4 ms·

I was in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia a few months ago. I wanted to see a film. I searched in Google for films showing in Kuala Lumpur. I found myself on a web page t

I was in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia a few months ago. I wanted to see a film. I searched in Google for films showing in Kuala Lumpur. I found myself on a web page that, while accurately listing movies and schedules currently showing, looked like it had been created around 2000. And it was fast. No animations, no auto-complete, no infinite-scroll, no JavaScript frameworks. Just the information I wanted, delivered to my phone seemingly as soon as I touched the link. Simple black-on-white text, plain layout. This made me somewhat sad, because it showed me what the web browsing experience could have been today.

jkestner 11y ago
Obligatory: http://motherfuckingwebsite.com http://motherfuckingwebsite.com I'm glad I got off the train as web sites became web apps. I made one of the latter, though it actually was designed to complete certain tasks as opposed to being a container for content. Websites now seem to be trying to emulate native apps - not just in terms of cramming a bunch of UI into a page, but also in the closedness. I hate how 95% of content sites bury the hyperlinks to anything that takes you off their site, including the source.
- keithpeter 11y ago
  The mfws page is 5k or so and one script (and I might want to fight about that depending on the reason it is there - see the page code at the bottom). Suppose you had another 5k budget for css. What could you do with it to make the page look 'nicer' in the sense of closer to mainstream Web pages that ordinary people might use? Edit: clarity
  - bewuethr 11y ago
    Like this? http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/ http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/
    - keithpeter 11y ago
      Yup, that is a tad more modish.
  - jkestner 11y ago
    Right, and then you'll add images because you're not a monk. Remember when images were content and not chrome? That's another practice to bring back. Even with @2x images or whatever, they at least can avoid blocking the load of the rest of the page and rendering the layout. As you add a bunch of other files that have to be fetched over another HTTP connection and then affect the rendering of the page (for example, fonts), we're back to sluggishness.
- dredmorbius 11y ago
  With only a modest amount of "cruft" (1216 bytes of CSS): http://codepen.io/dredmorbius/pen/KpMqqB?editors=100 http://codepen.io/dredmorbius/pen/KpMqqB?editors=100
S4M 11y ago
On the other hand, many people don't want to touch with a ten foot pole a website that doesn't look "sexy".
- omouse 11y ago
  Do we know that though? Many people who are users or are web devs or project managers or executives? I think that's why there's been a trendy towards minimalist design; it looks pretty good and it's typically fast.
- jkestner 11y ago
  Even if that were true, the definition of "sexy" has changed over the years. Currently we're in a Rubenesque period.
bigger_cheese 11y ago
Yes I agree here. When I was in high school in the mid 90's I was able to create my own html pages in a text editor. The web was simple back then we had frames and tables and that was enough. Sure it wasn't perfect pop up ads were rife, blink tags were a thing and internet explorer had problems with transparent gifs. But the web was simple. Nowadays html pages are riddled with javascript, CSS and I don't have a clue what is going on when I hit view source on the average website. Webpages are massively over engineered you shouldn't need a scripting language to display an article of text and some links.
- HelloNurse 11y ago
  And now that we have HTML5 and CSS3 the technology for writing web pages with a text editor is better and simpler; many techniques and features have transitioned from impossible to easy or from convoluted hacks to straightforward. The two pillars of current web page overengineering are generating pages from server-side templates and preprocessors (not only automating cruft production but hiding horrible HTML and CSS code from users) and Javascript abuse.

jkestner 11y ago

Obligatory: http://motherfuckingwebsite.com http://motherfuckingwebsite.com I'm glad I got off the train as web sites became web apps. I made one of the latter, though it actually was designed to complete certain tasks as opposed to being a container for content. Websites now seem to be trying to emulate native apps - not just in terms of cramming a bunch of UI into a page, but also in the closedness. I hate how 95% of content sites bury the hyperlinks to anything that takes you off their site, including the source.

keithpeter 11y ago
The mfws page is 5k or so and one script (and I might want to fight about that depending on the reason it is there - see the page code at the bottom). Suppose you had another 5k budget for css. What could you do with it to make the page look 'nicer' in the sense of closer to mainstream Web pages that ordinary people might use? Edit: clarity
- bewuethr 11y ago
  Like this? http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/ http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/
  - keithpeter 11y ago
    Yup, that is a tad more modish.
- jkestner 11y ago
  Right, and then you'll add images because you're not a monk. Remember when images were content and not chrome? That's another practice to bring back. Even with @2x images or whatever, they at least can avoid blocking the load of the rest of the page and rendering the layout. As you add a bunch of other files that have to be fetched over another HTTP connection and then affect the rendering of the page (for example, fonts), we're back to sluggishness.
dredmorbius 11y ago
With only a modest amount of "cruft" (1216 bytes of CSS): http://codepen.io/dredmorbius/pen/KpMqqB?editors=100 http://codepen.io/dredmorbius/pen/KpMqqB?editors=100

S4M 11y ago

On the other hand, many people don't want to touch with a ten foot pole a website that doesn't look "sexy".

omouse 11y ago
Do we know that though? Many people who are users or are web devs or project managers or executives? I think that's why there's been a trendy towards minimalist design; it looks pretty good and it's typically fast.
jkestner 11y ago
Even if that were true, the definition of "sexy" has changed over the years. Currently we're in a Rubenesque period.

bigger_cheese 11y ago

Yes I agree here. When I was in high school in the mid 90's I was able to create my own html pages in a text editor. The web was simple back then we had frames and tables and that was enough. Sure it wasn't perfect pop up ads were rife, blink tags were a thing and internet explorer had problems with transparent gifs. But the web was simple. Nowadays html pages are riddled with javascript, CSS and I don't have a clue what is going on when I hit view source on the average website. Webpages are massively over engineered you shouldn't need a scripting language to display an article of text and some links.

HelloNurse 11y ago
And now that we have HTML5 and CSS3 the technology for writing web pages with a text editor is better and simpler; many techniques and features have transitioned from impossible to easy or from convoluted hacks to straightforward. The two pillars of current web page overengineering are generating pages from server-side templates and preprocessors (not only automating cruft production but hiding horrible HTML and CSS code from users) and Javascript abuse.