[galangalalgol]

I'm not even proximal to webdev, can someone explain why people keep making pages using new stuff? I get why google keeps adding things, but why do people use it? Well over half the pages I go to look better without js. HN looks identical.

[freddex]

Many of the newer standards added to the web platform boil down to supporting development of web apps, not only web pages. For example, the current iteration of the File System API in Chrome (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/File_System...) allows web apps to request permission to read and write to the user's file system. This is great for many tools.

Of course, this can be fairly controversial: More app-like capabilities lead to more complex standards and harder-to-secure browsers. There's also overengineering where people use web app techniques to develop web pages. You don't need (much) JS or even any of the new standards for HN, but for something like Google Docs or Figma, it's a different story.

[qingcharles]

A lot of the new stuff added to CSS in the last few years has allowed web devs to vastly reduce the amount of JavaScript and HTML cruft in our pages and make them much more semantic and accessible, reduce download size and increase render speed.

If you use them right.

Which 99% of sites do not.