[Porthos9K]

Never mind IE11. http://motherfuckingwebsite.com still works on IE6, and why shouldn't it? It's plain HTML with no CSS or JS.

There is no reason why any web document should not still be readable in Lynx, Mosaic, or even WorldWideWeb.

Web applications are a bit more complicated, but that complication is self-inflicted. We developers choose to to hijack users' devices for work that should be done on the server in the name of providing a better user experience, and we make our work harder in the process.

Supporting old browsers isn't that hard. Build a solid foundation of HTML, HTTP GET, and HTTP POST, even if it means doing full page refreshes. You can always layer your AJAX calls and such on top. It's called "progressive enhancement", remember?

[userbinator]

Web applications are a bit more complicated, but that complication is self-inflicted. We developers choose to to hijack users' devices for work that should be done on the server in the name of providing a better user experience, and we make our work harder in the process.

I think you are absolutely right with "self-inflicted" --- it brings to mind the frequent discussions here about Slack and their web-based client using hundreds of MB to gigabytes of memory for what is essentially "IRC with some images". Not too long ago they "stopped supporting" older browsers, which was basically a kick in the face to everyone for whom it was working perfectly fine before.

I remember using "webchats" in the late 90s/early 2000s with IE6 (or could be 5/5.5, not sure) on machines with probably 1/100th the processing power and memory of ones today, and they worked perfectly well; complete with things like animated emoticons (they weren't called "emoji" yet) and GIFs that didn't even lag the system unlike what happens today, and that was on a single-core CPU!

A possibly fun project is to create a Slack clone that works with that resource constraint, and uses their API; they have a WebSocket interface which older browsers are obviously not capable of using, but I believe there's a classic AJAX API too.

[MayeulC]

Use a Matrix bridge if you really need Slack, and pick one of the web-based Matrix clients, or build your own. Some are extremely lightweight.

[ilrwbwrkhv]

i like how the mfwebsite loads a google analytics tag at the end which is larger than the actual website. lol.

[alistairSH]

Oddly enough, this page doesn’t appear to scale properly on Safari on iPadOS. It’s too wide, requiring horizontal scrolling. Requesting the desktop version works. I haven’t tried any debugging, so don’t know why.

[imglorp]

Well, it's got js now.

     <!-- yes, I know...wanna fight about it? -->

Although I don't see why in this case. Owner can grep/wc the server logs to get a hit count.

[jpswade]

That website doesn't do anything.

[userbinator]

It doesn't need to. The "everything must be a web app" mindset is completely unnecessary and actively harmful to accessibility. I've seen far too many "redesigns" turn a site of static pages or even forms into a horribly slow and buggy limited-browser-support SPA that excludes access for no real reason.

[jpswade]

I think you missed the point.

This website doesn't do anything but others do. Browsers have to support both.

[denkmoon]

It delivers information. Arguably more effectively than most websites I visit for information.

[ummonk]

It seems to be delivering almost zero information.

[denkmoon]

The information delivered is the author's philosophy on website design and implementation complexity.

I can easily tell that the author does not approve of overly complex websites, and thinks they lead to poor experiences for the developer and user.

Contrast this with a website for some hot new web 3.0 buzzthing, where "what is this thing" is not answered in lieu of presenting a shitload of "why we/this thing is so great". An example of this is npmjs.com. Nowhere does it actually state "this is a package manager for javascript", if you didn't already know it.

[userbinator]

To its credit, at least npmjs.com is still readable without JS. However, it is lacking in terms of what it's about, and reminds me of GE.com - the latter maybe somewhat excusable because GE makes so many different things, but I don't think NPM is quite so large...

[jpswade]

Then you're missing the point that the web is used for interactions not just information.

[Porthos9K]

It's a document, not an app. What were you expecting?

[jpswade]

Browsers aren't about just reading documents, they are about interacting with the web. That's why there's such a good argument for upgrading browsers.