learned. You also need a project such as your own portfolio site to have a go with. Given there is no guide out there I think I had better write one.
TACIXAT 8y ago
I don't like that this conflates bloat with JS. I have a minimal chat application that heavily relies websockets and JS, that said, it strives to be data minimal. The heaviest part is the initial load of emoji images which get cached. Other than that there are no third party scripts or data transfer. I get that JS can suck and be abused, but I don't really understand the complete allergy to it. A websocket implementation is going to have a lot less overhead than page loads for everything.
- userbinator 8y ago
  The article is talking about websites, not webapps --- i.e. document-oriented sites, for which JS is really not necessary. For a realtime interactive application like chat, however, the circumstances are different.
  - dpau 8y ago
    I'm not sure that's the case, there are a number of the sites on this list, like Facebook and Reddit, that I definitely wouldn't categorize as document-oriented. It seems more of an issue with both how resource intensive the JS-heavy sites are, as well as the purpose of the JS- is it used to track me and invade my privacy, or does the JS have a legitimate use (as in a chat application)? Personally I LOVE JS-powered websites/webapps, as it means that as a lone developer I have the ability to create a website as powerful as a desktop application, without developing multiple versions for each OS/app store. So I, too, don't wish to see a massive backlash against JS, only against bad JS.
    - TeMPOraL 8y ago
      Facebook we could dispute once we include the chat (though the chat is available as separate Messenger site/app), but without it it's almost entirely a document-oriented experience. Profiles, timeline, posts, comments - those are all just glorified documents with forms. The same is true about the entirety of Reddit - it's document-oriented by nature. Consider HN as an example of a document-oriented social media site actually implemented as documents.
peterwwillis 8y ago
HN pedantry of the day: 'lite' vs 'light'. I screamed internally a bit at "a list of lite websites", so naturally I looked up the definition and etymology. It turns out that lite is basically a modifier for product names. Early in the 20th century it was used for products like "Auto-Lite" and "Adjusto-Lite", apparently as a diminutive form of "light". But then later it was used to connote fewer calories (as in "Miller Lite", "Kikkoman Lite") whereas other products still use the full form ("Yoplait Light"). Lite's other definition is "diminished or lacking in substance or seriousness ... innocuous or unthreatening", implying an almost childish, immature, or unthreatening form. In this website's case, the list is specifically referring to the "weight" or "heft" of the websites, relative to the content which isn't solely what the user is looking for. It also is not referring to a product name. That falls squarely under the definition for light, and not lite. But the name of the repo, awesome-lite-websites, can be seen as a product name. So the word lite fits for the name, but not in the description. (indeed, in the README the word "lightweight" is correctly used) [1] https://grammarist.com/words/lite/ https://grammarist.com/words/lite/ [2] https://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2012/10/lite-or-light-which-spelling-is-right.html https://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2012/10/lite-or-light-whi... [3] https://www.etymonline.com/word/lite https://www.etymonline.com/word/lite
Ultramanoid 8y ago
Added +2000 bonus points if : uBlock (0), as in text.npr.org or HN.
manigandham 8y ago
The twitter mobile version is also the "new" standard desktop version if you enable it.
faissaloo 8y ago
Is there a plugin that automatically sends me to the lighter version of a site if it exists?
jbverschoor 8y ago
Why does ddg do a POST request?
mg 8y ago
Great to see a post about lightweight websites having over 100 upvotes. To me, the "heaviness" of the web is making it much less enjoyable then it could be. As a user, I regularly read the HN discussion of an article rather then the article itself. Simply because HN is so lean and other websites are usually bloated. So bloated, that I prefer to infer the content from the HN discussion just so I can avoid visiting the website. I run multiple very lightweight websites myself: http://www.gnod.com http://www.gnod.com I categorically refuse to add heavy assets or frontend libraries. Many of my developer friends insist that "Normal users don't care!". I am not so sure. I wonder how big the target audience for "Lightweight websites" really is. Would love to see a poll that asks people "How much do you like the typical website? What are the most common reasons that make you dislike a website?".
- cmroanirgo 8y ago
  You're not alone: for HN and website lightness.
- pdimitar 8y ago
  > Many of my developer friends insist that "Normal users don't care!". I am not so sure. I am with you. I've spoken to a lot of non-technical users in my life. Their very typical and often response on the matter is "it is how it is, I cannot change it, of course it's annoying but I have no alternative" -- this is about ads, heavyweight sites and possible tracking/spying. So IMO most non-technical people accept it as a fact of life but would rejoice if the Web became lightweight again.
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    > So IMO most non-technical people accept it as a fact of life but would rejoice if the Web became lightweight again. Yup. There's also a subset of non-tech people who don't have a basic mental model for how things work; from those, I hear "my computer is slow, probably has viruses, could you help?". I come, and the computer is often fine - it's popular websites that just went through another bloat-up cycle, and the computer struggles with them. Installing uBlock can make such computer live for another year, but ultimately people end up discarding perfectly good hardware just because the web keeps accruing bloat.
asark 8y ago
We need a Web again. A hypertext document browsing system. Update the basic elements like they should have been updated 20+ years ago (sortable tables seems like a no-brainer to include in base HTML, there's got to be a way to update frames so they suck less and fit 90+% of the legit uses of AJAXy page updates, improved form elements like you get in a real GUI toolkit, file upload with preview, and so on) but NO javascript, NO talking to any server behind the user's back. Once the page loads my network connection should be silent until I click a link. I should get a preview of what a form's about to send. Anything but a GET to any server but the one I'm currently on, flatly disallowed. Somewhere you can browse hypertext documents with high performance, in safety, with no spying. This one can be abandoned to spyware and apps. Whatever. That's fine. But I don't want safe hyptertext browsing comingled with the same program that can and constantly does load spyware and other abusive junk.
- the8472 8y ago
  Inject this HTTP header and you have the web 1.0 back: Content-Security-Policy: sandbox allow-forms allow-top-navigation; Restrict default-src to self and your second requirement is covered.
  - asark 8y ago
    You misunderstand, I think. The problem is that the ecosystem of the modern web is entirely and irreverisbly full of spying and user-hostile junk, due to decisions that were made. TL;DR you can't have Javascript with anything close to its current capabilities and also have a safe and user-controlled Web. I don't want some restricted version of web sites that work OK in current web browsers, provided you're very careful not to leave those sites. I don't want constant fiddling with umatrix or custom privacy settings that break 90% of the Web. I want a safe hypertext browsing system back, in its own program that will kick open a "real" web browser (with warnings and flashing lights) if you try to link from it to the spyware web, like if you try to open a PDF. As long as I'm in it, I shouldn't have to worry about any links I open trying to spy on me. I shouldn't have to track down which tab in this system is making my nigh-supercomputer laptop's UI stutter (hi, Asana, Trello, Slack, Jira). None of them should break because of my privacy settings—privacy, old-school web style, should be the only way it operates. I want a safe-only Web that is for browsing hypertext documents. The current web can keep the spying, security vulnerabilities, resource-eating, and apps. I know I'd still have to use it, and that's fine, I just don't want safe, secure, resource friendly browsing to happen alongside this shitshow, because then it's not safe and secure.
blaze33 8y ago
The web brought us easy access to static content. Then, interactive web apps appeared and mixed code with content. Easy access to content need up restricted by new rules designed by app owners. So, could a better separation of content from software improve the situation?
ehonda 8y ago
Should also check out wiby.me, it is a search engine that only contains lightweight websites.
dorgo 8y ago
I would like to see more developement towards features like the "reading mode" in browsers. There is no good reason why the style of text should vary between websites. The same is true for many other "features". Why do tables with data look (and feel) different across websites? Why does every website implement user registration/login in it's own unique way? Every website has it's own navigation style/concept - instead of allowing me to use my choice for all websites (as a browser setting). The downsite though is less creativity/innovation.
- basch 8y ago
  Im with you. Id like to see a browser come out that does this. Reading mode by default, along with some p2p network of userstyles and templates. Opera sort of did this once, where the community maintained .js patches to make websites work better in the browser. It would be nice to have a set of standard browser templates, and then be able to have an on/off button for "allow most popular community patches to load automatically," those patches basically being css tweaks for sites that dont quite fit a template.

184 points by pmarin 8y ago

I was unaware of reddit.compact, looks even better than old.reddit.

This is fantastic. I have a thing for older laptops and many modern websites are too bloated to run on them. I might use some of these on every machine... why waste cycles when I just want to read?

jaabe 8y ago
I have a 2018 MacBook Pro, and reddit “lags” in safari unless I use the old version.
- pmarin 8y ago
  On my netbooks I have been using the html only version of Gmail because it became faster than the modern web app.
  - andai 8y ago
    I use it everywhere now. It loads instantly, it's amazing. The only thing I miss is the auto categorization, I have to filter out all the newsletters with my brain now.
    - krrrh 8y ago
      You can also setup filters which are easy to do in gmail and work better than autocategorization.
  - giancarlostoro 8y ago
    I'm tempted to make the switch myself, is there a way to permanently force this? Otherwise I'm just going to use Gmail from Thunderbird, which can be a Behemoth but it's not as damn slow as that UI at the end of the day.
  - asark 8y ago
    It's faster on my 2018 well-above-base-config Macbook, too. Somewhere along the way the original promise of this whole AJAX thing—faster updates, no page loads—got lost. The page loads are usually faster for real sites in the wild, where we have two versions to compare.
- jvagner 8y ago
  I have an older MacBook Air and reddit doesn't lag at all in Safari. Maybe it's something else..?
- pxtail 8y ago
  This is off-topic but: reddit uses React to for building and rendering interface. Reddit is no.1 forum on the Internet,huge company with plenty of resources and top-notch engineers. So conclusion is simple and straightforward - it is not possible to write complex and at same time high performant app using React. Is there any mistake in my reasoning?
  - the8472 8y ago
    Not intending to defend react, but you are neglecting other possibilities such as that they have not tried, tried too little or that it's not important to their business and others targeting different userbases could succeed.
  - r3bl 8y ago
    Yes, your sample size is one. Netlify is also built with React and its homepage loads amazingly fast (<1MB in size).
    - pxtail 8y ago
      Are you sure that Netlify homepage uses react? I have react developer tools installed and it indicates no react presence on netlify's (very plain and simple - I mentioned complex apps in my initial message, but that is another thing) homepage. Another example could be Facebook which qualifies into "complex apps" category and at the same time is very well known for sluggish performance.
    - owenversteeg 8y ago
      Not sure if that's a typo and you meant Netflix or not, but did you know that Netflix actually gave a presentation about removing React from their homepage, and got an incredible performance boost from it? I suspect something similar in the case of Netlify, if you're referring to them.
  - root_axis 8y ago
    Without a definition for "high performance" the statement doesn't really say much. If we had a definition for it, we'd also have to ask if "high performance" was even a goal for the reddit team. As you stated, reddit is the most popular forum on the internet and it has continued to grow even with the new design so perhaps the performance concerns were considered premature. I know some would disagree based on their own issues with performance, but it's at least safe to say that most people using reddit don't seem to have a problem with it (if there is one thing redditers love its to complain loudly about why reddit is going to shit)
- djhworld 8y ago
  The "new" reddit makes my 2015 macbook sound like its about to launch into space and the site really chugs in Firefox. Old reddit is smooth as silk. I honestly don't understand why they changed it.
- thekingshorses 8y ago
  Try https://reddit.premii.com/ https://reddit.premii.com/ It should work/load quickly on a 7-10 years old computer with the latest browser.

incadenza 8y ago

CNN is night and day...

bluedino 8y ago
The regular CNN site isn't even usable in Lynx

car12 8y ago

I wonder if anyone here would agree to pay a small subscription fee, say $2/month, to get a text only version of websites. No to minimal images, no to almost minimal CSS flash/bloat/design. Pretty close to reading things on a newspaper.

userbinator 8y ago
Given that browsers can already do that (CSS off, reading mode, etc.) I don't think that would be a popular idea. Usually it's "pay to get more content that wouldn't be accessible freely".
supermw 8y ago
I wouldn’t pay for that but I would pay a hell of a lot more than 2 a month to have all major websites I visit properly redesigned to render in terminal based browsers (such as links or w3m) as first class citizens without weird formatting bugs or UX.
didgeoridoo 8y ago
I might pay $5-10 one time for a browser plugin that intercepts requests and redirects me from the heavyweight versions to the lightweight ones on this list...
cmroanirgo 8y ago
What's wrong with the various reader modes that Safari and FF already have? They're great at de-formatting a page to it's base article. No cruft. It's very newspaper style. (Chrome has reader plugins that can doing this too) Not sure what your $2 would be doing another than adding an actor between me and the page I wish to read. For privacy purposes, I'll be keeping well clear of such "solutions".
- basch 8y ago
  Dont you normally have to wait for the heavy site to load before switching to reader?

tpfour 8y ago

Why is this the top voted story barely 40 minutes after submission? Are people really excited for 20 links, most of which aren't even "lite" websites? Every now and then there's an odd top story on HN which makes me wonder who actually reads this site. I guess I'm not hip enough!

badfrog 8y ago
I'd guess there's high correlation between people who want this and people who use emacs, which is a non-trivial portion of HN readers.
- tpfour 8y ago
  Well I am interested in lite websites as well but this list contains about 20 links with roughly half that aren't "lite versions of websites". I am just wondering why this is the topmost story.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  Don't know how one relates to the other, but I for one know a couple of web sites which UX would vastly improve, were they accessed through Emacs instead of the web browser.
benj111 8y ago
Perhaps you could interpret it as untapped demand for lightweight websites?
manigandham 8y ago
People also vote on the headline without actually reading.
TeMPOraL 8y ago
People probably upvoted prior to reading. I know I did, because the headline immediately told me I'll love the submission.
dang 8y ago
It's because HN readers have strong feelings against bloat, in software generally and especially on the web. Just mentioning that topic excites strong responses.

badfrog 8y ago

Does anybody know of a good browser extension to apply some default CSS to sites you visit? It took me just 4 lines to turn the CSS-free NPR site into something that I enjoy reading. Before and after: https://imgur.com/a/EJympO9 https://imgur.com/a/EJympO9

mdibaiee 8y ago
There is Stylus for Firefox and Chrome: Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/styl-us/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/styl-us/ Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stylus/clngdbkpkpeebahjckkjfobafhncgmne/ https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stylus/clngdbkpkpe...
andai 8y ago
font-family, font-size, max-width, what's the fourth one?
- badfrog 8y ago
  line-height
sogen 8y ago
iCab lets you select from several stylesheets. Pretty cool

qznc 8y ago

I recently started a subreddit with a similar goal: https://www.reddit.com/r/SpartanWeb/.compact https://www.reddit.com/r/SpartanWeb/.compact Explanation: http://beza1e1.tuxen.de/spartan_web.html http://beza1e1.tuxen.de/spartan_web.html

mdibaiee 8y ago
This is cool! I would appreciate pull-requests to add these to the repository Otherwise I will take a look at them later on myself
- qznc 8y ago
  Submitted a few I found fitting: https://github.com/mdibaiee/awesome-lite-websites/compare/master...qznc:patch-1 https://github.com/mdibaiee/awesome-lite-websites/compare/ma... There is no section for individual blogs.
StavrosK 8y ago
I had started a site with the same goal, but let the domain name lapse: https://lighten-the-web.netlify.com/ https://lighten-the-web.netlify.com/ It's open source, so feel free to make some PRs if you need a place to add resources or something to go with the subreddit.

Theodores 8y ago

The examples on the page are still fundamentally bloated. Take a look at the source of any example and you will find the regular div soup albeit not burdened by 106 cookies and 46 tracking scripts. The web has HTML5 elements and the CSS grid layout engine that can be made fully responsive with maintainable CSS variables to look excellent in evergreen browsers. However nobody is able to code up a page this way as there is so much technical debt in the way web development teams work and the hacks that can't be dispensed with overnight. Recently I tried to make a CMS form look pretty. The forms needed have to have the simplest markup, e.g. label followed by input, label followed by input with those inputs having HTML5 niceties such as placeholders and the 'required fields' being styled with simple CSS that is based on 'required=true' being on the input boxes. However, the templates had two divs and spans around the labels and two more divs around the inputs with a container div holding it all together, everything decorated with untold class tags. To make this look good and responsive in CSS grid I needed to get rid of all of it apart from the inputs and labels. If I didn't have confidence in what I was doing I would have just added yet more CSS and yet more complexity. Anyone can make stuff complex, making stuff simple and concise is an entirely different skill. None of the examples on this list have fully grasped what a modern web page should be like. It is as if nobody has taken the time to learn how to write content with the correct elements and then style it up for the evergreen browsers people actually use with modern CSS.

bo1024 8y ago
Any suggested resources or examples to learn from?
- Theodores 8y ago
  I do not actually see a concise course out there that puts it all together. I am a big fan of Rachel Andrews, Jen Simmons and Lea Verou, however, at the moment it really requires some DIY effort to get everything learned. You also need a project such as your own portfolio site to have a go with. Given there is no guide out there I think I had better write one.

TACIXAT 8y ago

I don't like that this conflates bloat with JS. I have a minimal chat application that heavily relies websockets and JS, that said, it strives to be data minimal. The heaviest part is the initial load of emoji images which get cached. Other than that there are no third party scripts or data transfer. I get that JS can suck and be abused, but I don't really understand the complete allergy to it. A websocket implementation is going to have a lot less overhead than page loads for everything.

userbinator 8y ago
The article is talking about websites, not webapps --- i.e. document-oriented sites, for which JS is really not necessary. For a realtime interactive application like chat, however, the circumstances are different.
- dpau 8y ago
  I'm not sure that's the case, there are a number of the sites on this list, like Facebook and Reddit, that I definitely wouldn't categorize as document-oriented. It seems more of an issue with both how resource intensive the JS-heavy sites are, as well as the purpose of the JS- is it used to track me and invade my privacy, or does the JS have a legitimate use (as in a chat application)? Personally I LOVE JS-powered websites/webapps, as it means that as a lone developer I have the ability to create a website as powerful as a desktop application, without developing multiple versions for each OS/app store. So I, too, don't wish to see a massive backlash against JS, only against bad JS.
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    Facebook we could dispute once we include the chat (though the chat is available as separate Messenger site/app), but without it it's almost entirely a document-oriented experience. Profiles, timeline, posts, comments - those are all just glorified documents with forms. The same is true about the entirety of Reddit - it's document-oriented by nature. Consider HN as an example of a document-oriented social media site actually implemented as documents.

peterwwillis 8y ago

HN pedantry of the day: 'lite' vs 'light'. I screamed internally a bit at "a list of lite websites", so naturally I looked up the definition and etymology. It turns out that lite is basically a modifier for product names. Early in the 20th century it was used for products like "Auto-Lite" and "Adjusto-Lite", apparently as a diminutive form of "light". But then later it was used to connote fewer calories (as in "Miller Lite", "Kikkoman Lite") whereas other products still use the full form ("Yoplait Light"). Lite's other definition is "diminished or lacking in substance or seriousness ... innocuous or unthreatening", implying an almost childish, immature, or unthreatening form. In this website's case, the list is specifically referring to the "weight" or "heft" of the websites, relative to the content which isn't solely what the user is looking for. It also is not referring to a product name. That falls squarely under the definition for light, and not lite. But the name of the repo, awesome-lite-websites, can be seen as a product name. So the word lite fits for the name, but not in the description. (indeed, in the README the word "lightweight" is correctly used) [1] https://grammarist.com/words/lite/ https://grammarist.com/words/lite/ [2] https://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2012/10/lite-or-light-which-spelling-is-right.html https://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2012/10/lite-or-light-whi... [3] https://www.etymonline.com/word/lite https://www.etymonline.com/word/lite

Ultramanoid 8y ago

Added +2000 bonus points if : uBlock (0), as in text.npr.org or HN.

manigandham 8y ago

The twitter mobile version is also the "new" standard desktop version if you enable it.

faissaloo 8y ago

Is there a plugin that automatically sends me to the lighter version of a site if it exists?

jbverschoor 8y ago

Why does ddg do a POST request?

mg 8y ago

Great to see a post about lightweight websites having over 100 upvotes. To me, the "heaviness" of the web is making it much less enjoyable then it could be. As a user, I regularly read the HN discussion of an article rather then the article itself. Simply because HN is so lean and other websites are usually bloated. So bloated, that I prefer to infer the content from the HN discussion just so I can avoid visiting the website. I run multiple very lightweight websites myself: http://www.gnod.com http://www.gnod.com I categorically refuse to add heavy assets or frontend libraries. Many of my developer friends insist that "Normal users don't care!". I am not so sure. I wonder how big the target audience for "Lightweight websites" really is. Would love to see a poll that asks people "How much do you like the typical website? What are the most common reasons that make you dislike a website?".

cmroanirgo 8y ago
You're not alone: for HN and website lightness.
pdimitar 8y ago
> Many of my developer friends insist that "Normal users don't care!". I am not so sure. I am with you. I've spoken to a lot of non-technical users in my life. Their very typical and often response on the matter is "it is how it is, I cannot change it, of course it's annoying but I have no alternative" -- this is about ads, heavyweight sites and possible tracking/spying. So IMO most non-technical people accept it as a fact of life but would rejoice if the Web became lightweight again.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  > So IMO most non-technical people accept it as a fact of life but would rejoice if the Web became lightweight again. Yup. There's also a subset of non-tech people who don't have a basic mental model for how things work; from those, I hear "my computer is slow, probably has viruses, could you help?". I come, and the computer is often fine - it's popular websites that just went through another bloat-up cycle, and the computer struggles with them. Installing uBlock can make such computer live for another year, but ultimately people end up discarding perfectly good hardware just because the web keeps accruing bloat.

asark 8y ago

We need a Web again. A hypertext document browsing system. Update the basic elements like they should have been updated 20+ years ago (sortable tables seems like a no-brainer to include in base HTML, there's got to be a way to update frames so they suck less and fit 90+% of the legit uses of AJAXy page updates, improved form elements like you get in a real GUI toolkit, file upload with preview, and so on) but NO javascript, NO talking to any server behind the user's back. Once the page loads my network connection should be silent until I click a link. I should get a preview of what a form's about to send. Anything but a GET to any server but the one I'm currently on, flatly disallowed. Somewhere you can browse hypertext documents with high performance, in safety, with no spying. This one can be abandoned to spyware and apps. Whatever. That's fine. But I don't want safe hyptertext browsing comingled with the same program that can and constantly does load spyware and other abusive junk.

the8472 8y ago
Inject this HTTP header and you have the web 1.0 back: Content-Security-Policy: sandbox allow-forms allow-top-navigation; Restrict default-src to self and your second requirement is covered.
- asark 8y ago
  You misunderstand, I think. The problem is that the ecosystem of the modern web is entirely and irreverisbly full of spying and user-hostile junk, due to decisions that were made. TL;DR you can't have Javascript with anything close to its current capabilities and also have a safe and user-controlled Web. I don't want some restricted version of web sites that work OK in current web browsers, provided you're very careful not to leave those sites. I don't want constant fiddling with umatrix or custom privacy settings that break 90% of the Web. I want a safe hypertext browsing system back, in its own program that will kick open a "real" web browser (with warnings and flashing lights) if you try to link from it to the spyware web, like if you try to open a PDF. As long as I'm in it, I shouldn't have to worry about any links I open trying to spy on me. I shouldn't have to track down which tab in this system is making my nigh-supercomputer laptop's UI stutter (hi, Asana, Trello, Slack, Jira). None of them should break because of my privacy settings—privacy, old-school web style, should be the only way it operates. I want a safe-only Web that is for browsing hypertext documents. The current web can keep the spying, security vulnerabilities, resource-eating, and apps. I know I'd still have to use it, and that's fine, I just don't want safe, secure, resource friendly browsing to happen alongside this shitshow, because then it's not safe and secure.

blaze33 8y ago

The web brought us easy access to static content. Then, interactive web apps appeared and mixed code with content. Easy access to content need up restricted by new rules designed by app owners. So, could a better separation of content from software improve the situation?

ehonda 8y ago

Should also check out wiby.me, it is a search engine that only contains lightweight websites.

dorgo 8y ago

I would like to see more developement towards features like the "reading mode" in browsers. There is no good reason why the style of text should vary between websites. The same is true for many other "features". Why do tables with data look (and feel) different across websites? Why does every website implement user registration/login in it's own unique way? Every website has it's own navigation style/concept - instead of allowing me to use my choice for all websites (as a browser setting). The downsite though is less creativity/innovation.

basch 8y ago
Im with you. Id like to see a browser come out that does this. Reading mode by default, along with some p2p network of userstyles and templates. Opera sort of did this once, where the community maintained .js patches to make websites work better in the browser. It would be nice to have a set of standard browser templates, and then be able to have an on/off button for "allow most popular community patches to load automatically," those patches basically being css tweaks for sites that dont quite fit a template.