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Ask HN: Low Fidelity Web Development

Having been on vacation for two weeks with nothing but a regular pixel 3 and an unreliable 4G I realised that the mobile web is really an absolute disaster. I'm surprised that we tolerate it, in its current state. Are there any good books or blogs on best practices of developing low fidelity websites geared towards people in the developing world, or those with slow connections, and smaller, low power devices and so forth. Ideally, something that begins with first principles and then builds upon that with suggested solutions. Thanks

crate_barre 5y ago
One thing you can do is use dev tools (chrome dev tools) and throttle your bandwidth down to 3g. Build with that constraint and you should be good.
- 5350-uiop-1130 5y ago
  thank you, good idea
cenazoic 5y ago
You might take a look at how the Low-Tech Magazine site is served and designed: https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/about.html https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/about.html
- 5350-uiop-1130 5y ago
  thanks, very cool!
carlos_rpn 5y ago
The best I could find were this http://www.aptivate.org/webguidelines/TopTen.html#:~:text=Design%20your%20pages%20to%20load,is%20the%20maximum%20page%20size.&text=Good%20design%20is%20possible%20without,turned%20off%20in%20the%20browser http://www.aptivate.org/webguidelines/TopTen.html#:~:text=De.... and some book from 2007.
- 5350-uiop-1130 5y ago
  thank you
clorohk 5y ago
It’s actually fairly simple I think, but will probably lead you away from most modern client-side JS frameworks. - render the website on the server (with PHP, Ruby, JS, Java, whatever you’re comfortable with) - deliver HTML and CSS only as far as possible - reduce JS to a minimum and stick to raw JS where possible (or use simple libraries like jQuery) - use native fonts wherever possible - rely on as few third party elements as possible (chats, popups, etc). You can’t control what they are doing/loading. Very unsexy way of doing web development but worked for me anytime I had to do a project for a client. Here’s a website of mine where I pushed my approach to the limit: https://www.pinhok.com/ https://www.pinhok.com/ (and yes, you could still produce nice designed websites with this approach, wasn’t the main target for me for this website for now)
forgotmypw17 5y ago
Keep using that device and build your sites to work with it. Consider also older browsers. Netscape 3.04Gold is one of the best JS linters I've ever used. Restrict yourself to HTML3 and enhance progressively from there. If you're not too squeamish about domain names you visit, you can see what that may look like from the link in my profile. (Works in almost every post-1995 browser, with JS and without, and on slow connections.)

crate_barre 5y ago

One thing you can do is use dev tools (chrome dev tools) and throttle your bandwidth down to 3g. Build with that constraint and you should be good.

5350-uiop-1130 5y ago
thank you, good idea

cenazoic 5y ago

You might take a look at how the Low-Tech Magazine site is served and designed: https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/about.html https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/about.html

5350-uiop-1130 5y ago
thanks, very cool!

carlos_rpn 5y ago

The best I could find were this http://www.aptivate.org/webguidelines/TopTen.html#:~:text=Design%20your%20pages%20to%20load,is%20the%20maximum%20page%20size.&text=Good%20design%20is%20possible%20without,turned%20off%20in%20the%20browser http://www.aptivate.org/webguidelines/TopTen.html#:~:text=De.... and some book from 2007.

5350-uiop-1130 5y ago
thank you

clorohk 5y ago

It’s actually fairly simple I think, but will probably lead you away from most modern client-side JS frameworks. - render the website on the server (with PHP, Ruby, JS, Java, whatever you’re comfortable with) - deliver HTML and CSS only as far as possible - reduce JS to a minimum and stick to raw JS where possible (or use simple libraries like jQuery) - use native fonts wherever possible - rely on as few third party elements as possible (chats, popups, etc). You can’t control what they are doing/loading. Very unsexy way of doing web development but worked for me anytime I had to do a project for a client. Here’s a website of mine where I pushed my approach to the limit: https://www.pinhok.com/ https://www.pinhok.com/ (and yes, you could still produce nice designed websites with this approach, wasn’t the main target for me for this website for now)

forgotmypw17 5y ago

Keep using that device and build your sites to work with it. Consider also older browsers. Netscape 3.04Gold is one of the best JS linters I've ever used. Restrict yourself to HTML3 and enhance progressively from there. If you're not too squeamish about domain names you visit, you can see what that may look like from the link in my profile. (Works in almost every post-1995 browser, with JS and without, and on slow connections.)