The revived No JS Club celebrates websites that don’t use Javascript, the powerful but sometimes overused code that’s been bloating the web and crashing tabs since 1995. The No CSS Club goes a step further and forbids even a scrap of styling beyond the browser defaults. And there is even the No HTML Club, where you’re not even allowed to use HTML. Plain text websites!
The modern web is the pure incarnation of evil. When Satan has a 1v1 with his manager, he confers with the modern web. If Satan is Sauron, then the modern web is Melkor [1]. Every horror that you can imagine is because of the modern web. Modern web is not an existential risk (X-risk), but is an astronomic suffering risk (S-risk) [2]. It is the duty of each and every man, woman, and child to revolt against it. If you’re not working on returning civilization to ooga-booga, you’re a bad person.
A compromise with the clubs is called for. A hypertext brutalism that uses the raw materials of the web to functional, honest ends while allowing web technologies to support clarity, legibility and accessibility. Compare this notion to the web brutalism of recent times, which started off in similar vein but soon became a self-subverting aesthetic: sites using 2.4MB frameworks to add text-shadow: 40px 40px 0px hotpink to 400kb Helvetica webfonts that were already on your computer.
I also like the idea of implementing “hypotext” as an inversion of hypertext. This would somehow avoid the failure modes of extending the structure of text by failing in other ways that are more fun. But I’m in two minds about whether that would be just a toy (e.g. references banished to metadata, i.e. footnotes are the hypertext) or something more conceptual that uses references to collapse the structure of text rather than extend it (e.g. links are includes and going near them spaghettifies your brain). The term is already in use in a structuralist sense, which is to say there are 2 million words of French I have to read first if I want to get away with any of this.
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JavaScript, AJAX, and modern web frameworks have pushed us away from displaying information in a pure and clean way. We need to go back to a better time!
Looks at no-HTML websites
Shit, we’ve gone back too far!
CSS on the other hand is quite essential to separate layout from content. Which is a good thing, so I can’t really think of a reason for a “no-CSS” rule. Specifically if you can use inline styles as well but in a way more messy way.
CSS is useful but also the devil.
CSS is mostly evil when you have to center elements in the page.
text-align: center
or
margin: auto
or
grid
or
flexbox
It’s really not that hard now.
What if I still have to support IE6?
Then quit your job and get one that doesn’t need to worry about stuff Microsoft doesn’t support anymore.
I made a promise, Mr. garretble: a promise. “Don’t you make me use any other browser,” said my nan; and I don’t mean to. I don’t mean to.
She’s still using Windows XP.
Someone will thank you for your service. Not me, but someone.
Then your life choices should be of more concern then centering a div.
then
I got you covered:
position: absolute; left: 50%; transform: translateX(-50%);
Learn flex forget pixels and screen measurements.
I think the idea is that you keep the layout as simple as possible such that you don’t need any code for it, css or otherwise.
Separate you layout from content so hard that you have no opinions about the layout.
Separating layout from content is good. CSS is a really bad way to do it.
Might as well do
no digital cluband we exchange information through mail and pigeons.Too much information.
Back to smoke signals.Wait. You know what? Back to monke!
It was a mistake to leave the oceans in the first place.
in my next life, i’m gonna be an insect critter hopping in the grassy meadows i guess
I recently made www.timedial.org, using mainly HTML 3.2. I tried HTML 2.0, but the lack of tables, fonts and even text alignment was a bit too much.
Sorry, but it looks awful
HTML 2.0 doesn’t have tables, and tables are not so bad, even org-mode has tables.
Since HTML 4.01 was a thing when I first saw a website:
Being able to have buttons is good. Buttons with pictures too.
And, unlike some people, I liked the idea of framesets. A simple enough websites could have an IRC-like chat frame to the left and the main navigable area to the right.
And the unholy amount of specific tags is the other side of the coin for not yet using JS and CSS for everything.
I think an “RHTML” standard as a continuation and maybe simplification of HTML 4.01 (no JS, no CSS, do dynamic things in applets, without Netscape plugins do applets with some new kind of plugins running in a specialized sandboxed VM with JIT) could be useful. Other than this there’s no need in any change at all. It’s perfect. It has all the necessary things for hypertext.
I loved frames 🥹
I hated frames, but I do have a tiny bit of nostalgia for them because I started web design in the early '00s when they were all the craze for handmade blogs and portfolio sites :D
And the iframes took up like 1/4 of the screen (with miniscule faint text!) while the rest of the page were large brush swoops and other graphical elements 🥹
And the tiny navigation buttons without any text that you had to figure out from the hovered URL.
Ah it was all so fucking unusable, but pretty xD
Haha! Forgot about navigation being a puzzle. Funsies.
I can get behind no JS club, I can’t get behind no CSS club.
CSS is 🆒
Just earlier I was reading about this website hosted on solar power and the extremes they went through to get the website to be simple so very little data is transmitted to save precious watts.
The website https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/about/the-solar-website/
This is genuinely inspiring to me, may be my new ADHD hobby for the next couple of weeks.
I just talked to a friend a couple days ago, we’ll take a weekend off, do a hackaton to rebuild our sites in this style. Dithering the images looks really cool, I’d like to do his as well.
it also matters because the complexity of websites is a burden to end-user devices. especially on weak smartphones, as i’m using rn, the power usage of heavy websites sucks a lot, as it considerably slows down the device overall.
Looks like the geocities websites of my youth.
Plug for my astro plugin which dithers images and achieves the same look and feel as the linked website: https://www.npmjs.com/package/@bashbers/astro-image-dithering
I do wonder if we’re going to see some websites popping up that kind of hit the reset button on social media and go back to smaller communities of folks with something in common.
I kind of miss the days of actually having online conversations with folks you know are real people (not bots), that aren’t trying to be an influencer, or get famous, or some how many money off your interactions.
I think it’ll happen, but I don’t think it’s happening yet.
The unease is already there (“the internet used to be a place”/“why isn’t the internet fun any more?” sentiments and #OldWeb #SlowWeb hashtags), but I don’t think people are ready to do anything about it.
I’m only one guy, with a small internet following, but I recently had a go at launching a small “Gaymers” webring (well, a simplified version of one). I promoted it on my socials, I laid out why I think it’s a good idea, I paid to “Blaze” it on Tumblr – I even emailed some like-minded creators directly.
I rewrote the webpage multiple times, to try to make it more persuasive and more concise. I added a contact form in case people felt uncomfortable emailing me. I loosened the rules to allow commercial websites, as long as they were still independent. I worked hard on the widget and incorporated feedback (made it respect
prefers-reduced-motionand made a static version for sites where animation would feel out of place).I got some good feedback; lots of people said it was interesting, and a good idea. But literally no one joined or expressed any interest in joining. 🤷♂️
I’m going to have one more go at promoting it next time I’ve got money to spare, but I’ll most likely end up quietly deleting it along with any evidence it existed, because a webring of one is fucking embarrassing. 💀
I guess if you build it, they will not necessarily come lmao
I love this idea. Do you mind if I promote it with some queer folks I know?
Myself I’m pretty straight and don’t have a website, but maybe one day.
I’d love it if you did that! Thanks!
Check out the gemini protocol: https://geminiprotocol.net/
It kinda fills that niche of the “old web”.
Is there any way to go back to running these things on an old Dell in the corner of a bedroom next to a fire extinguisher?
That’s when we have truly won
Pfff, that’s nothing. My club doesn’t even have a website.
I love the internet.
How do you use hyperlinks without HTML?
Copy and paste the url
Jesus. This is getting out of hand.
We can go further. We could take away your fancy "URL"s and just use IP addresses for navigation.
Heck, we could do away with TCP/IP altogether and network over serial. It’s a perfectly functional protocol with several baud rates to choose from. I like ol’ reliable 9600, but I sometimes dabble in 115200 when I’m feeling adventurous.
Back in school my friends all flashed their mcus with 4-8MB images over serial with 115200 baud. I set up ota updates over wifi. They were all fascinated by my speedy flashes. However when I offered to help them set it up, not one was interested because their setup was working as is and slow flashing is not a “bad” thing since it gave them an excuse to do other things.
We are talking minutes vs seconds here.
The teachers were surprised by my quick progress and iterations. When I told them my “trick” the gave me bonus points but also were not interested in learning how to do ota which was very easy. A simple 20 minute first time setup would have saved sooo much time during the year.
Forces one to avoid deep links and parameter crap. I’m sorta two minds about this.
If you want to know copy and paste this link into your browser: text.only
That reminds me of lynx
Just to mention it:
gopher://sdf.org
There is no better place for plain and real content
no http club, who is joining?
I did using Gemini (the protocol, not Google’s thing) and Gopher.
Didn’t know about Gemini (the protocol, not Google’s thing)
Gopher it 😂
True
Pretty much have. If it’s not https, I stay away.
No HTML should rather do all-Commonmark instead, imo. Background color and text width & stuff should not be your (the creators) business but my (the users) business only. But some basic styling is nice.
i guess Commonmark is the same thing as Markdown?
in that case, this is why i love the fediverse (especially lemmy) so much: comments and posts are simple markdown.
it comes quite close to the principle of distributing content in the way of markdown articles.
I am in the “whistling into the phone handset on a dialup connection is the purest form of online communication” club.
Butterflies.
Get this bs outta here. I write on paper! No one knows my thoughts or feelings!!
What devilry is this? Written word? Real cultures use oral history to store knowledge!
Or hieroglyphs, to stay on the sane side.
counterpoint: https://bestestmotherfucking.website/
That is made by someone who had a Geocities website, or went 1000% in on MySpace back in the day.
I love this.
I thought I was being “bare-bones” when I remade my website with PHP & XML (no framework or database). What would they think about a python app that delivers plaintext or html? Is that still kosher for the no-js gang? Or does it have to be static files?
I’d be down with the no-html crowd if they made one exception to allow anchor tags. A web without links sounds not so usable.
Dunno. Give it a shot and see how it goes!
Personally I would just set nginx + translator that would push the site into different formats if I wanted it long term. Just dump the resultant files, set up a website.cool/xxx.txt and push it out there.
