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Comment by alpaca128 | Hacker News Reader

It might not save the planet, but I sure do prefer a website that doesn't need five seconds to load.

I don't feel like I'm asking that much but for some reason websites insist on using HD videos as site background, autoplaying livestreams, newsletter popups and more.

No need to argue about saving the climate - not using Netflix or YouTube would indeed make a much larger difference - but just do it for our sanity. I swear the only reason I'm not clinically insane yet is because browsers have tabs which let me load websites in the background. And that's with an internet connection that, while not the fastest, is far beyond anything certain remote regions have access to.

How about we keep sites lightweight so more people around the world have access to information and education, in turn improving more than just the climate.

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I am still in awe at how Wikipedia can have such a site that might not have the trendiest design but can still be accessible to Windows XP users, and that works without JavaScript (even their mobile version, which phones can benefit from less JS (equals more battery life) but for some reason websites have forgotten about it).

For other websites though, it eats your limited data allowance if you are in a unlucky country (even at home if you are in a worse country, thank goodness for unlimited home connections here).

Why wouldn't they? They re serving the same content for 20 years

Good question. Counter-example: news sites. Very lean in '90s and early 2000s, but now still serves the same thing but with more tracking (so JS), autoplaying video for another newsitem (so additional data is consumed + battery life), and the essential content (what an average user wants) is still the same. Complicated visualization done wih JS+Canvas? Fine with that. News item? If it is a human, it would be obese already.

TLDR: News sites for reading news has certainly got heavier.

News sites need to look trendy even if the current trend is "morbidly obese" wiki doesn't need that

Actually, the "essential content" has on average gotten much worse as budget cuts mean much less original writing.

There isn't always an actual need to change a design, but people feeling that something "looks outdated" if it's not following current aesthetic trends is a real thing.

Somehow the Wikipedia design doesn't seem to be suffering from that. (And that's probably a good thing.)

I remember when I was younger and moved from 55kbps dial up to 2mbps ADSL - I felt like the future had been delivered to our house.

Now I feel like computing is ageing with me

Lightweight software allows people to hold on to PCs and phones for longer, reducing garbage. Same for high contrast text and icons, which are still usable on cheap screens.

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