[ineedasername]

Apart from the style & aesthetic, there was this great & glorious period of time on the web from around 1997 to 2004 (rough estimate) where broadband was was still rare enough the web designers had to assume slow dialup connections and at least try to keep page size low.

During this time, if you had broadband and a moderately fast computer, browsing the web lightning fast.

Then came the frameworks and, especially after smartphones, the adaptive web for small mobile-first(ish, or second or whatever) screen sizes and the bloat began. Previously you only had to worry about pages that dumped flash ads or used flash for every UI element, they were still slow. Then everything became about as slow as before.

I still think browsing is a bit faster than the dialup days, but not as fast as the golden age from '97-'04. It seems now that page loads sizes & javascript CPU load expand at roughly the pave of computing power & bandwidth availability.

Which means it's a pretty awful experience for anyone on a low end computer w/ broadband that barely meets the definition.