26 ms·

The Return of the 90s Web

786 points by mxbck 6y ago

dhosek 6y ago
Funny that he started with the claim that the dancing baby gif wasn't coming back. Turns out, it's already back. https://twitter.com/JArmstrongArty/status/1225901929898946561 https://twitter.com/JArmstrongArty/status/122590192989894656...
Animats 6y ago
Webflow is touted as "the new Dreamweaver". Of course, it's "software as a service", about 3x as expensive as basic web hosting.
- hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
  > about 3x as expensive as basic web hosting. Good, that's a bargain IMO. I get way more than 3x the value out of webflow than I do "basic web hosting".
- dvfjsdhgfv 6y ago
  Can you self-host Webflow-generated content?
  - Animats 6y ago
    You have to pay $192/year before you can export what you created.
    - system2 6y ago
      That's very expensive.
usrusr 6y ago
Preloading on button-down, nice detail optimization. It's possible that you have to abort that request, but it will be the rare exception. It's my favorite thing I learned today.
- noisem4ker 6y ago
  See previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23203658 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23203658
purerandomness 6y ago
I recently watched the "Helvetica" documentary that was posted here a few days ago [0], where they briefly mention "Grunge Typography" [1], a seemingly dead-end branch of typography that, for some strange reason, became pretty popular for a short period of time. After some years however, consensus amongst designers formed that what they've created was a pile of illegible garbage, and realized that there was no other way than completely dismiss that branch, go back to the roots, and evolve from a few steps back. I feel the same kind of consensus is slowly forming around ideas like SPAs, client-side rendering and things like CSS-in-JS. We saw the same happen with NoSQL and many other ideas before that. We recently deployed an entire SaaS only using server-side rendering and htmx [2] to give it an SPA-like feel and immediate interactivity where needed. It was a pleasure to develop, it's snappy and we could actually rely on the Browser doing the heavy lifting for things like history, middle click, and not break stuff. I personally highly recommend it and see myself using this approach in many upcoming projects. [0] https://www.hustwit.com/helvetica/ https://www.hustwit.com/helvetica/ [1] https://www.theawl.com/2012/08/the-rise-and-fall-of-grunge-typography/ https://www.theawl.com/2012/08/the-rise-and-fall-of-grunge-t... [2] https://htmx.org/ https://htmx.org/ (formerly "Intercooler")
- dewey 6y ago
  I have fond memories of creating images with Grunge fonts in some pirated copy of Photoshop and then positioning them with HTML tables and Dreamweaver.
  - themodelplumber 6y ago
    Those were good times in a lot of ways! Also I may be an outlier, but IMO grunge as a textural expression still benefits lots of contemporary design projects. In fact if you know how to work within broader principles of design, maybe you stop caring as much about what's current, because that's just one of many outcomes that may or may not be appropriate for the message...
  - binarytox1n 6y ago
    This is how I learned web development. Don't forget photoshopping the glossiest buttons possible. Not sure if that fad was before or after the grunge.
agumonkey 6y ago
swings and roundabouts
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
kickscondor 6y ago
I really like the turbolinks approach - you simply write HTML and then include the script in your head tags. However, I'm still hooked on Markdown. So I am still prerendering HTML - and then doing the routing with Hyperapp. (See https://href.cool/Tapes/Africa https://href.cool/Tapes/Africa for an example - you get a prerendered static HTML page, but it uses JavaScript from there to render the other pages.) The ultimate approach is Beaker Browser though. You can actually just write your whole site in Markdown (/index.md, /posts/batman-review.md, /posts/covid-resources.md) and then write a nice wrapper for them at /.ui/ui.html. This means you can edit posts with the built-in editor - and people can 'view source' to see your original Markdown! It's like going beyond the 90s on an alternate timeline. (A sample of this is this wiki: hyper://1c6d8c9e2bca71b63f5219d668b0886e4ee2814a818ad1ea179632f419ed29c4/. Hit the 'Editor' button to see the Markdown source.)
- swader999 6y ago
  This sounds like a dream.
- pmlnr 6y ago
  I kinda went down the same path to generate my site. I had a static generator, which worked as most static generators, being a standalone program, and moved to having a python script (and it's .venv) in the root folder of my content, that has markdown, that converts it to a HTML.
DoubleGlazing 6y ago
Maybe I'm missing something, the article isn't very clear. One of the reasons why we have front end apps pulling from an API is because it allows for interoperability. The same API that serves data to the web browser can serve that data to mobile apps and to third parties as well. The idea of bringing HTML rendering back on to the server just doesn't seem useful to me.
- Karrot_Kream 6y ago
  That's if you're making an application, sure, but on the web I view all sorts of sites and most of them are just styled text containers, maybe with an optional way to mutate things. HN, Reddit, News, recipes, forums, galleries, these are things I regularly consume that don't need APIs to return content. For applications, like Facebook, it's understandable, but if you don't spend all of your time in Social Media, then you probably are not really using an application.
  - dndvr 6y ago
    You must use old.reddit.com
    - Karrot_Kream 6y ago
      On mobile I just use a client that requests data from the API and renders it for me. On desktop, yes, for now, but I'm in the process of writing views that load faster and don't require a browser.
- bdcravens 6y ago
  You're correct, but for many companies, APIs and multiple interoperable clients are a YAGNI.
- pgm8705 6y ago
  Having both is still an option with minimal effort. In Rails it can be as simple as adding .json to your request and you get the data, otherwise the HTML.
- 6y ago
pgm8705 6y ago
I'm glad this is the case. I've been a Rails developer for close to 10 years now, but 3 or 4 years back I got sucked into the React world. I bought right in and my company quickly adopted the "React on Rails" pattern. Looking back, it was one of the worst professional decisions I've made in my career. Now we're back to server side rendering and StimulusJS on the front-end when needed. Productivity is way up, and developer happiness is way up. With new tools like https://docs.stimulusreflex.com https://docs.stimulusreflex.com and https://cableready.stimulusreflex.com https://cableready.stimulusreflex.com I'm very excited about what can be accomplished with minimal JS. (Note: I still think React is an awesome library! I'm sure there are devs that are super productive with it too. It just wasn't the best fit for me and my company)
- cvshepherd 6y ago
  i've been using nothing but rails for the last 10 years, without missing anything. though had i known that tech like cableready/stimulus was on the horizon, i probably would have missed that. i'm always amazed when i read tech blogs focusing on the complexities, intricacies, and pitfalls of modern day JS development. then i look at the value it brings the visitor/customer, and 99% of the time i'm shaking my head in disbelief.
- wlll 6y ago
  A company I contract to for backend and server stuff made the jump from static HTML to client side rendering with react. They did it because the consulting company they went to receommended it "because it was the future", and I am sure in no small part because that was what the consulting company specialised in. It was the worst decision they have ever made. The site they ended up with was incredibly slow, and given the relatively few pages on the site you never really make for that initial load in time saved later. It's also incredibly hard to write well, requires a special third party service to show anything in Google and is incredibly hard to manage. They don't realise this of course, and are now attempting to solve the management and initial load issues by splitting the app up into three distinct apps. It won't help.
- kingdomcome50 6y ago
  I think the problem here is less about choosing to utilize a client-side rendering implementation and more about choosing to adopt the “SPA” paradigm - where everything is smashed together in a single application bundle. React + React DOM is something like 35kb gzipped. That’s not nothing (don’t forget caching) and pushing the initial render to the client (though not strictly necessary) does incur a bit of a penalty, but I think the benefits outweigh the drawbacks in many more use cases than people give credit. The real problem is two-fold: The first, as I stated above, is wrapping the entire application in a client-side implementation. As many people are pointing out this is often unnecessary. You don’t need to go full “SPA” in order to benefit from the vdom. The second (related) reason is when developers just start adding 3rd party dependencies without considering their impact (or if they are necessary). React is a library, and for the features you get it’s really not that big. If that’s all you are using to add that extra sparkle to some of your pages I firmly believe you are getting the absolute most “bang for your buck”.
JohnBooty 6y ago
I can't wait for server-side rendering to take its place in the sun again. There are many use cases for which a client-side framework like React is eesential. But I feel the vast majority of use cases on the web would be better off with server-side rendering. And... There are issues of ethics here. You are kidding yourself to an extent when you say that you are building a "client-side web app." It is essentially an application targeted at Google's application platform, Chromium. Sure, React (or whatever) runs on FF and Safari too. For now. Maybe not always. They are already second-class citizens on the web. They will probably be second-class citizens of your client-side app unless your team has the resources to devote equal time and resources to non-Chromium browsers. Unless you work in a large shop, you probably don't. Server-side rendering is not always the right choice, but I also do see it as a hedge against Google's, well, hegemony.
- untog 6y ago
  I think there's a lot of truth in what you're saying and the core problem is that we somehow decided there was one correct way to make a web site, and that was to use React. Are you creating a complex webapp? Use React. Go nuts! But are you making a mostly static page (blog, marketing site, whatever)? Then don't use React. It adds entirely unnecessary bloat and complication.
  - gpapilion 6y ago
    The industry has gone back and forth here forever between thick and thin clients, and I view this as an extension. Largely we all use thick clients now (PCs, phones, and things with way too much compute power), and the move to chrome or chromium based browsers made the behavior predictable. The pendulum swinging back is really an acknowledgement that the advantages provided client side rendering, don't always outweigh the networking costs. Data visualization is one of these areas I wonder if the javascript methods provide a real advantage vs server side rendering.
    - zozbot234 6y ago
      Except that phones have only gotten thinner and thinner since the 1990s... And PC's (laptops, at least) are not far behind.
armandososa 6y ago
This is a legitimate question apropos of OP‘s web ring: Who qualifies as a nerd of the 90s? Is it nerds born in the 90s or people who were nerds during the 90s?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
dndvr 6y ago
I did get a chuckle out of a page extolling the virtues of 'html over the wire' asking me if I was 'interested in things like front-end dev and the JAMStack'
waltbosz 6y ago
What I miss most from the early days of the Internet is the content. It was all created with love. My theory is that the high barrier to entry of online publishing kept all but the most determined people from creating content. As a result, the little content that was out there was usually good. With today's monetized blogs, it is often content for content's sake. People don't try, or they write about topics which they are not really interested in, but did just to have a new post. Or often the writing is bad. Maybe today's problem isn't the blogs, but the SEO that puts the crap blogs at the top of the search results. Or maybe I'm misremembering and the old content was crap too, or maybe my standards are higher than they were in my teenage years.
- mtgp1000 6y ago
  I think what you're saying about reduced barriers to entry has lowered the standard of all popular media. It used to be expensive to publish anything - especially the further back in time you go. So classics for example typically represent particularly bright writers, as having something published before the printing press, and widely disseminated, was simply unlikely to happen. But today anyone can create an account on YouTube or stream on twitch and it doesn't matter if the content is of any particular quality or veracity, so long as the common man sees what he wants to see. I think there's a major secondary effect, in that now that we are surrounded by low quality media, the average person's ability to recognize merit in general is lessened.
  - chrisjarvis 6y ago
    The secondary effect you mention is absolutely the case. There is unlimited media and unlimited platforms on which to consume it. "Content" is truly a commodity now. I would like to try to make watching movies/tv a special thing again for myself, as opposed to little more than background noise. I think this will require careful curation and research, rather than just trusting an algorithm.
    - dragandj 6y ago
      Yes, there is unlimited media and content, but the thing is that most of this content is either total crap, or polished content that was too much optimized for the median viewer. There is great, non-polished but authentic content for every niche, but it is very, very difficult to find it. Such content is not a commodity, but unfortunately, it seems that the average content is good enough for the average viewer...
yagodragon 6y ago
I really hope personal blogging becomes popular again!. Speaking of which, I still haven't found a really good alternative to the "horrible" WordPress for blogging. It has: - Integrated API, RSS - Tons of plugins - Accessibility, translations - Easy and powerful editor(Gutenberg) - Comments sections and forms w/ complete ownership and moderation - Easy data imports from multiple platforms. - Users and roles - 100% open source w/ GPL. You own your data - Extremely easy and cheap to host and move around. I love modern tooling and git based workflows for all my project but my "static" 11ty/Gatsby.js blog doesn't provide all these features out of the box. Instead of writing, you end up reimplementing basic cms features.
- movedx 6y ago
  Have you considered something like Ghost? ghost.org
  - yagodragon 6y ago
    Ghost looks great and very polished! For me though, it provides much less out of the box (no built-in comments etc). It's also harder to self host and manage and the hosted service costs 30$/month which is extremely pricey for an indie blog. 3rd party ecosystem for wordpress (plugins/themes) is huge. I can easily extend my blog to an e-commerce store, an online community etc.
    - input_sh 6y ago
      > It's also harder to self host and manage Eh, I disagree. The only difference is that it uses Node instead of PHP. You still hook it up to MySQL/MariaDB/SQLite and you're good to go. Plus I consider its Members feature (https://ghost.org/members/ https://ghost.org/members/) to be a game-changer, though it's powered by Stripe, so you'll have to be in one of 39 countries supported by it to make it work without extensively hacking your theme.
      - yagodragon 6y ago
        That's a big difference. I can't use a cheap shared hosting and managing a VPS (os updates, database backups etc) is too much for a small blog. Node.js is fine but it turns out after all these years, php is still the king in crud,blog,cms type of application, which is the 99% of the websites out there. As for the members feature, wordpress has tons of "membership" plugins. Still though, Ghost landing page for members[0] does a great job explaining why i need this. Excellent design and copywriting [0] https://ghost.org/members/ https://ghost.org/members/
sbussard 6y ago
Social networks are failing us and we want independence and community. The web used to be that, then it turned into a gated gossip community.
ryanmarsh 6y ago
If we’re going back to the 90’s let this be your reminder we still don’t have something for web dev as easy to use as VB6.
- toast0 6y ago
  We no longer have anything for the desktop as easy to use as VB6 (nor for mobile).
  - gmfawcett 6y ago
    Plus ça change. :) I was just reading an article ("APL since 1978", [1]), which recounts the complaints of mainframe programmers when microcomputers were introduced in the mid-80s, because of how much harder it became to design application interfaces: > Worse, the technical skill required to write applications suddenly increased dramatically. You needed to know about networks, how to deal with the poor reliability of shared files on a LAN — or how to construct client/server components to achieve the security, performance, and reliability that you needed. User interfaces, which were so simple on the mainframe, became an absolute nightmare as an endless procession of new GUI frameworks and UI “standards” appeared and then faded away. [1] https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3386319 https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3386319
- jennasys 6y ago
  Anvil has basically created VB6 for the web but uses Python for the code-behind-the-forms. It can't do everything, but on the surface looks like a pretty valiant effort: https://anvil.works/ https://anvil.works/
  - ryanmarsh 6y ago
    That’s nice but JS is the language of the web. Anything that tries to step around it won’t reach critical mass relative to VB on Windows 9x.
- pmlnr 6y ago
  We kind of used to... dreamweaver, when it was still macromedia, was pretty neat.
simias 6y ago
I'm not a web developer but my girlfriend needed a website to show her photography work so I decided to make it for her. It's the simplest thing in the world, basically just three columns with photo thumbnails and the only javascript is some simple image viewer to display the images full screen when you click the thumbnails. It's really, really basic but I was impressed with the feedback I received from it, many people were impressed by how slick and fast it was. And indeed, I went looking for professional photographer websites and indeed, what a huge mess most of them are. Incredibly heavy framework for very basic functionality, splash screens to hide the loading times etc... It's the electron-app syndrome, it's simpler to do that way so who cares if it's like 5 orders of magnitude less efficient than it should be? Just download more RAM and bandwidth. Mine is a bunch of m4 macros used to preprocess static HTML files, and a shell script that generates the thumbnails with image magic. I wonder if I could launch the new fad in the webdev community. What, you still use React? That's so 2019. Try m4 instead, it's web-scale!
- throwawaysbsh 6y ago
  Link?
- throwanem 6y ago
  Some of us still remember the hell of configuring sendmail, you monster.
- aidenn0 6y ago
  Hah, I still have some m4 html macros lying around, it's certainly the quickest way to make HTML less painful.
- abrookewood 6y ago
  Can you give more details? I don't think I've ever heard of M4 before.
  - hedora 6y ago
    You probably already have m4 on your development machine: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/M4_(computer_language) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/M4_(computer_language)
stickfigure 6y ago
This seems to be one developer's wishful thinking, without any evidence presented to back up the assertion. Pointing out "hey, here's a couple websites that do server side rendering" does not a trend make. We're ripping out webflow, if anecdata counts for anything (it doesn't). Webflow occupies the barren middle ground of "too complicated for marketing people, too simple for technical people". I find it much easier to write html than to figure out how to get their UI to make the html I want.
- djohnston 6y ago
  I just hit the same wall with bubble.. it definitely has some impressive attributes but sometimes I just need to see the code. I really hate clicking around looking for descendent nodes in a UI vs just looking at html template
- petepete 6y ago
  GOV.UK is a good example of a mainstream site that's built in the traditional manner. It's actually a collection of hundreds (thousands) of separate services, the vast majority of which are rendered on the server and use JS only where necessary. As there's no advertising or images on most pages they tend to be incredibly fast too.
yedava 6y ago
For a lot of internal corporate web applications, server side rendering is what makes most sense. These applications are always used from browsers on a company provided laptop. You don't need to worry about multiple frontends and "web scale" Back in the day, it used be that internal apps were shitty to use, and had slow service layer code. But once the data got to the view layer, at least the pages rendered fast. Now with proliferation of SPAs, we have shitty user experience, slow backends and slow UI renders.
secondcoming 6y ago
My iPad is 10 years old and there are websites that bring it to its knees, especially mobile.twitter.com links. I don't click them anymore, it's too frustrating. Maybe web devs should be given low-end machines to work on so they can experience what their non-desktop users experience. The whole 'mobile web' distinction really shouldn't need to exist, my iPad isn't a mobile phone from 2005.
- coder543 6y ago
  If your iPad is 10 years old, then it’s an original iPad. The original iPad received its last update 8 years ago. I really enjoyed my launch day original iPad — it was incredible, just because it was such a new experience, but the hardware was severely underpowered even for the time. Laptops from 2010 are probably much better equipped to browse the web today than that 2010 iPad. It just seems very idealistic to expect most websites to cater to a browser that hasn’t received an update in 8 years running on a processor that has a fraction of the power of any Raspberry Pi 2 or above. Modern iPads are served the “real” web by default, further emphasizing why you would benefit from upgrading at least once a decade.
  - jamil7 6y ago
    But what is the great new experience offered by something like twitter’s web site that demands all that new power and brings that machine to it’s knees? What cutting edge features is it offering that it didn’t offer in 2010? Thats kind of what made the web a cool platform, it was backwards compatible by default and could run on all kinds of things.
    - pmlnr 6y ago
      Tracking and data collection. The way the make money. Twitter in 2010 was actively losing money, if I recall correctly. That said... modern frontend that doesn't run proparly on a core 2 intel machine with no adblocking should be massacred.
  - echlebek 6y ago
    A 1 GHz Cortex-8 is a ton of computing power. The proof of this is iOS itself. When you bring the GPU into the mix, it's obviously capable of a lot as an operating system. There are no problems displaying high resolution static content and video content on an iPad. But around the same time, it became fashionable to start rendering static content on the fly, maybe inserting some not-so-static content around it to justify this choice. Add in advertising. And a browser that you might have trouble controlling script execution on. Add in tracking. Remember that story about how eBay fingerprints your browser in part by mapping the open websockets you have? That costs power and cycles. And the cookies have been piling up since the 90s. Speaking of storage, it's now much more common to use localStorage. Now anyone with a website on the internet can store appreciable amounts of stuff on your computer if you visit their website. And they can read and write that storage as much as they want while you're on their site, without regard for your computer's performance. And all of this is just considered normal and regular. This isn't even getting towards abusive behaviour like running a crypto miner in a browser or something. This is just web applications continually expanding their resource entitlements. The web is a great honking tire fire. Many articles and books have been written about this, many of them are summarily dismissed by web developers as ivory tower nonsense. But the trajectory of system requirements for displaying mainly-text documents is growing at an unsustainable pace, and there is eventually going to be some kind of reckoning. I have a $3000 1 year old laptop, and sometimes slack gets so slow I have to kill the browser process and start over again. The issue is not hardware.
bradgessler 6y ago
I’d love to use a search engine that simply didn’t index websites with moderate or excessive amounts of JavaScript, images, and video. You wouldn’t need AMP because it would load quickly, ads would be minimal, and the text content would probably be forced to be higher quality because it would have to stand on its own. Does such a thing exist?
- pp19dd 6y ago
  It'd be so easy for Google (or others) to add that capability in their search, using the pagespeed insights they're now using to rank. Like, "squirrel -amp cumulative_layout_shift:0 total_blocking_time:0"
- hedora 6y ago
  Even better. Blacklist all sites with ads. I’m guessing google will never implement that.
  - Summershard 6y ago
    How would websites create revenue then? People are very unwilling to pay for online articles.
    - system2 6y ago
      Maybe websites should stop spamming junk for SEO and don't rely on clickbait to create revenue? I am very happy to use adblockers and have very little sympathy.
- carldaddy 6y ago
  Maybe https://wiby.me/ https://wiby.me/ ? I love surfing this on my free time.
rudolph9 6y ago
One idea I’ve been thinking about building is sort of a hybrid SSR where you make use of server sent events to continually render more on the page based on the users interaction (most obvious would be scroller). Of course I have yet to investigate how modern browsers render a never ending index.html, how I wouldnsend the client events and correspond them to the existing open original request, how this would scale to multiple hosts behind a load balacer (but maybe that’s getting ahead of my self haha).
- bricej13 6y ago
  That's sorta the idea behind server-rendered Blazor. Components are rendered on the server and passed over to the client via websockets. Unsurprisingly, input lag and scalability can be major obstacles, but I expect it to make large headwinds in enterprise apps.
Havoc 6y ago
I was totally expecting the content of this post to be "return to html leading to JAMstack"
mike503 6y ago
I haven’t even adopted the more modern JAMStack type techniques yet, and now this guy is saying those are old?! I still consider those closer to the holy grail; clients scale indefinitely, servers you still have to pay for.
mafuyu 6y ago
Along these lines, does anyone have any recommendations for a service or framework to create a simple personal site? I just want a basic blog, project pages, and photo gallery. I use Jekyll at the moment to statically generate pages to host on github.io, but frankly, I don't have much webdev experience and I'd rather just have something work out of the box at this point.
- juliend2 6y ago
  I would say: start by doing pure HTML, then progressively work with PHP to include header.php/footer.php on every page. Then create helper functions for a few things you don't wanna repeat. You'll be surprised by how good it feels to know your website from A to Z. This is what I do for my own site: https://www.juliendesrosiers.com/ https://www.juliendesrosiers.com/ . Almost every URL ends with an old-school .php for that very reason lol. But I like the fact that every time i want to modify something, I simply SSH into my dreamhost account and use vim to edit posts and pages. But om your case it could be https://www.panic.com/coda/ https://www.panic.com/coda/ . And if starting from nothing seem scary, you can always start with a basic themeforest theme, or a framework like Bootstrap. Having the html-css already done goes a long way.
  - simonbarker87 6y ago
    This is exactly what I did a few weeks ago after getting fed up of Wordpress for my personal site. Static HTML pages and some php for the header the and the blog homepage. It means I need to write in plain HTML but that’s fine, the only js is prism syntax highlighting.
- astura 6y ago
  WordPress?
- TeddyDD 6y ago
  Hugo is great. It's feature packed static website generator. There is plenty of templates you can use and modify. https://gohugo.io/ https://gohugo.io/
- 6y ago
buboard 6y ago
please don't call it server-side-rendering. The http server was always meant to respond with hypertext content. Serving json is the oddity, not the other way around
- zzo38computer 6y ago
  For document-oriented stuff, you can serve HTML or plain text. For data-oriented stuff, I think that it is not so wrong to serve JSON, CSV, RDF, SQLite database, or whatever format it is, although such things should not be hidden from the user (especially if scripts are disabled); this is independent of whether or not there is also a HTML version of the data (if so, the HTML could be generated either ahead of time or on demand; which is best may depend on the situation).
peterwwillis 6y ago
> at some point our kids might think frosted hair tips are totally cool you shut your face sir! my hair was the BOMB when I was 14!!!
imagetic 6y ago
Good.
dredmorbius 6y ago
Schopenhauer's 19th century essay "On Authorship" has been a personal fave since discovering it last year: Writing for money and reservation of copyright are, at bottom, the ruin of literature. No one writes anything that is worth writing, unless he writes entirely for the sake of his subject. What an inestimable boon it would be, if in every branch of literature there were only a few books, but those excellent! This can never happen, as long as money is to be made by writing. It seems as though the money lay under a curse; for every author degenerates as soon as he begins to put pen to paper in any way for the sake of gain. The best works of the greatest men all come from the time when they had to write for nothing or for very little.... https://www.gutenberg.org/files/10714/10714-h/10714-h.htm#link2H_4_0003 https://www.gutenberg.org/files/10714/10714-h/10714-h.htm#li... Brain Pickings articulates my reasons well, though really, just read the source: https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/01/13/schopenhauer-on-authorship/ https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/01/13/schopenhauer-on-aut...
- wwweston 6y ago
  > What an inestimable boon it would be, if in every branch of literature there were only a few books, but those excellent! This can never happen, as long as money is to be made by writing. Well, we're making progress towards reducing if not eliminating profit through authorship.
- jasondclinton 6y ago
  Yes, the joke is that unemployment benefits are the real Endowment for the Arts. One wonders if we would have a healthier society if those who are capable of creating great art could do so by being freed up from financial constraints.
  - pinkfoot 6y ago
    We would also play better golf. Still keen to subsidise it?
    - jasondclinton 6y ago
      The "Player of Games" by Ian M Banks takes place in a far-future society in which the abundance is so high that many people do pass the time playing games or whatever else enriches their lives. The question is: since we long since passed the point at which most people could work one day a week and maintain the level of abundance that existed in the 1960s, is that the society that we want to live in?
emersonrsantos 6y ago
Serverless is the new CGI
mymythisisthis 6y ago
I want a good webpage; -Clearly written like a Navy manual, -but using well made animated gifs alongside flat pictures, -with a few videos thrown into the mix, that are short and concise, no longer than 3minutes, -and short audio clips to learn to properly pronounce something.
malwarebytess 6y ago
Wow, Hey.com has none of the lag that modern websites have. Is the email client as responsive?
- benhurmarcel 6y ago
  I find the client quite responsive, yes. On login it opens instantly, and interactions feel almost instant to me. But I haven't tried Superhuman to compare, I highly suspect Hey isn't as fast.
- tradesmanhelix 6y ago
  It's created by Basecamp which makes Turbolinks [0], Turbolink iOS [1], and Turbolinks Android (deprecated) [2], so there's a good chance that snappiness you're seeing is due to those awesome tools! (In fact, this Github issue comment [3] seems to confirm that HEY uses Turbolinks.) On a related note, really wish things had gone this direction. Instead, it feels like React, Angular, etc. re-created the backend in the frontend, so now for most apps you essentially have two backends plus one frontend to maintain. I think as soon as our frontends started requiring controllers and routes to work we should have been like, "Hey, wait a minute..." But I guess design folks tend to know JS, so I can see how that combo won. My $0.02 from 5+ years in the industry is that you probably don't need React, but Godspeed if you think you do - just maintain extreme discipline or you'll end up with spaghetti code (esp. if contractors are involved) faster than you can blink. Long-term, I hope things move back to sanity. React and company work OK for some problems, but 95% of websites/webapps can probably get by with either straight HTML/JS/CSS or server-side rendering/templating. [0] https://github.com/turbolinks/turbolinks https://github.com/turbolinks/turbolinks [1] https://github.com/turbolinks/turbolinks-ios https://github.com/turbolinks/turbolinks-ios [2] https://github.com/turbolinks/turbolinks-android https://github.com/turbolinks/turbolinks-android [3] https://github.com/turbolinks/turbolinks-android/issues/111#issuecomment-631617956 https://github.com/turbolinks/turbolinks-android/issues/111#... Edit: Formatting
revskill 6y ago
Actually it depends on the kind of website you'll build. Some years ago, i made an app with Rails and turbolinks and some "tricks" to make ajax work smooth. The first version was built in 6 month, then i rebuilt the second version with React in 3 weeks ! The pain is in refactoring and adding new features as well as speed of development. That's the day i discovered React. The way i develop Rails app is just make api json response to match mocked json on the React frontend, nothing more to think or trick! There's a reason (or many reasons) I and many other chose React (or similar libraries/frameworks) to get the job done.
- cvshepherd 6y ago
  would you mind saying what the main roadblock to more productivity in rails was for you, compared to react?
badsectoracula 6y ago
> Frontpage and Dreamweaver were big in the 90s because of their “What You See Is What You Get” interface. People could set up a website without any coding skills, just by dragging boxes and typing text in them. > > Of course they soon found that there was still source code underneath, you just didn’t see it. And most of the time, that source code was a big heap of auto-generated garbage - it ultimately failed to keep up with the requirements of the modern web. If you do not see the source code it doesn't matter if it is garbage or not or if it is following any "modern web requirements" or not - all it matters is if it does what you expect it to do. Besides, it is a bit of a hypocrisy nowadays to complain about the code underneath a WYSIWYG tool when many web developers use transpilers that target CSS, JavaScript and pretty much all sites rely on dynamically generated and altered HTML that doesn't let you make more sense on the final output than something like Frontpage or Dreamweaver would generate. Sadly the closest thing i could find nowadays to something like a WYSIWYG site editor is Publii[0]. It suffers greatly from the 'developer has a huge screen so they assume everyone has a huge screen' syndrome and i really dislike pretty much all of the themes available for it (everything is too oversized). And it is an Electron app because of course it will be an Electron app despite not needing to be one (it doesn't offer full WYSIWYG functionality, only for the article editor which isn't any more advanced than Windows 95's WordPad and it relies on an external browser to show you the final site). But it does the job (i tried on a new attempt for a dev blog of mine[1]) even if i dislike how oversized everything is. [0] https://getpublii.com/ https://getpublii.com/ [1] http://runtimeterror.com/devlog/ http://runtimeterror.com/devlog/
- CliffStoll 6y ago
  I first hardcoded kleinbottle.com with handwritten html; over 20+years, I've gone through several tools. One by one they've evaporated - Home Page, Front Page, GoLive, Dreamweaver 5. I'm now hobbling along with BlueGriffon.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
pjmlp 6y ago
It never went away, those of us old fashioned devs on Java and .NET stacks, it has been our bread and butter for the last 20 years regarding Web stacks, SSR with some JavaScript on top. I guess what it happening is the newer generations re-discovering that actually it makes sense to generate static content once, instead of redoing it in every client device across the globe.
INTPenis 6y ago
Another point to this, I equate the modern fediverse with all the old message boards. Message boards are still around but it used to be an integral part of web culture. They essentially took over from dial up BBS. But now community boards have moved to cloud services like Discord. The self-hosted boards are still around in the shape of federated ActivityPub instances. It makes a lot more sense than hosting an isolated island of PunBB or vBulletin. I just hope more communities host their own small localized ActivityPub instance, using AP relays to create a vibrant fediverse.
donmb 6y ago
What I can confirm is that old fashioned html tags such as <fieldset> or <iframe> are coming back and are underrated. So much can be done with just plain html.
ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
One of the things I say (when I think some poor bastard has no choice but to listen), is “The September That Never Ended was the best thing to happen to the Web.” That was what changed it from a niche community of geeks to a true “everyman’s town square.” It was also the worst thing to happen to it. It heralded a tsunami of money and God-awful content. Money tends to be a damoclean butterknife. It will spur tremendous growth and energy, and also reduce the moral structure to a septic tank. I’m glad the BLINK tag is dead.
j4yav 6y ago
The indieweb is so great. I ultimately turned back off webmentions though because I was worried about GDPR liability, as well as wondered if people who liked my tweet actually intended to have their name and like appear on my website. My site is otherwise marked up for the indieweb, I've got indieauth working, and it's a cool community.
pointillistic 6y ago
Why people miss the simple solution, off with the ads on with micro-payments. You like the content, pay for it.
qwerty456127 6y ago
This is so adorable. I wish more people and companies were using/designing/serving web sites the way that was meant to be done.
uncletammy 6y ago
I've been counting down the days until it's okay again to use <tables> . I think I have a lot more counting to do ...
- robertoandred 6y ago
  It's never been wrong to use <table> for its intended purpose.
platz 6y ago
i'm getting a ERR_HTTP2_PROTOCOL_ERROR in chrome?
SomeoneFromCA 6y ago
They need to bring back Gopher. It has a good chance to become very hipster today.
- ralls_ebfe 6y ago
  Gopher still exists. There is even a new protocol, which is similar to gopher: gopher://gemini.circumlunar.space
  - SomeoneFromCA 6y ago
    I have actually tried a gopher HN mirror. And it was an interesting experience.
t0ughcritic 6y ago
Won’t work, now there is one search engine and the first page is all ads and all pages are over optimized. No one will see any new sites or blogs generally.
codr7 6y ago
I've been playing around with this for several years now; building more or less elaborate frameworks for server side rendering and dividing the interface into separate pages. I blame Seaside [0] for corrupting me. Never used it to build anything, but once the idea of building the user interface on the server was in my head there was no way back. Though I have to admit I still find JSON really convenient for submissions compared to using fields for everything as it allows massaging the data on the way. Besides that I've found the approach to be a total success. Pages load instantly, bookmarks and back buttons work as expected and most of the application stays on the server. [0] http://www.seaside.st/ http://www.seaside.st/

786 points by mxbck 6y ago

Funny that he started with the claim that the dancing baby gif wasn't coming back. Turns out, it's already back. https://twitter.com/JArmstrongArty/status/1225901929898946561 https://twitter.com/JArmstrongArty/status/122590192989894656...

Animats 6y ago

Webflow is touted as "the new Dreamweaver". Of course, it's "software as a service", about 3x as expensive as basic web hosting.

hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
> about 3x as expensive as basic web hosting. Good, that's a bargain IMO. I get way more than 3x the value out of webflow than I do "basic web hosting".
dvfjsdhgfv 6y ago
Can you self-host Webflow-generated content?
- Animats 6y ago
  You have to pay $192/year before you can export what you created.
  - system2 6y ago
    That's very expensive.

usrusr 6y ago

Preloading on button-down, nice detail optimization. It's possible that you have to abort that request, but it will be the rare exception. It's my favorite thing I learned today.

noisem4ker 6y ago
See previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23203658 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23203658

purerandomness 6y ago

I recently watched the "Helvetica" documentary that was posted here a few days ago [0], where they briefly mention "Grunge Typography" [1], a seemingly dead-end branch of typography that, for some strange reason, became pretty popular for a short period of time. After some years however, consensus amongst designers formed that what they've created was a pile of illegible garbage, and realized that there was no other way than completely dismiss that branch, go back to the roots, and evolve from a few steps back. I feel the same kind of consensus is slowly forming around ideas like SPAs, client-side rendering and things like CSS-in-JS. We saw the same happen with NoSQL and many other ideas before that. We recently deployed an entire SaaS only using server-side rendering and htmx [2] to give it an SPA-like feel and immediate interactivity where needed. It was a pleasure to develop, it's snappy and we could actually rely on the Browser doing the heavy lifting for things like history, middle click, and not break stuff. I personally highly recommend it and see myself using this approach in many upcoming projects. [0] https://www.hustwit.com/helvetica/ https://www.hustwit.com/helvetica/ [1] https://www.theawl.com/2012/08/the-rise-and-fall-of-grunge-typography/ https://www.theawl.com/2012/08/the-rise-and-fall-of-grunge-t... [2] https://htmx.org/ https://htmx.org/ (formerly "Intercooler")

dewey 6y ago
I have fond memories of creating images with Grunge fonts in some pirated copy of Photoshop and then positioning them with HTML tables and Dreamweaver.
- themodelplumber 6y ago
  Those were good times in a lot of ways! Also I may be an outlier, but IMO grunge as a textural expression still benefits lots of contemporary design projects. In fact if you know how to work within broader principles of design, maybe you stop caring as much about what's current, because that's just one of many outcomes that may or may not be appropriate for the message...
- binarytox1n 6y ago
  This is how I learned web development. Don't forget photoshopping the glossiest buttons possible. Not sure if that fad was before or after the grunge.

agumonkey 6y ago

swings and roundabouts

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

kickscondor 6y ago

I really like the turbolinks approach - you simply write HTML and then include the script in your head tags. However, I'm still hooked on Markdown. So I am still prerendering HTML - and then doing the routing with Hyperapp. (See https://href.cool/Tapes/Africa https://href.cool/Tapes/Africa for an example - you get a prerendered static HTML page, but it uses JavaScript from there to render the other pages.) The ultimate approach is Beaker Browser though. You can actually just write your whole site in Markdown (/index.md, /posts/batman-review.md, /posts/covid-resources.md) and then write a nice wrapper for them at /.ui/ui.html. This means you can edit posts with the built-in editor - and people can 'view source' to see your original Markdown! It's like going beyond the 90s on an alternate timeline. (A sample of this is this wiki: hyper://1c6d8c9e2bca71b63f5219d668b0886e4ee2814a818ad1ea179632f419ed29c4/. Hit the 'Editor' button to see the Markdown source.)

swader999 6y ago
This sounds like a dream.
pmlnr 6y ago
I kinda went down the same path to generate my site. I had a static generator, which worked as most static generators, being a standalone program, and moved to having a python script (and it's .venv) in the root folder of my content, that has markdown, that converts it to a HTML.

DoubleGlazing 6y ago

Maybe I'm missing something, the article isn't very clear. One of the reasons why we have front end apps pulling from an API is because it allows for interoperability. The same API that serves data to the web browser can serve that data to mobile apps and to third parties as well. The idea of bringing HTML rendering back on to the server just doesn't seem useful to me.

Karrot_Kream 6y ago
That's if you're making an application, sure, but on the web I view all sorts of sites and most of them are just styled text containers, maybe with an optional way to mutate things. HN, Reddit, News, recipes, forums, galleries, these are things I regularly consume that don't need APIs to return content. For applications, like Facebook, it's understandable, but if you don't spend all of your time in Social Media, then you probably are not really using an application.
- dndvr 6y ago
  You must use old.reddit.com
  - Karrot_Kream 6y ago
    On mobile I just use a client that requests data from the API and renders it for me. On desktop, yes, for now, but I'm in the process of writing views that load faster and don't require a browser.
bdcravens 6y ago
You're correct, but for many companies, APIs and multiple interoperable clients are a YAGNI.
pgm8705 6y ago
Having both is still an option with minimal effort. In Rails it can be as simple as adding .json to your request and you get the data, otherwise the HTML.
6y ago

pgm8705 6y ago

I'm glad this is the case. I've been a Rails developer for close to 10 years now, but 3 or 4 years back I got sucked into the React world. I bought right in and my company quickly adopted the "React on Rails" pattern. Looking back, it was one of the worst professional decisions I've made in my career. Now we're back to server side rendering and StimulusJS on the front-end when needed. Productivity is way up, and developer happiness is way up. With new tools like https://docs.stimulusreflex.com https://docs.stimulusreflex.com and https://cableready.stimulusreflex.com https://cableready.stimulusreflex.com I'm very excited about what can be accomplished with minimal JS. (Note: I still think React is an awesome library! I'm sure there are devs that are super productive with it too. It just wasn't the best fit for me and my company)

cvshepherd 6y ago
i've been using nothing but rails for the last 10 years, without missing anything. though had i known that tech like cableready/stimulus was on the horizon, i probably would have missed that. i'm always amazed when i read tech blogs focusing on the complexities, intricacies, and pitfalls of modern day JS development. then i look at the value it brings the visitor/customer, and 99% of the time i'm shaking my head in disbelief.
wlll 6y ago
A company I contract to for backend and server stuff made the jump from static HTML to client side rendering with react. They did it because the consulting company they went to receommended it "because it was the future", and I am sure in no small part because that was what the consulting company specialised in. It was the worst decision they have ever made. The site they ended up with was incredibly slow, and given the relatively few pages on the site you never really make for that initial load in time saved later. It's also incredibly hard to write well, requires a special third party service to show anything in Google and is incredibly hard to manage. They don't realise this of course, and are now attempting to solve the management and initial load issues by splitting the app up into three distinct apps. It won't help.
kingdomcome50 6y ago
I think the problem here is less about choosing to utilize a client-side rendering implementation and more about choosing to adopt the “SPA” paradigm - where everything is smashed together in a single application bundle. React + React DOM is something like 35kb gzipped. That’s not nothing (don’t forget caching) and pushing the initial render to the client (though not strictly necessary) does incur a bit of a penalty, but I think the benefits outweigh the drawbacks in many more use cases than people give credit. The real problem is two-fold: The first, as I stated above, is wrapping the entire application in a client-side implementation. As many people are pointing out this is often unnecessary. You don’t need to go full “SPA” in order to benefit from the vdom. The second (related) reason is when developers just start adding 3rd party dependencies without considering their impact (or if they are necessary). React is a library, and for the features you get it’s really not that big. If that’s all you are using to add that extra sparkle to some of your pages I firmly believe you are getting the absolute most “bang for your buck”.

JohnBooty 6y ago

I can't wait for server-side rendering to take its place in the sun again. There are many use cases for which a client-side framework like React is eesential. But I feel the vast majority of use cases on the web would be better off with server-side rendering. And... There are issues of ethics here. You are kidding yourself to an extent when you say that you are building a "client-side web app." It is essentially an application targeted at Google's application platform, Chromium. Sure, React (or whatever) runs on FF and Safari too. For now. Maybe not always. They are already second-class citizens on the web. They will probably be second-class citizens of your client-side app unless your team has the resources to devote equal time and resources to non-Chromium browsers. Unless you work in a large shop, you probably don't. Server-side rendering is not always the right choice, but I also do see it as a hedge against Google's, well, hegemony.

untog 6y ago
I think there's a lot of truth in what you're saying and the core problem is that we somehow decided there was one correct way to make a web site, and that was to use React. Are you creating a complex webapp? Use React. Go nuts! But are you making a mostly static page (blog, marketing site, whatever)? Then don't use React. It adds entirely unnecessary bloat and complication.
- gpapilion 6y ago
  The industry has gone back and forth here forever between thick and thin clients, and I view this as an extension. Largely we all use thick clients now (PCs, phones, and things with way too much compute power), and the move to chrome or chromium based browsers made the behavior predictable. The pendulum swinging back is really an acknowledgement that the advantages provided client side rendering, don't always outweigh the networking costs. Data visualization is one of these areas I wonder if the javascript methods provide a real advantage vs server side rendering.
  - zozbot234 6y ago
    Except that phones have only gotten thinner and thinner since the 1990s... And PC's (laptops, at least) are not far behind.

armandososa 6y ago

This is a legitimate question apropos of OP‘s web ring: Who qualifies as a nerd of the 90s? Is it nerds born in the 90s or people who were nerds during the 90s?

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

dndvr 6y ago

I did get a chuckle out of a page extolling the virtues of 'html over the wire' asking me if I was 'interested in things like front-end dev and the JAMStack'

waltbosz 6y ago

What I miss most from the early days of the Internet is the content. It was all created with love. My theory is that the high barrier to entry of online publishing kept all but the most determined people from creating content. As a result, the little content that was out there was usually good. With today's monetized blogs, it is often content for content's sake. People don't try, or they write about topics which they are not really interested in, but did just to have a new post. Or often the writing is bad. Maybe today's problem isn't the blogs, but the SEO that puts the crap blogs at the top of the search results. Or maybe I'm misremembering and the old content was crap too, or maybe my standards are higher than they were in my teenage years.

mtgp1000 6y ago
I think what you're saying about reduced barriers to entry has lowered the standard of all popular media. It used to be expensive to publish anything - especially the further back in time you go. So classics for example typically represent particularly bright writers, as having something published before the printing press, and widely disseminated, was simply unlikely to happen. But today anyone can create an account on YouTube or stream on twitch and it doesn't matter if the content is of any particular quality or veracity, so long as the common man sees what he wants to see. I think there's a major secondary effect, in that now that we are surrounded by low quality media, the average person's ability to recognize merit in general is lessened.
- chrisjarvis 6y ago
  The secondary effect you mention is absolutely the case. There is unlimited media and unlimited platforms on which to consume it. "Content" is truly a commodity now. I would like to try to make watching movies/tv a special thing again for myself, as opposed to little more than background noise. I think this will require careful curation and research, rather than just trusting an algorithm.
  - dragandj 6y ago
    Yes, there is unlimited media and content, but the thing is that most of this content is either total crap, or polished content that was too much optimized for the median viewer. There is great, non-polished but authentic content for every niche, but it is very, very difficult to find it. Such content is not a commodity, but unfortunately, it seems that the average content is good enough for the average viewer...

yagodragon 6y ago

I really hope personal blogging becomes popular again!. Speaking of which, I still haven't found a really good alternative to the "horrible" WordPress for blogging. It has: - Integrated API, RSS - Tons of plugins - Accessibility, translations - Easy and powerful editor(Gutenberg) - Comments sections and forms w/ complete ownership and moderation - Easy data imports from multiple platforms. - Users and roles - 100% open source w/ GPL. You own your data - Extremely easy and cheap to host and move around. I love modern tooling and git based workflows for all my project but my "static" 11ty/Gatsby.js blog doesn't provide all these features out of the box. Instead of writing, you end up reimplementing basic cms features.

movedx 6y ago
Have you considered something like Ghost? ghost.org
- yagodragon 6y ago
  Ghost looks great and very polished! For me though, it provides much less out of the box (no built-in comments etc). It's also harder to self host and manage and the hosted service costs 30$/month which is extremely pricey for an indie blog. 3rd party ecosystem for wordpress (plugins/themes) is huge. I can easily extend my blog to an e-commerce store, an online community etc.
  - input_sh 6y ago
    > It's also harder to self host and manage Eh, I disagree. The only difference is that it uses Node instead of PHP. You still hook it up to MySQL/MariaDB/SQLite and you're good to go. Plus I consider its Members feature (https://ghost.org/members/ https://ghost.org/members/) to be a game-changer, though it's powered by Stripe, so you'll have to be in one of 39 countries supported by it to make it work without extensively hacking your theme.
    - yagodragon 6y ago
      That's a big difference. I can't use a cheap shared hosting and managing a VPS (os updates, database backups etc) is too much for a small blog. Node.js is fine but it turns out after all these years, php is still the king in crud,blog,cms type of application, which is the 99% of the websites out there. As for the members feature, wordpress has tons of "membership" plugins. Still though, Ghost landing page for members[0] does a great job explaining why i need this. Excellent design and copywriting [0] https://ghost.org/members/ https://ghost.org/members/

sbussard 6y ago

Social networks are failing us and we want independence and community. The web used to be that, then it turned into a gated gossip community.

ryanmarsh 6y ago

If we’re going back to the 90’s let this be your reminder we still don’t have something for web dev as easy to use as VB6.

toast0 6y ago
We no longer have anything for the desktop as easy to use as VB6 (nor for mobile).
- gmfawcett 6y ago
  Plus ça change. :) I was just reading an article ("APL since 1978", [1]), which recounts the complaints of mainframe programmers when microcomputers were introduced in the mid-80s, because of how much harder it became to design application interfaces: > Worse, the technical skill required to write applications suddenly increased dramatically. You needed to know about networks, how to deal with the poor reliability of shared files on a LAN — or how to construct client/server components to achieve the security, performance, and reliability that you needed. User interfaces, which were so simple on the mainframe, became an absolute nightmare as an endless procession of new GUI frameworks and UI “standards” appeared and then faded away. [1] https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3386319 https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3386319
jennasys 6y ago
Anvil has basically created VB6 for the web but uses Python for the code-behind-the-forms. It can't do everything, but on the surface looks like a pretty valiant effort: https://anvil.works/ https://anvil.works/
- ryanmarsh 6y ago
  That’s nice but JS is the language of the web. Anything that tries to step around it won’t reach critical mass relative to VB on Windows 9x.
pmlnr 6y ago
We kind of used to... dreamweaver, when it was still macromedia, was pretty neat.

simias 6y ago

I'm not a web developer but my girlfriend needed a website to show her photography work so I decided to make it for her. It's the simplest thing in the world, basically just three columns with photo thumbnails and the only javascript is some simple image viewer to display the images full screen when you click the thumbnails. It's really, really basic but I was impressed with the feedback I received from it, many people were impressed by how slick and fast it was. And indeed, I went looking for professional photographer websites and indeed, what a huge mess most of them are. Incredibly heavy framework for very basic functionality, splash screens to hide the loading times etc... It's the electron-app syndrome, it's simpler to do that way so who cares if it's like 5 orders of magnitude less efficient than it should be? Just download more RAM and bandwidth. Mine is a bunch of m4 macros used to preprocess static HTML files, and a shell script that generates the thumbnails with image magic. I wonder if I could launch the new fad in the webdev community. What, you still use React? That's so 2019. Try m4 instead, it's web-scale!

throwawaysbsh 6y ago
Link?
throwanem 6y ago
Some of us still remember the hell of configuring sendmail, you monster.
aidenn0 6y ago
Hah, I still have some m4 html macros lying around, it's certainly the quickest way to make HTML less painful.
abrookewood 6y ago
Can you give more details? I don't think I've ever heard of M4 before.
- hedora 6y ago
  You probably already have m4 on your development machine: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/M4_(computer_language) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/M4_(computer_language)

stickfigure 6y ago

This seems to be one developer's wishful thinking, without any evidence presented to back up the assertion. Pointing out "hey, here's a couple websites that do server side rendering" does not a trend make. We're ripping out webflow, if anecdata counts for anything (it doesn't). Webflow occupies the barren middle ground of "too complicated for marketing people, too simple for technical people". I find it much easier to write html than to figure out how to get their UI to make the html I want.

djohnston 6y ago
I just hit the same wall with bubble.. it definitely has some impressive attributes but sometimes I just need to see the code. I really hate clicking around looking for descendent nodes in a UI vs just looking at html template
petepete 6y ago
GOV.UK is a good example of a mainstream site that's built in the traditional manner. It's actually a collection of hundreds (thousands) of separate services, the vast majority of which are rendered on the server and use JS only where necessary. As there's no advertising or images on most pages they tend to be incredibly fast too.

yedava 6y ago

For a lot of internal corporate web applications, server side rendering is what makes most sense. These applications are always used from browsers on a company provided laptop. You don't need to worry about multiple frontends and "web scale" Back in the day, it used be that internal apps were shitty to use, and had slow service layer code. But once the data got to the view layer, at least the pages rendered fast. Now with proliferation of SPAs, we have shitty user experience, slow backends and slow UI renders.

secondcoming 6y ago

My iPad is 10 years old and there are websites that bring it to its knees, especially mobile.twitter.com links. I don't click them anymore, it's too frustrating. Maybe web devs should be given low-end machines to work on so they can experience what their non-desktop users experience. The whole 'mobile web' distinction really shouldn't need to exist, my iPad isn't a mobile phone from 2005.

coder543 6y ago
If your iPad is 10 years old, then it’s an original iPad. The original iPad received its last update 8 years ago. I really enjoyed my launch day original iPad — it was incredible, just because it was such a new experience, but the hardware was severely underpowered even for the time. Laptops from 2010 are probably much better equipped to browse the web today than that 2010 iPad. It just seems very idealistic to expect most websites to cater to a browser that hasn’t received an update in 8 years running on a processor that has a fraction of the power of any Raspberry Pi 2 or above. Modern iPads are served the “real” web by default, further emphasizing why you would benefit from upgrading at least once a decade.
- jamil7 6y ago
  But what is the great new experience offered by something like twitter’s web site that demands all that new power and brings that machine to it’s knees? What cutting edge features is it offering that it didn’t offer in 2010? Thats kind of what made the web a cool platform, it was backwards compatible by default and could run on all kinds of things.
  - pmlnr 6y ago
    Tracking and data collection. The way the make money. Twitter in 2010 was actively losing money, if I recall correctly. That said... modern frontend that doesn't run proparly on a core 2 intel machine with no adblocking should be massacred.
- echlebek 6y ago
  A 1 GHz Cortex-8 is a ton of computing power. The proof of this is iOS itself. When you bring the GPU into the mix, it's obviously capable of a lot as an operating system. There are no problems displaying high resolution static content and video content on an iPad. But around the same time, it became fashionable to start rendering static content on the fly, maybe inserting some not-so-static content around it to justify this choice. Add in advertising. And a browser that you might have trouble controlling script execution on. Add in tracking. Remember that story about how eBay fingerprints your browser in part by mapping the open websockets you have? That costs power and cycles. And the cookies have been piling up since the 90s. Speaking of storage, it's now much more common to use localStorage. Now anyone with a website on the internet can store appreciable amounts of stuff on your computer if you visit their website. And they can read and write that storage as much as they want while you're on their site, without regard for your computer's performance. And all of this is just considered normal and regular. This isn't even getting towards abusive behaviour like running a crypto miner in a browser or something. This is just web applications continually expanding their resource entitlements. The web is a great honking tire fire. Many articles and books have been written about this, many of them are summarily dismissed by web developers as ivory tower nonsense. But the trajectory of system requirements for displaying mainly-text documents is growing at an unsustainable pace, and there is eventually going to be some kind of reckoning. I have a $3000 1 year old laptop, and sometimes slack gets so slow I have to kill the browser process and start over again. The issue is not hardware.

bradgessler 6y ago

I’d love to use a search engine that simply didn’t index websites with moderate or excessive amounts of JavaScript, images, and video. You wouldn’t need AMP because it would load quickly, ads would be minimal, and the text content would probably be forced to be higher quality because it would have to stand on its own. Does such a thing exist?

pp19dd 6y ago
It'd be so easy for Google (or others) to add that capability in their search, using the pagespeed insights they're now using to rank. Like, "squirrel -amp cumulative_layout_shift:0 total_blocking_time:0"
hedora 6y ago
Even better. Blacklist all sites with ads. I’m guessing google will never implement that.
- Summershard 6y ago
  How would websites create revenue then? People are very unwilling to pay for online articles.
  - system2 6y ago
    Maybe websites should stop spamming junk for SEO and don't rely on clickbait to create revenue? I am very happy to use adblockers and have very little sympathy.
carldaddy 6y ago
Maybe https://wiby.me/ https://wiby.me/ ? I love surfing this on my free time.

rudolph9 6y ago

One idea I’ve been thinking about building is sort of a hybrid SSR where you make use of server sent events to continually render more on the page based on the users interaction (most obvious would be scroller). Of course I have yet to investigate how modern browsers render a never ending index.html, how I wouldnsend the client events and correspond them to the existing open original request, how this would scale to multiple hosts behind a load balacer (but maybe that’s getting ahead of my self haha).

bricej13 6y ago
That's sorta the idea behind server-rendered Blazor. Components are rendered on the server and passed over to the client via websockets. Unsurprisingly, input lag and scalability can be major obstacles, but I expect it to make large headwinds in enterprise apps.

Havoc 6y ago

I was totally expecting the content of this post to be "return to html leading to JAMstack"

mike503 6y ago

I haven’t even adopted the more modern JAMStack type techniques yet, and now this guy is saying those are old?! I still consider those closer to the holy grail; clients scale indefinitely, servers you still have to pay for.

mafuyu 6y ago

Along these lines, does anyone have any recommendations for a service or framework to create a simple personal site? I just want a basic blog, project pages, and photo gallery. I use Jekyll at the moment to statically generate pages to host on github.io, but frankly, I don't have much webdev experience and I'd rather just have something work out of the box at this point.

juliend2 6y ago
I would say: start by doing pure HTML, then progressively work with PHP to include header.php/footer.php on every page. Then create helper functions for a few things you don't wanna repeat. You'll be surprised by how good it feels to know your website from A to Z. This is what I do for my own site: https://www.juliendesrosiers.com/ https://www.juliendesrosiers.com/ . Almost every URL ends with an old-school .php for that very reason lol. But I like the fact that every time i want to modify something, I simply SSH into my dreamhost account and use vim to edit posts and pages. But om your case it could be https://www.panic.com/coda/ https://www.panic.com/coda/ . And if starting from nothing seem scary, you can always start with a basic themeforest theme, or a framework like Bootstrap. Having the html-css already done goes a long way.
- simonbarker87 6y ago
  This is exactly what I did a few weeks ago after getting fed up of Wordpress for my personal site. Static HTML pages and some php for the header the and the blog homepage. It means I need to write in plain HTML but that’s fine, the only js is prism syntax highlighting.
astura 6y ago
WordPress?
TeddyDD 6y ago
Hugo is great. It's feature packed static website generator. There is plenty of templates you can use and modify. https://gohugo.io/ https://gohugo.io/
6y ago

buboard 6y ago

please don't call it server-side-rendering. The http server was always meant to respond with hypertext content. Serving json is the oddity, not the other way around

zzo38computer 6y ago
For document-oriented stuff, you can serve HTML or plain text. For data-oriented stuff, I think that it is not so wrong to serve JSON, CSV, RDF, SQLite database, or whatever format it is, although such things should not be hidden from the user (especially if scripts are disabled); this is independent of whether or not there is also a HTML version of the data (if so, the HTML could be generated either ahead of time or on demand; which is best may depend on the situation).

peterwwillis 6y ago

> at some point our kids might think frosted hair tips are totally cool you shut your face sir! my hair was the BOMB when I was 14!!!

imagetic 6y ago

Good.

dredmorbius 6y ago

Schopenhauer's 19th century essay "On Authorship" has been a personal fave since discovering it last year: Writing for money and reservation of copyright are, at bottom, the ruin of literature. No one writes anything that is worth writing, unless he writes entirely for the sake of his subject. What an inestimable boon it would be, if in every branch of literature there were only a few books, but those excellent! This can never happen, as long as money is to be made by writing. It seems as though the money lay under a curse; for every author degenerates as soon as he begins to put pen to paper in any way for the sake of gain. The best works of the greatest men all come from the time when they had to write for nothing or for very little.... https://www.gutenberg.org/files/10714/10714-h/10714-h.htm#link2H_4_0003 https://www.gutenberg.org/files/10714/10714-h/10714-h.htm#li... Brain Pickings articulates my reasons well, though really, just read the source: https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/01/13/schopenhauer-on-authorship/ https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/01/13/schopenhauer-on-aut...

wwweston 6y ago
> What an inestimable boon it would be, if in every branch of literature there were only a few books, but those excellent! This can never happen, as long as money is to be made by writing. Well, we're making progress towards reducing if not eliminating profit through authorship.
jasondclinton 6y ago
Yes, the joke is that unemployment benefits are the real Endowment for the Arts. One wonders if we would have a healthier society if those who are capable of creating great art could do so by being freed up from financial constraints.
- pinkfoot 6y ago
  We would also play better golf. Still keen to subsidise it?
  - jasondclinton 6y ago
    The "Player of Games" by Ian M Banks takes place in a far-future society in which the abundance is so high that many people do pass the time playing games or whatever else enriches their lives. The question is: since we long since passed the point at which most people could work one day a week and maintain the level of abundance that existed in the 1960s, is that the society that we want to live in?

emersonrsantos 6y ago

Serverless is the new CGI

mymythisisthis 6y ago

I want a good webpage; -Clearly written like a Navy manual, -but using well made animated gifs alongside flat pictures, -with a few videos thrown into the mix, that are short and concise, no longer than 3minutes, -and short audio clips to learn to properly pronounce something.

malwarebytess 6y ago

Wow, Hey.com has none of the lag that modern websites have. Is the email client as responsive?

benhurmarcel 6y ago
I find the client quite responsive, yes. On login it opens instantly, and interactions feel almost instant to me. But I haven't tried Superhuman to compare, I highly suspect Hey isn't as fast.
tradesmanhelix 6y ago
It's created by Basecamp which makes Turbolinks [0], Turbolink iOS [1], and Turbolinks Android (deprecated) [2], so there's a good chance that snappiness you're seeing is due to those awesome tools! (In fact, this Github issue comment [3] seems to confirm that HEY uses Turbolinks.) On a related note, really wish things had gone this direction. Instead, it feels like React, Angular, etc. re-created the backend in the frontend, so now for most apps you essentially have two backends plus one frontend to maintain. I think as soon as our frontends started requiring controllers and routes to work we should have been like, "Hey, wait a minute..." But I guess design folks tend to know JS, so I can see how that combo won. My $0.02 from 5+ years in the industry is that you probably don't need React, but Godspeed if you think you do - just maintain extreme discipline or you'll end up with spaghetti code (esp. if contractors are involved) faster than you can blink. Long-term, I hope things move back to sanity. React and company work OK for some problems, but 95% of websites/webapps can probably get by with either straight HTML/JS/CSS or server-side rendering/templating. [0] https://github.com/turbolinks/turbolinks https://github.com/turbolinks/turbolinks [1] https://github.com/turbolinks/turbolinks-ios https://github.com/turbolinks/turbolinks-ios [2] https://github.com/turbolinks/turbolinks-android https://github.com/turbolinks/turbolinks-android [3] https://github.com/turbolinks/turbolinks-android/issues/111#issuecomment-631617956 https://github.com/turbolinks/turbolinks-android/issues/111#... Edit: Formatting

revskill 6y ago

Actually it depends on the kind of website you'll build. Some years ago, i made an app with Rails and turbolinks and some "tricks" to make ajax work smooth. The first version was built in 6 month, then i rebuilt the second version with React in 3 weeks ! The pain is in refactoring and adding new features as well as speed of development. That's the day i discovered React. The way i develop Rails app is just make api json response to match mocked json on the React frontend, nothing more to think or trick! There's a reason (or many reasons) I and many other chose React (or similar libraries/frameworks) to get the job done.

cvshepherd 6y ago
would you mind saying what the main roadblock to more productivity in rails was for you, compared to react?

badsectoracula 6y ago

> Frontpage and Dreamweaver were big in the 90s because of their “What You See Is What You Get” interface. People could set up a website without any coding skills, just by dragging boxes and typing text in them. > > Of course they soon found that there was still source code underneath, you just didn’t see it. And most of the time, that source code was a big heap of auto-generated garbage - it ultimately failed to keep up with the requirements of the modern web. If you do not see the source code it doesn't matter if it is garbage or not or if it is following any "modern web requirements" or not - all it matters is if it does what you expect it to do. Besides, it is a bit of a hypocrisy nowadays to complain about the code underneath a WYSIWYG tool when many web developers use transpilers that target CSS, JavaScript and pretty much all sites rely on dynamically generated and altered HTML that doesn't let you make more sense on the final output than something like Frontpage or Dreamweaver would generate. Sadly the closest thing i could find nowadays to something like a WYSIWYG site editor is Publii[0]. It suffers greatly from the 'developer has a huge screen so they assume everyone has a huge screen' syndrome and i really dislike pretty much all of the themes available for it (everything is too oversized). And it is an Electron app because of course it will be an Electron app despite not needing to be one (it doesn't offer full WYSIWYG functionality, only for the article editor which isn't any more advanced than Windows 95's WordPad and it relies on an external browser to show you the final site). But it does the job (i tried on a new attempt for a dev blog of mine[1]) even if i dislike how oversized everything is. [0] https://getpublii.com/ https://getpublii.com/ [1] http://runtimeterror.com/devlog/ http://runtimeterror.com/devlog/

CliffStoll 6y ago
I first hardcoded kleinbottle.com with handwritten html; over 20+years, I've gone through several tools. One by one they've evaporated - Home Page, Front Page, GoLive, Dreamweaver 5. I'm now hobbling along with BlueGriffon.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

pjmlp 6y ago

It never went away, those of us old fashioned devs on Java and .NET stacks, it has been our bread and butter for the last 20 years regarding Web stacks, SSR with some JavaScript on top. I guess what it happening is the newer generations re-discovering that actually it makes sense to generate static content once, instead of redoing it in every client device across the globe.

INTPenis 6y ago

Another point to this, I equate the modern fediverse with all the old message boards. Message boards are still around but it used to be an integral part of web culture. They essentially took over from dial up BBS. But now community boards have moved to cloud services like Discord. The self-hosted boards are still around in the shape of federated ActivityPub instances. It makes a lot more sense than hosting an isolated island of PunBB or vBulletin. I just hope more communities host their own small localized ActivityPub instance, using AP relays to create a vibrant fediverse.

donmb 6y ago

What I can confirm is that old fashioned html tags such as <fieldset> or <iframe> are coming back and are underrated. So much can be done with just plain html.

ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago

One of the things I say (when I think some poor bastard has no choice but to listen), is “The September That Never Ended was the best thing to happen to the Web.” That was what changed it from a niche community of geeks to a true “everyman’s town square.” It was also the worst thing to happen to it. It heralded a tsunami of money and God-awful content. Money tends to be a damoclean butterknife. It will spur tremendous growth and energy, and also reduce the moral structure to a septic tank. I’m glad the BLINK tag is dead.

j4yav 6y ago

The indieweb is so great. I ultimately turned back off webmentions though because I was worried about GDPR liability, as well as wondered if people who liked my tweet actually intended to have their name and like appear on my website. My site is otherwise marked up for the indieweb, I've got indieauth working, and it's a cool community.

pointillistic 6y ago

Why people miss the simple solution, off with the ads on with micro-payments. You like the content, pay for it.

qwerty456127 6y ago

This is so adorable. I wish more people and companies were using/designing/serving web sites the way that was meant to be done.

uncletammy 6y ago

I've been counting down the days until it's okay again to use <tables> . I think I have a lot more counting to do ...

robertoandred 6y ago
It's never been wrong to use <table> for its intended purpose.

platz 6y ago

i'm getting a ERR_HTTP2_PROTOCOL_ERROR in chrome?

SomeoneFromCA 6y ago

They need to bring back Gopher. It has a good chance to become very hipster today.

ralls_ebfe 6y ago
Gopher still exists. There is even a new protocol, which is similar to gopher: gopher://gemini.circumlunar.space
- SomeoneFromCA 6y ago
  I have actually tried a gopher HN mirror. And it was an interesting experience.

t0ughcritic 6y ago

Won’t work, now there is one search engine and the first page is all ads and all pages are over optimized. No one will see any new sites or blogs generally.

codr7 6y ago

I've been playing around with this for several years now; building more or less elaborate frameworks for server side rendering and dividing the interface into separate pages. I blame Seaside [0] for corrupting me. Never used it to build anything, but once the idea of building the user interface on the server was in my head there was no way back. Though I have to admit I still find JSON really convenient for submissions compared to using fields for everything as it allows massaging the data on the way. Besides that I've found the approach to be a total success. Pages load instantly, bookmarks and back buttons work as expected and most of the application stays on the server. [0] http://www.seaside.st/ http://www.seaside.st/