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Browse the web like its 1999

oldweb.today

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Re: Browse the web like its 1999

#81

Post by nine_k »

namelosw wrote: post #66
shp0ngle wrote: post #14

This just makes me angry. Browsers are now so fast and capable that you can emulate whole OS with another browser in them, which you can then use to browse . So why does half of the websites in 2021 feel so sluggish? GMail, which was famous for loading fast, sometimes takes forever to load. I need to wait minutes when reading news websites while elements randomly jump around the page (seriously, why does pages do tha…

> I don't want to just blindly blame JS. Look at this page! JS can be amazing! And I love stuff like Figma (as it's so fast and optimized). I agree with your point, but I have to point out that Figma is mostly built on C++/WASM.

It runs on the web, and it's fast.

Also, fronted parts that operate the DOM are necessarily JS.

Re: Browse the web like its 1999

#82

Post by ninkendo »

ricardobayes wrote: post #44
pacifika wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Typically results in custom controls and working against the browser provided affordances

Of course, but I pride myself in able to create custom code and not just rely on some built-in stuff.

Why do you consider it a good thing to not use standard controls?

Re: Browse the web like its 1999

#83

Post by usrbin »

ricardobayes wrote: post #44
pacifika wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Typically results in custom controls and working against the browser provided affordances

Of course, but I pride myself in able to create custom code and not just rely on some built-in stuff.

The operative piece of the above post (to me) is "working _against_ the browser", not the existence of custom code per se. IME lots of problems with UI development have come (partly) from shoehorning tech to do something it's not meant to do, at the expense of speed, accessibility, and general usability. If the built-in thing doesn't do what you need, by all means build something that does, but it's worth keeping in mind that often the useful thing that end users actually need/want is the built-in thing.

Re: Browse the web like its 1999

#84

Post by nine_k »

greggyb wrote: post #80
nine_k wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't even mind Gmail taking some time to operate. What I do mind is pegging all 4 cores of an i5, and burning through my battery. (Sadly, my workflow is heavily dependent on multiple labels per email, and no IMAP client seems to work acceptably in that situation.)

I'm not sure what sort of workflow and mail client you desire, but Notmuch supports arbitrary tagging. Most coverage I've seen of it integrates with emacs or mutt (or similar text-based mail clients). That said, in searching for the project homepage, I also saw this project[1], which might be interesting if you're looking for something a bit less terminal. I'm sure there are more alternatives, but hopefully this is u…

Thank you; likely I should finally give it a try.

Re: Browse the web like its 1999

#85

Post by greggturkington »

kragen wrote: post #34
shp0ngle wrote: post #14

This just makes me angry. Browsers are now so fast and capable that you can emulate whole OS with another browser in them, which you can then use to browse . So why does half of the websites in 2021 feel so sluggish? GMail, which was famous for loading fast, sometimes takes forever to load. I need to wait minutes when reading news websites while elements randomly jump around the page (seriously, why does pages do tha…

Dan Luu reports that Google penalizes his pages in search rankings because they don't include enough CSS and JS. It's not really half of the websites; it's the half you're being guided to.

Can you link to this please? Intuitively it seems every Core Web Vital would be improved by less code.

I found this post [1] but it seems a but outdated and references AMP, which Core Web Vital metrics are supposed to replace (right?).

https://danluu.com/web-bloat/

Re: Browse the web like its 1999

#86

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

majani wrote: post #72
marginalia_nu wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's basically Parkinson's law. If someone is given NASA's resources to move a piece of paper across the room, they will find a way to use a space shuttle to do it and call you oldfashioned for doing it by hand.

Yup. This is also happening in gaming, where 2D pixel art platformers are now above 1GB in size https://store.steampowered.com/app/504230/Celeste/ https://apps.apple.com/us/app/castlevania-grimoire-of-souls/... When the hardware was restricted, such games used to be squeezed onto a 48MB SNES cartridge

48MB? That's ridiculous for an SNES cart. Even at 48Mb that's the size of the largest SNES cart IIRC.

Re: Browse the web like its 1999

#87

Post by kioshix »

bryans wrote: post #37

This brings me so much joy. It's such a perfect emulation that it actually makes me homesick for the late 90s.

Yeah, this reminds me of when I was young and spent hours at the public library, because that's where I could get on the internet at that time.

Re: Browse the web like its 1999

#88

Post by SilasX »

majani wrote: post #72
marginalia_nu wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's basically Parkinson's law. If someone is given NASA's resources to move a piece of paper across the room, they will find a way to use a space shuttle to do it and call you oldfashioned for doing it by hand.

Yup. This is also happening in gaming, where 2D pixel art platformers are now above 1GB in size https://store.steampowered.com/app/504230/Celeste/ https://apps.apple.com/us/app/castlevania-grimoire-of-souls/... When the hardware was restricted, such games used to be squeezed onto a 48MB SNES cartridge

Yep. Ticket to Ride is a board game and its video game version on Steam is hundreds of megabytes, yet all it has is 2D images with some scaling and translation effects.

Re: Browse the web like its 1999

#89

Post by coldpie »

hulitu wrote: post #62
shp0ngle wrote: post #14

This just makes me angry. Browsers are now so fast and capable that you can emulate whole OS with another browser in them, which you can then use to browse . So why does half of the websites in 2021 feel so sluggish? GMail, which was famous for loading fast, sometimes takes forever to load. I need to wait minutes when reading news websites while elements randomly jump around the page (seriously, why does pages do tha…

> Browsers are now so fast and capable that you can emulate whole OS with another browser in them, which you can then use to browse Yes they can emulate a whole OS. It's browsing at what they suck. Seconds wasted for TLS handshake, seconds wasted on downloading MB of JS, then realizing content is missing, another TLS handshake, another download, then some ads, some tracking scripts and finaly the page is displayed. O…

> then some ads, some tracking scripts

Well, these at least are fixable. The web is unusable without uBlock Origin and NoScript.

Re: Browse the web like its 1999

#90

Post by runako »

shp0ngle wrote: post #14

This just makes me angry. Browsers are now so fast and capable that you can emulate whole OS with another browser in them, which you can then use to browse . So why does half of the websites in 2021 feel so sluggish? GMail, which was famous for loading fast, sometimes takes forever to load. I need to wait minutes when reading news websites while elements randomly jump around the page (seriously, why does pages do tha…

I broadly agree, but you lost me at Figma being fast. Granted I am using an older MacBook Pro (2015), but using Figma in a browser usually requires that I close other apps to let Figma do its thing. Figma and Miro are the only sites I have encountered that incur this level of performance hit.

Incidentally, mightyapp.com was founded to make browsing less resource-intensive by doing the rendering in the cloud. They highlight Figma and Miro (among others) prominently, so it seems others have similar experiences with Figma.

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