Am a web developer, and I partially agree with you. On one hand, I am appreciative that the near monopoly of Chromium-based browser engines has simplified cross-platform testing. I can now be quite confident in an identical experience in Edge or Vivaldi on Windows as I would get in Chrome on Ubuntu. On the other hand... f*cking HELL the data waste in websites these days! Developers importing 5-10MB worth of bizarre JavaScript packages in order to do simple things that can be done concisely in vanilla JS. No consideration at ALL to low bandwidths and loading order. Packages within packages within packages connected to other packages in a precarious balance doomed to fall apart within 12 months. It's all so unnecessary! I mean look at this stupid site we're on right now! Basically entirely text and yet so bloated and dysfunctional that older phones struggle to render it. How do you f*ck up so badly that you can't get a quad core 1.4GHz budget Android from 8 years ago to render a text-based website, meanwhile other Devs are putting DOOM onto digital pregnancy tests?

by Randalhayes 1 week ago

Wholly agree. It's bloated. 2000s were what, pure php so some skills were required. Now we have templates, embeds and other fancy thingeys that just eat up a lot of space.

by kulasjulio 1 week ago

Php will minimal imports and self hosted JavaScript checking in.

by Anonymous 1 week ago

You mean a pregnancy test for human women that plays DOOM or a pregnancy test for video games?

by Anonymous 1 week ago

The former.

by Anonymous 1 week ago

Static site generators for the win!

by deonluettgen 1 week ago

i actually like #1 the best

by Anonymous 1 week ago

I like simple text well formatted with pictures and links to other sources. Internet websites nowadays (where I live) are mostly wordpress templates used over and over.

by kulasjulio 1 week ago

Lmao didn't know the second and third. Saved

by Anonymous 1 week ago

The first is ironically not even a website. It's a webpage. A website is a collection of webpages.

by Aromatic-Day 1 week ago

I pretty much agree. And it didn't seem like we went to the same handful of websites/apps for everything back then like we do now.

by Anonymous 1 week ago

Mostly disagree with your opinion, depends on the situation. I sort of agree that those ridiculous parallax scrolling sites, or the no button/link minimalism sites which you get now days are just bad. Don't forget though, that we also had jank back in the day, like those all Flash sites which were just boxes with X's in them most of the time, or those fixed to 4:3 640×480px screen size sites .

by Anonymous 1 week ago

I miss the neon green type on a black background with animating gifs all over the place. It was more fun to explore then.

by Anonymous 1 week ago

That's just a straight up fact!

by Early-Cauliflower441 1 week ago

Meh, I feel like the purpose of websites has changed and the design changed to match. When I started using the internet 20 years ago. I was just looking for information and GIFs, now I expect way more from basically all websites.

by Jaqueline96 1 week ago

Superior? Go to any japanese website in 2024 and you'll see how "superior" they are

by Anonymous 1 week ago

Finally an actual unpopular opinion, disagree though

by Anonymous 1 week ago