12 ms·

In defence of the boring web

243 points by Pseudomanifold 5y ago

cblconfederate 5y ago
That's a blog, not 'the web'
- zinekeller 5y ago
  > That's a blog, not 'the web' The original web as envisioned by Tim Berners-Lee is basically a collection of internetworked and interconnected documents, which a blog is definitely a part of it. Blame Google's ChromeOS ambitions (especially pre-Android integration) for opening the Pandora's Box of WebApps.
  - jasode 5y ago
    >Blame Google's ChromeOS ambitions (especially pre-Android integration) for opening the Pandora's Box of WebApps. Chrome OS is 2011 (first announced 2009). But before that, lots of people wanted the power of so-called "web apps" in the 1990s as we can see from various technologies getting introduced. And some even before Google incorporated in 1998: - ~1995 Sun Java plugin for browsers - ~1995 Netscape Navigator added Javascript - ~1996 Macromedia Flash plugin - ~1999 Microsoft IE XMLHttpRequest() function to fetch dynamic data - ... many others I forgot In 1998, I was able to order airline tickets on the internet for the first time on US Air and Southwest Airlines websites. In 1996, Mapquest had online maps to calculate driving directions. At this early stage, we're already past the "world wide web is only static documents" idea.
    - kingcharles 5y ago
      I built a "Google Docs" in 1997 using Java applets (couldn't raise funds, too early). And HoTMaiL had launched the previous year, bringing email to the web, which is certainly one of the closest things I can think of to the first "web app". WikiWikiWeb launched in early 1995. I'm trying to think what could classify as the first "web app"? I was on the Web in 1993 and there wasn't much of any use on there. Writing web apps was hard because there were no tools for it. I ended up writing most of my back end code in C. Which sounds crazy until I realize I'm writing it all in C# now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiWikiWeb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiWikiWeb
  - chasd00 5y ago
    To me, it was cookies that opened the pandora's box of webapps. Cookies are what made user sessions, shopping carts, and everything else possible.
    - ComradePhil 5y ago
      We could have built everything we have without cookies. Start a session and pass the session id back to all the links for that user and go fom there. So, instead of the Cookie header, you'd have the same information in the GET/POST parameters.
      - dsQTbR7Y5mRHnZv 5y ago
        Wouldn't the average user lose their session when closing the browser or navigating away in that case?
cageface 5y ago
It’s good advice to use the simplest tool that gets the job done. I like sites like this too. But let’s not jump from this to the conclusion that everything on the web should be built this way. There’s a place for things like Figma too.
- nesarkvechnep 5y ago
  Maybe Figma should've been a desktop app.
  - cageface 5y ago
    Being a web app that runs everywhere and is always up to date is a big part of Figma’s success. They’ve already crushed a very strong native desktop competitor.
  - wbobeirne 5y ago
    There was Sketch before Figma, and it was great... if you were running macOS. Then Figma ate its lunch because they were able to support viewing and editing on every platform, and didn't require downloading and installing an application just to review and comment on designs. Those advantages are only possible by either a) having a massive engineering team that can build applications for every device and a lightweight web app or b) building for the web.
z3t4 5y ago
> I am not using JavaScript, except for a minimal installation of MathJax to be able to render equations in blog posts (and I know of no other simple way to accomplish this goal). You can pre-render svg images
- ectopod 5y ago
  You can use pandoc to get html+mathml, which renders in Firefox with no JS. Chrome users can get an extension to render the mathml. Or you can add mathjax to your page, but I don't bother.
z3t4 5y ago
> I am using Hugo,2 a static website generator, to generate, well, static HTML files. Many people think it's a binary option of handwriting HTML vs using WordPress, but with a static site generator you get the advantage of both. I think static site generator are still exiting technology. Also companies are still sending Word-files to each other, while you are using git, and the web to publish, so you are still 30 years ahead of the rest - who are trying to get ahead by taking short-cuts like jumping on the latest hype train.
- CharlesW 5y ago
  > Many people think it's a binary option of handwriting HTML vs using WordPress… It's worth noting that one can handwrite HTML for WordPress themes and emit static sites from WordPress. This is a great option for those who like SSGs but want rich content management. Another option for this is to use WordPress as the CMS for your SSG. For example, this post describes how to use Gatsby with WordPress: https://liftoffllc.medium.com/gatsby-wordpress-bringing-together-the-best-of-a-cms-and-an-ssg-d6316ef4e8b https://liftoffllc.medium.com/gatsby-wordpress-bringing-toge...
- klodolph 5y ago
  > Also companies are still sending Word-files to each other, while you are using git, and the web to publish, so you are still 30 years ahead of the rest... Word + track changes is way more sophisticated and powerful than sending around text files with Git. The reason companies use Word is not just because they don't understand how to use Git, it's because Word is actually very powerful in its own right and contains a powerful version control system which allows you to add annotations and make reviews. It's kind of like having Git + GitHub built into one program.
chrischapman 5y ago
Nice read. Firm supporter of Web Pi (3.1415). When it comes to building for the web today, I'm always amazed that "so much can be done with so little" and yet the default is the opposite - "so much is needed to deliver so little" - so irrational! Where did we go wrong? I wonder what Web Euler (2.71828) would have looked like?
- NikolaNovak 5y ago
  I'm not in that part of IT; what is WebPi in this context? My mind went to some RaspberryPi stack, but perhaps it is this instead? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Platform_Installer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Platform_Installer
  - david_van_loon 5y ago
    In this context it is a play on the Web 2.0 and Web3 terminology.
    - thfuran 5y ago
      One that means what?
      - luxpir 5y ago
        A number greater than 2 and less than 3, or slightly beyond 3. Come on guys, grab a coffee.
        ShamelessC 5y ago
        The grifters were just making sure they didn't miss out on a recent rebranding effort.
- susam 5y ago
  My favourite phase of the web was Web Golden (1.61803). :) It mostly had static websites but some websites had tiny guestbooks that allowed a little user-generated content. I remember some of the website hosting providers made it really easy to add guestbooks, even for someone with no programming experience. All one needed to do was create an HTML page that contained a <form> element with the "action" attribute set to a URL of a server-side script provided by the hosting provider. The server-side script would accept every comment submitted via the guestbook and automatically insert the new comment into a static HTML page after escaping the special characters properly.
mrkentutbabi 5y ago
Wow just the right moment, I am thinking to setup my own blog. Commenting for bookMark.
- MandieD 5y ago
  There’s a very faint, tiny “favorite” in the line of faint, tiny links right below the title of comment pages for bookmarking. It took me about three years on HN to notice it, but now I have a wonderful, shareable collection of the cleverer things posted here.
  - mrkentutbabi 5y ago
    Oh I didn't know this. Thank you.
  - kingcharles 5y ago
    Been using this site for well over a decade (under my old handle) and never once noticed that. How is that possible o_O
susam 5y ago
I use a very similar stack to host my personal website that contains a blog and a collection of other pages. Here are the similarities between my stack and that of the author of this post: - No JavaScript except for loading MathJax only on those pages that contain mathematical equations. - No cookies, no banners, no account creation, no ads, no affiliate links. - All content and code is stored in a Git repository. - The HTML files are served using Nginx. - The website is hosted on a Debian system. - No load balancer, no database, no cache server, etc. However, there are some differences too. Here are the differences between my stack and that of the author of this post: - All my content is written in plain HTML. Some of the content in my website goes back to 2001 when the obvious way to write content was in plain HTML. I know that Markdown can be easier to write and read and I do use Markdown for GitHub READMEs. However, for my website, I just stayed back with HTML. - I have my own small Common Lisp program to generate the static HTML files. It picks all the content HTML files, puts them within a common HTML template to ensure headers and footers are consistent across pages, generates a blog post list page, generates RSS feeds, etc. By the way, I use Emacs for editing HTML. Its HTML+ mode has a pretty good collection of key sequences for editing HTML. For example, the key sequence C-c 2 inserts "<h2></h2>" and places the cursor in between the tags so that I can start typing the heading immediately, C-C C-o enters an arbitrary tag along with its closing pair (if applicable) and places the cursor in between the tags, C-c C-e automatically closes any open tag, etc. These key sequences along with automatic indentation of nested HTML elements by Emacs does a really good job at making editing plain HTML very convenient.
- umvi 5y ago
  Yep I recently did exactly this for my personal site as well (including initially writing HTML by hand), but instead of lisp I wrote a ~100 line python script[0] so that I could write future content in Markdown instead of HTML. Yes I'm aware of Jekyll and Hugo and such, but even those were too complex for my personal site. It only took about an hour of my time to write it, and now anytime I push markdown changes to my git repository, GitHub Actions runs the markdown through the python script and generates the site which is hosted on GitHub pages. [0] For the curious - https://gist.github.com/RPGillespie6/b133854b8ebf5a983cf32c26d684cff3 https://gist.github.com/RPGillespie6/b133854b8ebf5a983cf32c2...
klodolph 5y ago
"Boring" is nice although my experience with Hugo is that it takes a nontrivial amount of effort to get it working in the first place, such that I couldn't use it for putting project documentation on github.io and definitely wouldn't call it "boring" in the sense used in the article. It is definitely a more complex scheme even if that complexity is front-loaded and you get to keep everything boring on the server and the client (with the exception of MathJax, for good reasons). (Aside: consider Katex!) With Hugo, I ended up fighting with themes that wouldn't render correctly, and all the mess that is shortcodes. Shortcodes are nice in theory, but there should be a larger set of "standard" shortcodes that are expected to work across most themes (some nice subset of what Bootstrap gives you) and instead of custom syntax, it seems like you should be able to use standard HTML with custom tags. Anyway... my experience with Hugo made me feel that I would even have an easier time wrangling a Wordpress installation. It's equally possible to archive a Wordpress site by taking a snapshot of the HTML, and I've done it, it's just that the "boring" web (as the author puts it) moves the failure points to your personal computer, rather than the server you run your site on.
- marton_s 5y ago
  Jekyll. That's the boring static site generator.
  - klodolph 5y ago
    I might give Jekyll another shot, then.
    - Lio 5y ago
      I’m a big Jekyll fan too. If that’s not to your liking I guess you could try pandoc and make. I’m also a fan of vimwiki, but I guess you have to like vim for that.
    - lazyweb 5y ago
      Do it! I'm also currently migrating my old Wordpress blog to markdown in Jekyll using a minimalist theme [1]. I'm liking it so far. [1] https://github.com/riggraz/no-style-please https://github.com/riggraz/no-style-please
TacticalCoder 5y ago
> I am not using a load balancer, a database, or a cache server. But it's serving some static assets from CloudFlare... (nothing wrong with that: I'm just pointing it out)
- Topolomancer 5y ago
  OP here---true dat; that's the MathJax script. To be honest, I haven't yet come around moving away from it, but this thread mentions some alternatives.
aaaaaaaaaaab 5y ago
>I am not using JavaScript, except for a minimal installation of MathJax to be able to render equations in blog posts (and I know of no other simple way to accomplish this goal). I remember MathML support used to be bad. Is it still the case?
- runarberg 5y ago
  I think support is being actively work on for Chrome and is behind a feature flag. https://caniuse.com/mathml https://caniuse.com/mathml
  - jraph 5y ago
    MathML support in Chromium is pushed by Igalia: https://mathml.igalia.com/ https://mathml.igalia.com/
- extra88 5y ago
  Not only is browser MathML support lacking, authoring MathML kind of sucks. Anyone familiar with the basics of LaTeX for mathematical equations (human-readable LaTeX) will prefer to write that and let someone else's code render it (as MathML, as SVG, as a raster image).
MaxBarraclough 5y ago
I agree with the article's points that many of today's websites are bloated and user-hostile. A 'spartan' website like that is a refreshing change. I'd add one more virtue to the list: it doesn't deliberately break Reader Mode. The ideas listed are similar to those of the sadly overlooked IndieWeb community, [0][1] and they complement them. Ideally, the web should be both indie and boring. [0] https://indieweb.org/ https://indieweb.org/ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IndieWeb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IndieWeb
chubot 5y ago
I'm not sure I would frame it as "boring" ... the issue is that CONTENT (which should be interesting, and is what people are there for) is obscured by TECH. So the tech should get out of the way of the content, instead of asserting itself front and center. That is "exciting" to me. https://hiccupfx.telnet.asia/ https://hiccupfx.telnet.asia/ -- Get that "Client Side Render" Look https://lobste.rs/s/oybdsa/get_client_side_render_look https://lobste.rs/s/oybdsa/get_client_side_render_look
ozim 5y ago
Yes, 100 times yes if you are really delivering documents to the browser. It is a totally different thing if one is delivering 'web application'. Web application is about manipulating data, having lists, text fields and editing content. Delivering documents is about documentation, blogs, prose, maybe just image browsing. If company is crapping JS/tracking all over content that can be delivered as a document it is annoying. Just don't say that everything should be sans JS - because there are legitimate uses of JS and even those heavy JS frameworks if one is building rich editing experience.
- austincheney 5y ago
  > It is a totally different thing if one is delivering 'web application'. Why? I think the unspoken alternative to boring is gross negligent incompetence. It really doesn’t have to be that way. The web is 30 years old, JavaScript is 25 years old, and the mature DOM is 23 years old. Surely by now somebody can figure out how to dynamically add text to the screen with less than 10mb of JS taking less than 10 seconds to execute. As a counter point I have written an OS GUI that is 2mb unminified and loads in the browser in about 55ms (give or take 5ms) including full state restoration. That’s pretty fast. Looking at various benchmarks JavaScript is now executing as fast as Java in many micro-benchmarks. If this stuff is really that fast why we do we tolerate such incompetence writing frontend code? It’s like incompetence is built in by default as the standard expectation and everybody hires accordingly.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - mdoms 5y ago
    > Why? I think the unspoken alternative to boring is gross negligent incompetence. That's.... that's just silly. How would you deliver, say, Trello as a boring website? Or Google Maps? Or Grafana? Do you really think the developers of these apps are grossly negligent?
    - JadeNB 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
cblconfederate 5y ago
The problem is not the website that uses wordpress instead of some 'artisanal' static site generator. The former is something that mom and pop can self-host, the latter is something the aspiring programmer enjoys doing. The problem is that modern browser programming, and modern javascript in particular are way more complicated than they need to be for people to build their own websites. That's why everyone moves their communities in discord instead of building a self-hosted chat. The browsers are powerful today, but the APIs can be really complex. I have webrtc in mind in particular, dealing with that is something that easily can demoralize someone who is not a professional programmer. Even in the old days of Flash, you could host a Red5 server on a VPS and have a video conferencing app going, nowadays most people go with SaaS solutions because it's too damn hard. We need to be talking about how to make the browser an accessible platform wher everyone can build (including moms and pops, remember Frontpage?). NOT to keep over-complicating even the smallest tasks in order to please the BigCorps (looking at you, CSS complexity). Instead of another framework let's bring in more <tags> (Hello, <marquee>)
zzo38computer 5y ago
Yes, but there are a few things you should consider too: * Avoid CSS, too. (Fortunately the program I have, has the option to disable CSS, so I use that and it looks better, then.) * There should be a better way to display math equations (e.g. using MathML, possibly with a JavaScript code that only executes if MathML is not implemented in the client) I usually just use plain text files myself. However, Fossil uses HTML, and I would prefer to make it a different HTML. I started to make one using libfossil, but have not completed it yet and it lacks some features.
- ngrilly 5y ago
  Why should we totally avoid CSS? The default CSS is most web browsers is not great for reading (no maximum width, mo margin, etc.).
  - zzo38computer 5y ago
    Well, at least I prefer the default CSS (with only a few exceptions; I think "img { max-width: 100%; }" aught to be a default rule). However, they should be configurable by the end user to the settings that that user wants, instead of being different in different web pages.
schemescape 5y ago
The author mentions using server logs for understanding traffic: > I am not using any cookies or additional ways of user tracking. Instead, I am using GoAccess to generate static reports based on the webserver logs—no user-facing parts are involved, and IP addresses are anonymised. I've considered doing this as well, but I'd prefer not to have to run and maintain my own server, if possible. Is anyone aware of a cheap hosting service for static sites that provides HTTP logs (even if only in aggregate)?
- whiplash451 5y ago
  I believe OVH offers what you are looking for (website hosting with HTTP logs and aggregated statistics, I leave it to you to look at pricing and decide whether it is cheap in your reference frame).
- jbboehr 5y ago
  Only answering with what I'm familiar with, but AWS S3 provides access logs: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/userguide/ServerLogs.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/userguide/Server...
d12bb 5y ago
JavaScript is not the problem. That people forgot how to use the simplest tool to get the job done, and to not use more than needed, that's the problem.
bachmeier 5y ago
> I am not using JavaScript, except for a minimal installation of MathJax to be able to render equations This is the part I don't get. I know, many commenters on this site don't like Javascript, but a little Javascript isn't going to slow your site down. Conversely, you can completely avoid Javascript by doing a bunch of work on the server, yet slow your site just as badly as with Javascript (or even worse). It would be more productive to talk about the type of content rather than the arbitrary choice of technology used to create the page.
- john-doe 5y ago
  Javascript doesn’t hurt but becomes another thing to setup and maintain.
robbrown451 5y ago
"Sometimes, boring can be exciting." Well, not really. They are pretty much direct opposites. Do you mean "sometimes boring can be good"? I can get on board that. But it can't be exciting, because then it isn't boring.
yawnxyz 5y ago
Using Hugo isn't exactly "boring"... that's a pretty sophisticated system. But what is "boring" really? Unsexy? Why is Javascript not boring, but Hugo gets a pass? I use SvelteKit bc that's super easy for me to understand and helps me get to the content faster than say, Middleman or Hugo, so for me SvelteKit / Vercel is the most "boring" thing I can do. So I guess "boring" is relative?
asimpletune 5y ago
Sometimes I disable JS on my browser and then forget about it, only to be reminded when a website is totally non-functional without it. Then when I go back I realize with total horror how bad things were. Pop-ops on every, single website, with dishonest UX to opt-out of tracking each time you visit. The text I may only need to see for two seconds to remind myself of something is obscured by this huge modal that takes so long to load. With the exception of YouTube and a few other things I use, I greatly prefer the internet in 2022 when I forget to reenable JS. News sites and blogs are blazing fast, with no tracking dialogues to dismiss, and text gets drawn to the page immediately.
- ComradePhil 5y ago
  I use ScriptSafe which disables scripts by default on any website... but you can whitelist or temporarily allow a website to run scripts.
  - scim-knox-twox 5y ago
    At one time, even the old Opera had such options as standard. There was even a fixed CSS edition. Then they switched to Blink and everything became difficult...
- scim-knox-twox 5y ago
  I feel like you're describing my experience. I'll add webfonts to that. For me uBlock disables them everywhere (because that's not what they're for) and it's good to see how by simply missing a font (which can always fail to load, not just by deliberate blocking) you can't use pages because the icons aren't there and the buttons aren't labeled in any other way. Such a page immediately falls into DNS blocking - I won't bother just because they don't know the basics of web development...
taubek 5y ago
If the purpose of the web is to be informative than it can to be boring. Maybe the visual presentation will not be up to todays expectations but that is another thing. Markdown is great but sometimes it can be tricky to get the exact look and feel that you need.
inshadows 5y ago
YEwSdObPQT 5y ago
Whenever I am reading about something in the vain of "boring tech" they miss the following: 1) The first is that many developers don't understand how to do anything simply. Doing things simply normally means actually thinking about what you are doing before hand and it doesn't feel productive. 2) Many developers don't understand how the underlying tech works. I've been working with developers that are working on a web product and I am absolutely sure they haven't done the w3cschools (or similar) HTML and/or CSS tutorials. Which are really basic things (here is what a h1 is for) 3) There is no-incentive for developers to do things simply. Much of the industry wants to pay people who know how to build something in <complicated enterprisey product> or <complicated opensource product>. They don't want people to provide solution built on "boring tech". I don't see any of those changing anytime soon unfortunately.
- scim-knox-twox 5y ago
  Exactly that! Many developers don't understand any basics. We're 20 years since HTML4 and still many developers are using `<a />` instead `<button />`... It's of course only one from many examples. A lot of people (devs, designers, pms etc.) don't understand... nothing. They don't understand that someone may have poorer eyesight, that many people have slow Internet speed etc. I'm getting tired of using the Internet, practically to every site I have some criticisms (forcing to open links in a new tab...).
  - YEwSdObPQT 5y ago
    > Many developers don't understand any basics. We're 20 years since HTML4 and still many developers are using `<a />` instead `<button />`... I have literally been doing this for the last year when reviewing PRs. "What is the difference?" I am asked. One is an anchor and one is a button and they mean different things and are supposed to be used for different things. It is infuriating to simply link the first or second result on google and quote just to throw it in peoples faces. I feel like a dick quite frankly but nobody bothers.
    - scim-knox-twox 5y ago
christophilus 5y ago
Good read. Loaded fast. Looked great on my old iPhone. Very nice use of font size and line height. A+

That's a blog, not 'the web'

zinekeller 5y ago
> That's a blog, not 'the web' The original web as envisioned by Tim Berners-Lee is basically a collection of internetworked and interconnected documents, which a blog is definitely a part of it. Blame Google's ChromeOS ambitions (especially pre-Android integration) for opening the Pandora's Box of WebApps.
- jasode 5y ago
  >Blame Google's ChromeOS ambitions (especially pre-Android integration) for opening the Pandora's Box of WebApps. Chrome OS is 2011 (first announced 2009). But before that, lots of people wanted the power of so-called "web apps" in the 1990s as we can see from various technologies getting introduced. And some even before Google incorporated in 1998: - ~1995 Sun Java plugin for browsers - ~1995 Netscape Navigator added Javascript - ~1996 Macromedia Flash plugin - ~1999 Microsoft IE XMLHttpRequest() function to fetch dynamic data - ... many others I forgot In 1998, I was able to order airline tickets on the internet for the first time on US Air and Southwest Airlines websites. In 1996, Mapquest had online maps to calculate driving directions. At this early stage, we're already past the "world wide web is only static documents" idea.
  - kingcharles 5y ago
    I built a "Google Docs" in 1997 using Java applets (couldn't raise funds, too early). And HoTMaiL had launched the previous year, bringing email to the web, which is certainly one of the closest things I can think of to the first "web app". WikiWikiWeb launched in early 1995. I'm trying to think what could classify as the first "web app"? I was on the Web in 1993 and there wasn't much of any use on there. Writing web apps was hard because there were no tools for it. I ended up writing most of my back end code in C. Which sounds crazy until I realize I'm writing it all in C# now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiWikiWeb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiWikiWeb
- chasd00 5y ago
  To me, it was cookies that opened the pandora's box of webapps. Cookies are what made user sessions, shopping carts, and everything else possible.
  - ComradePhil 5y ago
    We could have built everything we have without cookies. Start a session and pass the session id back to all the links for that user and go fom there. So, instead of the Cookie header, you'd have the same information in the GET/POST parameters.
    - dsQTbR7Y5mRHnZv 5y ago
      Wouldn't the average user lose their session when closing the browser or navigating away in that case?

It’s good advice to use the simplest tool that gets the job done. I like sites like this too. But let’s not jump from this to the conclusion that everything on the web should be built this way. There’s a place for things like Figma too.

nesarkvechnep 5y ago
Maybe Figma should've been a desktop app.
- cageface 5y ago
  Being a web app that runs everywhere and is always up to date is a big part of Figma’s success. They’ve already crushed a very strong native desktop competitor.
- wbobeirne 5y ago
  There was Sketch before Figma, and it was great... if you were running macOS. Then Figma ate its lunch because they were able to support viewing and editing on every platform, and didn't require downloading and installing an application just to review and comment on designs. Those advantages are only possible by either a) having a massive engineering team that can build applications for every device and a lightweight web app or b) building for the web.

z3t4 5y ago

> I am not using JavaScript, except for a minimal installation of MathJax to be able to render equations in blog posts (and I know of no other simple way to accomplish this goal). You can pre-render svg images

ectopod 5y ago
You can use pandoc to get html+mathml, which renders in Firefox with no JS. Chrome users can get an extension to render the mathml. Or you can add mathjax to your page, but I don't bother.

z3t4 5y ago

> I am using Hugo,2 a static website generator, to generate, well, static HTML files. Many people think it's a binary option of handwriting HTML vs using WordPress, but with a static site generator you get the advantage of both. I think static site generator are still exiting technology. Also companies are still sending Word-files to each other, while you are using git, and the web to publish, so you are still 30 years ahead of the rest - who are trying to get ahead by taking short-cuts like jumping on the latest hype train.

CharlesW 5y ago
> Many people think it's a binary option of handwriting HTML vs using WordPress… It's worth noting that one can handwrite HTML for WordPress themes and emit static sites from WordPress. This is a great option for those who like SSGs but want rich content management. Another option for this is to use WordPress as the CMS for your SSG. For example, this post describes how to use Gatsby with WordPress: https://liftoffllc.medium.com/gatsby-wordpress-bringing-together-the-best-of-a-cms-and-an-ssg-d6316ef4e8b https://liftoffllc.medium.com/gatsby-wordpress-bringing-toge...
klodolph 5y ago
> Also companies are still sending Word-files to each other, while you are using git, and the web to publish, so you are still 30 years ahead of the rest... Word + track changes is way more sophisticated and powerful than sending around text files with Git. The reason companies use Word is not just because they don't understand how to use Git, it's because Word is actually very powerful in its own right and contains a powerful version control system which allows you to add annotations and make reviews. It's kind of like having Git + GitHub built into one program.

chrischapman 5y ago

Nice read. Firm supporter of Web Pi (3.1415). When it comes to building for the web today, I'm always amazed that "so much can be done with so little" and yet the default is the opposite - "so much is needed to deliver so little" - so irrational! Where did we go wrong? I wonder what Web Euler (2.71828) would have looked like?

NikolaNovak 5y ago
I'm not in that part of IT; what is WebPi in this context? My mind went to some RaspberryPi stack, but perhaps it is this instead? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Platform_Installer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Platform_Installer
- david_van_loon 5y ago
  In this context it is a play on the Web 2.0 and Web3 terminology.
  - thfuran 5y ago
    One that means what?
    - luxpir 5y ago
      A number greater than 2 and less than 3, or slightly beyond 3. Come on guys, grab a coffee.
      - ShamelessC 5y ago
        The grifters were just making sure they didn't miss out on a recent rebranding effort.
susam 5y ago
My favourite phase of the web was Web Golden (1.61803). :) It mostly had static websites but some websites had tiny guestbooks that allowed a little user-generated content. I remember some of the website hosting providers made it really easy to add guestbooks, even for someone with no programming experience. All one needed to do was create an HTML page that contained a <form> element with the "action" attribute set to a URL of a server-side script provided by the hosting provider. The server-side script would accept every comment submitted via the guestbook and automatically insert the new comment into a static HTML page after escaping the special characters properly.

mrkentutbabi 5y ago

Wow just the right moment, I am thinking to setup my own blog. Commenting for bookMark.

MandieD 5y ago
There’s a very faint, tiny “favorite” in the line of faint, tiny links right below the title of comment pages for bookmarking. It took me about three years on HN to notice it, but now I have a wonderful, shareable collection of the cleverer things posted here.
- mrkentutbabi 5y ago
  Oh I didn't know this. Thank you.
- kingcharles 5y ago
  Been using this site for well over a decade (under my old handle) and never once noticed that. How is that possible o_O

susam 5y ago

I use a very similar stack to host my personal website that contains a blog and a collection of other pages. Here are the similarities between my stack and that of the author of this post: - No JavaScript except for loading MathJax only on those pages that contain mathematical equations. - No cookies, no banners, no account creation, no ads, no affiliate links. - All content and code is stored in a Git repository. - The HTML files are served using Nginx. - The website is hosted on a Debian system. - No load balancer, no database, no cache server, etc. However, there are some differences too. Here are the differences between my stack and that of the author of this post: - All my content is written in plain HTML. Some of the content in my website goes back to 2001 when the obvious way to write content was in plain HTML. I know that Markdown can be easier to write and read and I do use Markdown for GitHub READMEs. However, for my website, I just stayed back with HTML. - I have my own small Common Lisp program to generate the static HTML files. It picks all the content HTML files, puts them within a common HTML template to ensure headers and footers are consistent across pages, generates a blog post list page, generates RSS feeds, etc. By the way, I use Emacs for editing HTML. Its HTML+ mode has a pretty good collection of key sequences for editing HTML. For example, the key sequence C-c 2 inserts "<h2></h2>" and places the cursor in between the tags so that I can start typing the heading immediately, C-C C-o enters an arbitrary tag along with its closing pair (if applicable) and places the cursor in between the tags, C-c C-e automatically closes any open tag, etc. These key sequences along with automatic indentation of nested HTML elements by Emacs does a really good job at making editing plain HTML very convenient.

umvi 5y ago
Yep I recently did exactly this for my personal site as well (including initially writing HTML by hand), but instead of lisp I wrote a ~100 line python script[0] so that I could write future content in Markdown instead of HTML. Yes I'm aware of Jekyll and Hugo and such, but even those were too complex for my personal site. It only took about an hour of my time to write it, and now anytime I push markdown changes to my git repository, GitHub Actions runs the markdown through the python script and generates the site which is hosted on GitHub pages. [0] For the curious - https://gist.github.com/RPGillespie6/b133854b8ebf5a983cf32c26d684cff3 https://gist.github.com/RPGillespie6/b133854b8ebf5a983cf32c2...

klodolph 5y ago

"Boring" is nice although my experience with Hugo is that it takes a nontrivial amount of effort to get it working in the first place, such that I couldn't use it for putting project documentation on github.io and definitely wouldn't call it "boring" in the sense used in the article. It is definitely a more complex scheme even if that complexity is front-loaded and you get to keep everything boring on the server and the client (with the exception of MathJax, for good reasons). (Aside: consider Katex!) With Hugo, I ended up fighting with themes that wouldn't render correctly, and all the mess that is shortcodes. Shortcodes are nice in theory, but there should be a larger set of "standard" shortcodes that are expected to work across most themes (some nice subset of what Bootstrap gives you) and instead of custom syntax, it seems like you should be able to use standard HTML with custom tags. Anyway... my experience with Hugo made me feel that I would even have an easier time wrangling a Wordpress installation. It's equally possible to archive a Wordpress site by taking a snapshot of the HTML, and I've done it, it's just that the "boring" web (as the author puts it) moves the failure points to your personal computer, rather than the server you run your site on.

marton_s 5y ago
Jekyll. That's the boring static site generator.
- klodolph 5y ago
  I might give Jekyll another shot, then.
  - Lio 5y ago
    I’m a big Jekyll fan too. If that’s not to your liking I guess you could try pandoc and make. I’m also a fan of vimwiki, but I guess you have to like vim for that.
  - lazyweb 5y ago
    Do it! I'm also currently migrating my old Wordpress blog to markdown in Jekyll using a minimalist theme [1]. I'm liking it so far. [1] https://github.com/riggraz/no-style-please https://github.com/riggraz/no-style-please

TacticalCoder 5y ago

> I am not using a load balancer, a database, or a cache server. But it's serving some static assets from CloudFlare... (nothing wrong with that: I'm just pointing it out)

Topolomancer 5y ago
OP here---true dat; that's the MathJax script. To be honest, I haven't yet come around moving away from it, but this thread mentions some alternatives.

aaaaaaaaaaab 5y ago

>I am not using JavaScript, except for a minimal installation of MathJax to be able to render equations in blog posts (and I know of no other simple way to accomplish this goal). I remember MathML support used to be bad. Is it still the case?

runarberg 5y ago
I think support is being actively work on for Chrome and is behind a feature flag. https://caniuse.com/mathml https://caniuse.com/mathml
- jraph 5y ago
  MathML support in Chromium is pushed by Igalia: https://mathml.igalia.com/ https://mathml.igalia.com/
extra88 5y ago
Not only is browser MathML support lacking, authoring MathML kind of sucks. Anyone familiar with the basics of LaTeX for mathematical equations (human-readable LaTeX) will prefer to write that and let someone else's code render it (as MathML, as SVG, as a raster image).

MaxBarraclough 5y ago

I agree with the article's points that many of today's websites are bloated and user-hostile. A 'spartan' website like that is a refreshing change. I'd add one more virtue to the list: it doesn't deliberately break Reader Mode. The ideas listed are similar to those of the sadly overlooked IndieWeb community, [0][1] and they complement them. Ideally, the web should be both indie and boring. [0] https://indieweb.org/ https://indieweb.org/ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IndieWeb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IndieWeb

chubot 5y ago

I'm not sure I would frame it as "boring" ... the issue is that CONTENT (which should be interesting, and is what people are there for) is obscured by TECH. So the tech should get out of the way of the content, instead of asserting itself front and center. That is "exciting" to me. https://hiccupfx.telnet.asia/ https://hiccupfx.telnet.asia/ -- Get that "Client Side Render" Look https://lobste.rs/s/oybdsa/get_client_side_render_look https://lobste.rs/s/oybdsa/get_client_side_render_look

ozim 5y ago

Yes, 100 times yes if you are really delivering documents to the browser. It is a totally different thing if one is delivering 'web application'. Web application is about manipulating data, having lists, text fields and editing content. Delivering documents is about documentation, blogs, prose, maybe just image browsing. If company is crapping JS/tracking all over content that can be delivered as a document it is annoying. Just don't say that everything should be sans JS - because there are legitimate uses of JS and even those heavy JS frameworks if one is building rich editing experience.

austincheney 5y ago
> It is a totally different thing if one is delivering 'web application'. Why? I think the unspoken alternative to boring is gross negligent incompetence. It really doesn’t have to be that way. The web is 30 years old, JavaScript is 25 years old, and the mature DOM is 23 years old. Surely by now somebody can figure out how to dynamically add text to the screen with less than 10mb of JS taking less than 10 seconds to execute. As a counter point I have written an OS GUI that is 2mb unminified and loads in the browser in about 55ms (give or take 5ms) including full state restoration. That’s pretty fast. Looking at various benchmarks JavaScript is now executing as fast as Java in many micro-benchmarks. If this stuff is really that fast why we do we tolerate such incompetence writing frontend code? It’s like incompetence is built in by default as the standard expectation and everybody hires accordingly.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- mdoms 5y ago
  > Why? I think the unspoken alternative to boring is gross negligent incompetence. That's.... that's just silly. How would you deliver, say, Trello as a boring website? Or Google Maps? Or Grafana? Do you really think the developers of these apps are grossly negligent?
  - JadeNB 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

cblconfederate 5y ago

The problem is not the website that uses wordpress instead of some 'artisanal' static site generator. The former is something that mom and pop can self-host, the latter is something the aspiring programmer enjoys doing. The problem is that modern browser programming, and modern javascript in particular are way more complicated than they need to be for people to build their own websites. That's why everyone moves their communities in discord instead of building a self-hosted chat. The browsers are powerful today, but the APIs can be really complex. I have webrtc in mind in particular, dealing with that is something that easily can demoralize someone who is not a professional programmer. Even in the old days of Flash, you could host a Red5 server on a VPS and have a video conferencing app going, nowadays most people go with SaaS solutions because it's too damn hard. We need to be talking about how to make the browser an accessible platform wher everyone can build (including moms and pops, remember Frontpage?). NOT to keep over-complicating even the smallest tasks in order to please the BigCorps (looking at you, CSS complexity). Instead of another framework let's bring in more <tags> (Hello, <marquee>)

zzo38computer 5y ago

Yes, but there are a few things you should consider too: * Avoid CSS, too. (Fortunately the program I have, has the option to disable CSS, so I use that and it looks better, then.) * There should be a better way to display math equations (e.g. using MathML, possibly with a JavaScript code that only executes if MathML is not implemented in the client) I usually just use plain text files myself. However, Fossil uses HTML, and I would prefer to make it a different HTML. I started to make one using libfossil, but have not completed it yet and it lacks some features.

ngrilly 5y ago
Why should we totally avoid CSS? The default CSS is most web browsers is not great for reading (no maximum width, mo margin, etc.).
- zzo38computer 5y ago
  Well, at least I prefer the default CSS (with only a few exceptions; I think "img { max-width: 100%; }" aught to be a default rule). However, they should be configurable by the end user to the settings that that user wants, instead of being different in different web pages.

schemescape 5y ago

The author mentions using server logs for understanding traffic: > I am not using any cookies or additional ways of user tracking. Instead, I am using GoAccess to generate static reports based on the webserver logs—no user-facing parts are involved, and IP addresses are anonymised. I've considered doing this as well, but I'd prefer not to have to run and maintain my own server, if possible. Is anyone aware of a cheap hosting service for static sites that provides HTTP logs (even if only in aggregate)?

whiplash451 5y ago
I believe OVH offers what you are looking for (website hosting with HTTP logs and aggregated statistics, I leave it to you to look at pricing and decide whether it is cheap in your reference frame).
jbboehr 5y ago
Only answering with what I'm familiar with, but AWS S3 provides access logs: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/userguide/ServerLogs.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/userguide/Server...

d12bb 5y ago

JavaScript is not the problem. That people forgot how to use the simplest tool to get the job done, and to not use more than needed, that's the problem.

bachmeier 5y ago

> I am not using JavaScript, except for a minimal installation of MathJax to be able to render equations This is the part I don't get. I know, many commenters on this site don't like Javascript, but a little Javascript isn't going to slow your site down. Conversely, you can completely avoid Javascript by doing a bunch of work on the server, yet slow your site just as badly as with Javascript (or even worse). It would be more productive to talk about the type of content rather than the arbitrary choice of technology used to create the page.

john-doe 5y ago
Javascript doesn’t hurt but becomes another thing to setup and maintain.

robbrown451 5y ago

"Sometimes, boring can be exciting." Well, not really. They are pretty much direct opposites. Do you mean "sometimes boring can be good"? I can get on board that. But it can't be exciting, because then it isn't boring.

yawnxyz 5y ago

Using Hugo isn't exactly "boring"... that's a pretty sophisticated system. But what is "boring" really? Unsexy? Why is Javascript not boring, but Hugo gets a pass? I use SvelteKit bc that's super easy for me to understand and helps me get to the content faster than say, Middleman or Hugo, so for me SvelteKit / Vercel is the most "boring" thing I can do. So I guess "boring" is relative?

asimpletune 5y ago

Sometimes I disable JS on my browser and then forget about it, only to be reminded when a website is totally non-functional without it. Then when I go back I realize with total horror how bad things were. Pop-ops on every, single website, with dishonest UX to opt-out of tracking each time you visit. The text I may only need to see for two seconds to remind myself of something is obscured by this huge modal that takes so long to load. With the exception of YouTube and a few other things I use, I greatly prefer the internet in 2022 when I forget to reenable JS. News sites and blogs are blazing fast, with no tracking dialogues to dismiss, and text gets drawn to the page immediately.

ComradePhil 5y ago
I use ScriptSafe which disables scripts by default on any website... but you can whitelist or temporarily allow a website to run scripts.
- scim-knox-twox 5y ago
  At one time, even the old Opera had such options as standard. There was even a fixed CSS edition. Then they switched to Blink and everything became difficult...
scim-knox-twox 5y ago
I feel like you're describing my experience. I'll add webfonts to that. For me uBlock disables them everywhere (because that's not what they're for) and it's good to see how by simply missing a font (which can always fail to load, not just by deliberate blocking) you can't use pages because the icons aren't there and the buttons aren't labeled in any other way. Such a page immediately falls into DNS blocking - I won't bother just because they don't know the basics of web development...

taubek 5y ago

If the purpose of the web is to be informative than it can to be boring. Maybe the visual presentation will not be up to todays expectations but that is another thing. Markdown is great but sometimes it can be tricky to get the exact look and feel that you need.

inshadows 5y ago

YEwSdObPQT 5y ago

Whenever I am reading about something in the vain of "boring tech" they miss the following: 1) The first is that many developers don't understand how to do anything simply. Doing things simply normally means actually thinking about what you are doing before hand and it doesn't feel productive. 2) Many developers don't understand how the underlying tech works. I've been working with developers that are working on a web product and I am absolutely sure they haven't done the w3cschools (or similar) HTML and/or CSS tutorials. Which are really basic things (here is what a h1 is for) 3) There is no-incentive for developers to do things simply. Much of the industry wants to pay people who know how to build something in <complicated enterprisey product> or <complicated opensource product>. They don't want people to provide solution built on "boring tech". I don't see any of those changing anytime soon unfortunately.

scim-knox-twox 5y ago
Exactly that! Many developers don't understand any basics. We're 20 years since HTML4 and still many developers are using `<a />` instead `<button />`... It's of course only one from many examples. A lot of people (devs, designers, pms etc.) don't understand... nothing. They don't understand that someone may have poorer eyesight, that many people have slow Internet speed etc. I'm getting tired of using the Internet, practically to every site I have some criticisms (forcing to open links in a new tab...).
- YEwSdObPQT 5y ago
  > Many developers don't understand any basics. We're 20 years since HTML4 and still many developers are using `<a />` instead `<button />`... I have literally been doing this for the last year when reviewing PRs. "What is the difference?" I am asked. One is an anchor and one is a button and they mean different things and are supposed to be used for different things. It is infuriating to simply link the first or second result on google and quote just to throw it in peoples faces. I feel like a dick quite frankly but nobody bothers.
  - scim-knox-twox 5y ago

christophilus 5y ago

Good read. Loaded fast. Looked great on my old iPhone. Very nice use of font size and line height. A+