[whstl]

I agree with the sibling saying that no website owes you anything, but what you say is not even true in the first place. In general we didn't really "simplify designs", and the "good UX on top" is often negated by modern website cruft.

As an example: the modern replacement for this kind of fan-site would be a Fandom.com site, which has an interface full of cruft, focused mostly on ads and "engagement" stuff. Only a small portion reserved for actual content. Unless there is a lot of customization, list pages are often alphabetical and have a terrible design that make it very difficult to find stuff. So you need to use their terrible search that is hidden in a tiny 30x30 button on the top among other buttons.

Plenty of other examples there. For every website like Hacker News, there's dozens of forums whose design is more focused on useless ornamentation, monetization and increasing engagement through stupid tactics.

[RamblingCTO]

Sorry but I totally disagree, not only with you but all the other commenters and down-voters. We got rid of flash, gifs, auto play videos with hideous sound, and blinking shit. We got reader mode, focusing on good UI/UX (given you're using ad blockers). In the times of myspace every website tried to pull fancy shit on us and I'm glad it's over. Just because there's still enough shit around doesn't mean that the internet got more readable in the mean time. Maybe I'm not using these shitty sites like you do, by MY experience is better than it was in these days.

/edit: and browsers and plugins are our saviours, hail reader mode and not auto-playing videos! I consider that part of the UI/UX development as well.

[whstl]

You started your message complaining about this specific website. Now, the things you complain of in this reply don't really apply to it. It's still better to use than the kind of website that replaced it. My browsing habits have nothing to do with it, I just picked an appropriate apples-to-apples example for comparison. I think it's unfair to compare this to Apple's website or something.

Also, you mention auto play videos. Those are pretty much a staple of the current website era, with browsers themselves having to fight back [1]. Now, even Reddit's new version has it. Annoying animated gifs and annoying flash were mostly novelties in personal webpages.

If anything, needing ad blockers, reader mode and and anti-autoplay in browsers, is an indication of how things aren't exactly great in the web anymore. And that website from 1999 doesn't need any of those.

[1] https://developer.chrome.com/blog/autoplay/

[RamblingCTO]

Yeah I was talking more broadly.

My point was that in the early days I couldn't really shape my browsing experience. Now I can because a necessity arose due to websites delivering shit (and imho this started in the early days). So now they are nice. That was my point, not really sure the delivery was on point haha. And with the demise of flash it really got a lot better. But maybe I don't visit shitty websites a lot.

[whstl]

> Now I can because a necessity arose due to websites delivering shit

Ah got it! We're in agreement, then. And I also can't live without those tools.

[RamblingCTO]

Glad we changed a disagreement to an agreement ;)