[rakoo]

I see a different lesson, perhaps not one that is very kind: content always beats form. Visual bells and whistles don't provide anything if relevant content is not also present. Those bells and whistles might even be an impediment to getting to the information, which means it's sometimes best left out.

I'm obviously biased in this interpretation, because I tend to favour low-bandwidth version of websites as much as I can, such as using the no-javascript version of facebook (m.facebook.com) where there is much less actual interaction than facebook wants, or using an alternate twitter client (nitter.net) because I just want to read the content, not wait for javascript to load and execute if I'm not even going to interact. Just look at Hacker News: isn't that supposed to be laughable in 2020's web design world ? And yet we're all using it because, beyond being centered on content, it's _fast_

The side effect of aiming for no javascript is that the content is more easily reachable: there's no need to wander into endless menus and animations that bring no value, because everything is there already. I feel it's a lesson that more designers should apply.

[perl4ever]

Is there any necessary connection between visual roughness or a "90s look" and low bandwidth or speed? Seems to me you can have a lot of javascript and CSS in a few KB, and what bogs down modern web pages has to be frameworks and advertising. Although I'm not and never have been a web dev.

[rakoo]

For sure you can have a slick website with javascript and CSS that doesn't slow down the page because of all the tricks like loading/caching/prerending/whatever magic is available. But that's the thing: it requires work, which means you have to be very good at it, or select the correct tools to do it and depend on them; in the case of companies website, you most likely are pressured to cram yet another feature that is extremely urgent yet there's no budget for making the site fast. Sometimes developers don't even care because it's fast enough to them. Some other times they do care, and they come up with excellent initiatives like 2G Tuesdays (https://engineering.fb.com/networking-traffic/building-for-e...)

So yeah, doing a 90s' style website is not necessary to have a fast website, but it's impossible to have a slow website. But it's true that a very minimum amount of CSS can totally change the look of your site without being bloated: see for example the Best Motherfucking Website (https://bestmotherfucking.website/)

[dfw99]

i totally agree with you. it's hilarious that someone would try to argue with the article's main point on a platform that basically proves the point.