Building an HTML-first site doubled our users overnight • Hacker News Board

Re: Building an HTML-first site doubled our users overnight

#171

Post by Hard_Space » Wed, Jun 10, 2026, 3:43 PM UTC

rewgs wrote: post #168

Hard_Space wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 60 year people can't user your fancy site because then don't have an internal model of how a computer works. I think this is a bit outdated. I'll be 60 in a month, and have been practicing and writing about machine learning, for money, for a straight 10 years now; and I was a young man (and a full stack developer) during the digital revolution. If anything, GenX had to work harder to get into these brittle emerging…

GP clearly isn’t talking about 60 year olds who were full stack devs and get on Hacker News.

Well, neither am I - I am talking about my own peer group, non-tech types just fine with computers.

Re: Building an HTML-first site doubled our users overnight

#172

Post by iammrpayments » Wed, Jun 10, 2026, 3:44 PM UTC

onion2k wrote: post #138

This isn't "We replaced a React app with an HTML form and performance improved." It's "We replaced a bad web page with a good web page and performance improved." Attributing this to the technology driving the browser experience is silly. You can make a brilliant user experience with React. You can make a terrible website with plain HTML. The improvement comes from the change design, not tech.

Of course, is just what with React is 100x harder, and when you fail the fans will blame you instead of the technology.

Re: Building an HTML-first site doubled our users overnight

#173

Post by nunez » Wed, Jun 10, 2026, 3:45 PM UTC

genewitch wrote: post #163

nunez wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chase works with ad blockers, though. It doesn't work if you disable JavaScript...but it wasn't always this way! They had a mobile version of their online banking service at https://m.chase.com that was EXTREMELY FAST and did 85% of what you need to do in an online banking portal (check balances, transfer funds). They scrapped it when they moved to their current bloated monstrosity of the portal that they have today.…

i am unclear on if it's because of the adblocker (specifically i use ad nauseam which does block some JS. some.) or because of firefox. I can load it on edge every time it fails on firefox. last week, chase.com worked fine on firefox. the previous 15 months where i needed to log in, it did not. Someone at chase isn't checking their work on firefox.

When I have to log into Chase on my computer, I do via Firefox, and it works fine. Maybe you flipped something on in about:config that's breaking it?

Re: Building an HTML-first site doubled our users overnight

#174

Post by simpaticoder » Wed, Jun 10, 2026, 3:45 PM UTC

OskarS wrote: post #165

As a non-web dev, I have a question about this part: > There was a sad coda; as is the way of contract work, I moved on. I explained what I had built to my replacement, that it always worked even without javascript. He was appalled and said, “but that’s a lot more work for us.” Why is it more work? The approach described in the article seems honestly reasonably simple: just write the standard components for the form,…

Simpler doesn't mean easier. Consider a chef who at their previous job started using a wood-burning stove. This is an objectively simpler tool than a gas or electric stove, yet it would be very difficult (even impossible, depending on local architecture and regulations) for a new kitchen to add one.

Re: Building an HTML-first site doubled our users overnight

#175

Post by whstl » Wed, Jun 10, 2026, 3:45 PM UTC

afavour wrote: post #7

entropichorse wrote: post #3

People who built a crappy website using React are just as likely to build a crappy website using Astro, HTML-first approach or any other technology

Not really, no. Astro requires you to opt a component in to client-side rendering, React (with its server components etc) require you to opt out . Defaults matter in scenarios like this and I'd bet the average developer of crappy websites would have a much faster site with Astro than React for that reason alone.

Small correction: it's other frameworks that require you to opt-out, most notably Next.js. Although I've been seeing so many people confusing Next.js with React lately...

Astro itself works just fine with React, and it can still be HTML-only.

But you can also render React on the server yourself using renderToString, if you don't want a framework.

Re: Building an HTML-first site doubled our users overnight

#176

Post by theflyinghorse » Wed, Jun 10, 2026, 3:46 PM UTC

OskarS wrote: post #165

As a non-web dev, I have a question about this part: > There was a sad coda; as is the way of contract work, I moved on. I explained what I had built to my replacement, that it always worked even without javascript. He was appalled and said, “but that’s a lot more work for us.” Why is it more work? The approach described in the article seems honestly reasonably simple: just write the standard components for the form,…

It probably has to do with what technology people are used to. There has been a couple of generations of web developers who have only known javascript and its ecosystem for building webapps, and so anything other than pure javascript solution looks foreign.

Re: Building an HTML-first site doubled our users overnight

#177

Post by LNSY » Wed, Jun 10, 2026, 3:46 PM UTC

OskarS wrote: post #165

As a non-web dev, I have a question about this part: > There was a sad coda; as is the way of contract work, I moved on. I explained what I had built to my replacement, that it always worked even without javascript. He was appalled and said, “but that’s a lot more work for us.” Why is it more work? The approach described in the article seems honestly reasonably simple: just write the standard components for the form,…

Because before there was AI Slop, there was React.

Re: Building an HTML-first site doubled our users overnight

#178

Post by StableAlkyne » Wed, Jun 10, 2026, 3:46 PM UTC

motoboi wrote: post #132

Old people. They exist. Not even that old. 60 year people can't user your fancy site because then don't have an internal model of how a computer works. You know that when pressing a button a hidden engine runs in the backend (or something runs in the backend). You expect an answer and if the expectation do not match the result, the model in your mind creates an hypothesis about what maybe happened and iterate from th…

I would argue it's not even old people. Most people do not have any understanding of what's going on when you click a button. Website either acts as expected, or it doesn't "work"

If the button doesn't work, the average user is going to say "this most be broken" and then use a competitor (or contact your support). That's why it's really important to error-proof one's design (eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poka-yoke).

So instead of the button failing because you didn't check a box, pop up with a message telling them "Please click $box before continuing". Or if you want to be fancy, feed them whatever form you're giving them piecemeal, so that they can't continue until they finish this small part (e.g., have them input a name, then the next page only has a spot for an address, then the next page only has a spot for card information, then the next only has a spot to select shipping). Simple bite sized chunks anyone (well, anyone you would ethically want to sell to) can understand.

Re: Building an HTML-first site doubled our users overnight

#179

Post by dijksterhuis » Wed, Jun 10, 2026, 3:46 PM UTC

Hard_Space wrote: post #162

motoboi wrote: post #132

Old people. They exist. Not even that old. 60 year people can't user your fancy site because then don't have an internal model of how a computer works. You know that when pressing a button a hidden engine runs in the backend (or something runs in the backend). You expect an answer and if the expectation do not match the result, the model in your mind creates an hypothesis about what maybe happened and iterate from th…

> 60 year people can't user your fancy site because then don't have an internal model of how a computer works. I think this is a bit outdated. I'll be 60 in a month, and have been practicing and writing about machine learning, for money, for a straight 10 years now; and I was a young man (and a full stack developer) during the digital revolution. If anything, GenX had to work harder to get into these brittle emerging…

> practicing and writing about machine learning ... full stack developer ... digital revolution.

my mum, a boomer now in her 70s, would have no bloody clue what you're talking about. she used to work helping out a guy who was doing punchcard programming back when she was young. she ain't dumb. if i broke it down into normal human english words, she'd probably get a sort of idea (or at least nod along to humour me).

i've lost count of the number of conversations i've had with my dad, late 70s boomer, where he complains that they've changed the UI. "It's all different and i don't understand, why did they have to change it? I don't know where anything is now." he's been moaning about things like this for over a decade now (so since his late 60s).

there are definitely technically not-very-literate 60 year olds and the general point about older folks, whether that's >60 or >70, is very real:

older people exist who don't have a clue about SPAs/PWAs, and chances are they're either asking their offspring for help (my mum does this), trying to phone someone instead (my mum does this) or just walking away from it (my mum does this).

Re: Building an HTML-first site doubled our users overnight

#180

Post by atoav » Wed, Jun 10, 2026, 3:48 PM UTC

OskarS wrote: post #165

As a non-web dev, I have a question about this part: > There was a sad coda; as is the way of contract work, I moved on. I explained what I had built to my replacement, that it always worked even without javascript. He was appalled and said, “but that’s a lot more work for us.” Why is it more work? The approach described in the article seems honestly reasonably simple: just write the standard components for the form,…

By this point people don't appear to have any real clue how to write HTML anymore. Writing semantic HTML isn't significantly harder than say writing Markdown. You copy some HTMl skeleton and you literally just stack your elements into the body. I managed to do that as a 13 year old on MySpace without any deep instruction. Sure you have to close elements as well so the syntax is slightly harder than markdown, but that allows you to differenciate between for example , and .

I am convinced the one single thing that made HTML unusable over the time was that people wanted or needed a way to re-use parts of the page across multiple pages, like headers, navigational elements and footers.

This meant people used frames, PHP, templating engines or any other new technology mainly for the purpose of creating shared elements, simply because HTML failed (and to this day: fails) to offer a way to include one HTML file in another without having it suck (like frames definitely did, since the browser treated each subpart of the page like its own entity including caching).