[HelloNurse]

The examples are mostly low contrast: a wasteland of white and preferably off-white empty space, also white and preferably off-white and preferably borderless boxes, lightly colored and mostly grey text inside them. When did combining dark text on a light background and light text on a dark background become nontrivial advice?

When web pages had a proper structure and color scheme (compare www.gnu.org now and in 2004: http://web.archive.org/web/20040113091408/https://www.gnu.or... ) they were more readable.

[meesterdude]

More readable, yes. But not as pretty. One can obviously go too pretty and lose all readability, but the socialization of the web has to some degree required we embrace more diversity in design.

I still have trouble not underlining clickable links, for example. But sometimes in a design it's just as obviously clickable without it, and less cluttered too.