4 ms·

I love the idea behind Gemini, and on a similar note, I'm wondering: is there a name for the back-to-basics, web 1.0 philosophy? Like, a name for the "sites th

I love the idea behind Gemini, and on a similar note, I'm wondering: is there a name for the back-to-basics, web 1.0 philosophy? Like, a name for the "sites that look like https://motherfuckingwebsite.com https://motherfuckingwebsite.com " ?

kixiQu 6y ago
No, because the only traction it has ever had and will ever have is with techies who are capable of recognizing (and issuing) a description of "HTML documents with only very minimal client-side JS, often without any CSS whatsoever".
- pbourke 6y ago
  or, you know, Craigslist and Wikipedia.
  - kixiQu 6y ago
    I don't think a case can be made for Wikipedia being on http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ style level. Craigslist--maybe the listing pages, sure. And that's a fair point! It has more penetration than I was allowing. But I don't think it's going to get a designy sounding name because designy sorts of people don't feel the same nostalgic affection for fairly raw HTML.
Reelin 6y ago
Perhaps the idea of brutalist web design fits? (https://brutalist-web.design/ https://brutalist-web.design/) HN is a good example of it IMO.
- clarry 6y ago
  It looks alright but to me the simple-web ideal is rather like.. no design. Like, you don't design an essay, or a comment, you just write one. And so was the web. Initially you did not do "web design", you wrote hyperlinked documents with some markup to support formatting (not design!) and embedding images; how it looks in the end is up to the user agent (and transitively to the user who could pick and configure their UA). Then web design happened and it all went to hell. Web "designers" started doing "cute" things and business owners started wanting more and more branding and fashionable stuff.. and here we are. I've said it before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22608293 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22608293
- dredmorbius 6y ago
  HN looks simple, but its under-the-surface table-based layout is ... actually something of a mess. Especially if you want to parse or reformat it readily (e.g., by parsing the structure, not just reskinning CSS).
lelandbatey 6y ago
I feel like I've heard of this world of exclusively hyperlinked simple web pages referred to as "the document web". But in my brief searches I can't find another source for that term. Maybe I'm inventing it in my head right now, but regardless, it feels like a good name.
- juststeve 6y ago
  the Semantic Web?
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    The Semantic Web is what you're part of if you make your content explicitly machine-readable, especially if you do it with RDF[0]. -- [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_Description_Framework https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_Description_Framework

kixiQu 6y ago

No, because the only traction it has ever had and will ever have is with techies who are capable of recognizing (and issuing) a description of "HTML documents with only very minimal client-side JS, often without any CSS whatsoever".

pbourke 6y ago
or, you know, Craigslist and Wikipedia.
- kixiQu 6y ago
  I don't think a case can be made for Wikipedia being on http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ style level. Craigslist--maybe the listing pages, sure. And that's a fair point! It has more penetration than I was allowing. But I don't think it's going to get a designy sounding name because designy sorts of people don't feel the same nostalgic affection for fairly raw HTML.

Reelin 6y ago

Perhaps the idea of brutalist web design fits? (https://brutalist-web.design/ https://brutalist-web.design/) HN is a good example of it IMO.

clarry 6y ago
It looks alright but to me the simple-web ideal is rather like.. no design. Like, you don't design an essay, or a comment, you just write one. And so was the web. Initially you did not do "web design", you wrote hyperlinked documents with some markup to support formatting (not design!) and embedding images; how it looks in the end is up to the user agent (and transitively to the user who could pick and configure their UA). Then web design happened and it all went to hell. Web "designers" started doing "cute" things and business owners started wanting more and more branding and fashionable stuff.. and here we are. I've said it before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22608293 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22608293
dredmorbius 6y ago
HN looks simple, but its under-the-surface table-based layout is ... actually something of a mess. Especially if you want to parse or reformat it readily (e.g., by parsing the structure, not just reskinning CSS).

lelandbatey 6y ago

I feel like I've heard of this world of exclusively hyperlinked simple web pages referred to as "the document web". But in my brief searches I can't find another source for that term. Maybe I'm inventing it in my head right now, but regardless, it feels like a good name.

juststeve 6y ago
the Semantic Web?
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  The Semantic Web is what you're part of if you make your content explicitly machine-readable, especially if you do it with RDF[0]. -- [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_Description_Framework https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_Description_Framework