Why I Don't Use Netscape (1999)
complang.tuwien.ac.at
complang.tuwien.ac.at
I did find this bit interesting too...
> Apart from this practical reason, there's a principal one: The first time I invoked Netscape, it said that it is obsolete and refuses to work. I don't use software that thinks it knows better than I when I should stop using it.
...considering the modern trend for autoupdating software. The author (after this paragraph) also considers availability, but another issue is if the software is something one would like to use even if it is available - for instance, personally i never liked using a version of Paint Shop Pro after version 7 since i found all of them a degradation. I can use PSP7 just fine though (even on Linux via Wine) - imagine if the software decided by itself that it is too old to run or to replace itself with a new version against my wishes (this is something a lot of software does nowadays).
From a user's perspective this also has implications on preserving backwards compatibility for foundational functionality programs rely on.
[0] https://people.inf.ethz.ch/wirth/Articles/LeanSoftware.pdf
See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33201971 for a bit more context.
I for one don't really mind the Autoupdate. I can't stand it that it forces me to restart while I am in some workflow. I'd be fine with "you should update, click here, when ready" which I can click five minutes later when done with the task.
https://github.com/mozilla/policy-templates
https://linuxreviews.org/HOWTO_Make_Mozilla_Firefox_Stop_Nag...
The problem is the recent trend that everything has to be a web application. So browsers aren't just to access information anymore, but literally to do everything else too. I personally don't agree with the web application trend, but this is the reason why a browser is so much more complex compared to an MP3 decoder: the decoder has to do a single thing, the browsers have to do more and more things.
Since lots of money is today transfered directly (banking site) or indirectly (purchase) via a browser, I would say yes.
(even though in reality most updates are introducing new web features and not strengthening security).
Does it have to? I don’t know. But it is. It’s an operating system where 3rd parties execute random code on, and you hope it stays sandboxed. Those websites? Thanks to ads, they don’t update once in a while, but usually once every few seconds.
All software will have bugs. I want my fixes fast and often to an environment where I run untrusted code from that many places.
You can't really have usable vertical tabs in Chromium via plugins either, unless you're content with wasting a lot of horizontal space for an ugly sidebar and vertical space for uselessly duplicated tab bar.
Firefox is the only actual choice I'm aware about.
Why? Are you considering forking Firefox?
I don’t see how just using it does. So if you aren’t contributing to it you may as well use the browser with the best feature set for your use case.
lower market share =>
nobody testing against the free browser or fixing site breakage =>
quirks (bugs, underdefined specifications, nonstandard features) of other browsers becoming required for a functional Web =>
free browser is no longer a browser of the actual Web.I don’t see how that relates to market share, since regular users won’t do that.
I regularly have 2-4 Firefox windows with dozens of tabs in each and a "You need to restart" button press takes like 4-5 seconds max to close all windows and reload them all with all of my tabs as they were. The most I have to do is stick each instance on the right workspace.
Granted each tab will reload when opening it but if I'm updating my OS packages I'm probably not exactly "in the zone".
Nope, it only happens when something outside changed Firefox's files (in this case when Ubuntu swapped files because dpkg updated Firefox). This never happens* in Windows and macOS (it might nag, but you can definitely dismiss it). It seems that johnchristopher has a suggestion to disable auto-updates on a specific application in Debian and Ubuntu (haven't tested it though): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33202052
* At least using their official installers. I'm specifically excluding using Chocolatey/brew/other loose-file update mechanism or your bonkers enterprise solution insists on using loose files and not rely on *.msi/*.app/*.pkg.
This also doesn't occur on NixOS because the new version is in a different direcotry and the old version is kept until it is garbage collected.
Also with flatpak; you are using the old version until you close it. Then it will be garbage collected. On the next launch, you will be running a new version from different root.
It was snap that updated firefox regardless of whether you wanted it or not.
Happens with multiple Firefox instances too, `firefox -P -no-remote` (I think in recent versions the -no-remote is redundant), even on Windows with official installers. In that case you don't even get the error message; new tabs just remain blank. There might be a delay between process A's update and symptoms appearing in process B; not sure.
Will not work with snap though.
The first time it happened, I would get rid of whatever software was involved in causing it and never use it again, except for testing purposes.
I completely agree with you about everything else too. The Web is mature enough that I can use a well-tested website with a 20-year-old browser.
There is no technical reason to not have a minimum-viable web browser with a smaller attack surface that doesn't need upgrades for months or even years.
And, in fact, such browsers exist, and I can browse most of the Web that I need with them. I just have to ignore the shitty mainstream, which I am more than happy to do.
qutebrowser
luakit
If you're into more traditional, then there are these Firefox-based forks:
LibreWolf
Waterfox
Waterfox Classic
PaleMoon
I'm also a fan of Camino on Mac, but that's mostly HTTP-only at this point.
Links (GUI)
Links (console)
Lynx (console)
w3m (console, especially if you like vim bindings)
And each update logs me out of my password manager
Worse, now this is happening to Thunderbird. Wasn't an issue until about a month ago. Now I need to re-install Thunderbird every few weeks because they've pushed an update.
When from my point of view, as a user, I haven't seen a new feature which I truly wanted in over 5 years, maybe more like 10.
Or maybe new features are still coming out in the W3C specs and need to be implemented. Did you know CSS now has a parent selector, or that JS will be getting functional piping soon?
It's a shame, really.
First, it's not software that thinks it knows better. It's whoever maintains that software. Humans. Who read and write the code that makes that software work, and who find problems with the software and fix it.
Now, with that out of the way, and the assumption that someone maintaining software should notify you if the version you have has outstanding problems, yes you should still be in control of making the decision to continue using it, or to get a newer version. But you should be OK with software maintainers having thoughts and opinions about whether specific versions are problematic.
Why I will never buy another Apple product. Had a great video editing station I would author DVDs with until one day Apple decided I needed to upgrade my OS to continue using the software which of course required a new computer. Apple's dead to me.
Push for silent updates, force upgrades, always on tracking, remote bricking, notarization, (corporate cartels) trusted networks, making things harder to open, harder to repair, authorization for everything all point toward control.
I believe another generation of hackers will emerge from this transition.
Sweeping complexity under the rug isn't the same thing as removing it.
I tend to browse without JavaScript enabled, except for places I already trust to not abuse it. And if there is anything blocking me from accessing the page, such as a modal dialog, a cookie notice, a survey, a prompt to sign up for the newsletter, I close the tab.
Over time, I have found that type of rude lack of consideration for the reader's cognitive load and ability to correlate highly with low-quality content that is a waste of my time to read, so this practice also saves me a lot of reading time.
And every day, my Internet gets better and better.
I like the term "featurism", I'm going to try to remember it.
[1] I have heard of people trying to get Mosaic to work on modern machines, but I think the efforts were restricted to rebuilding the software rather than adding features.
Security isn't everything, there's also accessibility to think about.
HTTPS breaks in many circumstances when it's not needed, including on current browsers.
You can also use a stripping proxy.
Bigger issues I've encountered with actually using Mosaic is that a) it does not support the Host header, so you must have a dedicated IP address, and b) it doesn't like semicolons in then Content-Type header, which most of today's servers include.
TLS is not just about security. It also protects the authenticity of your content, ensures privacy and even accessibility for your visitors. Without it, any node between your visitor and your server could inject content and JavaScript to do all sorts of nefarious tracking and profiling.
These days there's really no excuse for using plain HTTP on public facing sites. Please rethink your decision.
While the threat of MITM is technically true, thanks to being on a relatively safe networks segment, I have yet to encounter it happening in the real world, except in cases of captive portals, when I actually want it to happen.
I think it is largely an over-stated threat for most read-only applications.
The impact on accessibility, on the other hand, is real and huge.
I see loud and intrusive ads on Wikipedia already, and it's why I've started using wikiless instead.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Funding_Wikipedia_th...
<link src="http://target.site/...">
There are risks and there are benefits. Managing the risks to get the benefits is the game.
My sites only use cookies for user preferences preferences and client-linked session tokens, so I am not too worried.
A different way to mitigate the risks is by only storing information that does not need to be private, remaining small and un-interesting, designing for transparency and auditability, and keeping a close eye on those audit logs.
Web 2.5 is a thing.
https://oldvcr.blogspot.com/2022/07/crypto-ancienne-20-now-b...
You're going to love the qualified version:
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=creeping%20f...
Popup Blocker [0] and uBlock Origin for Firefox will do a pretty good job of getting rid of the junk you don't want.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/popup-blocker...
In my comment, I was thinking of the context of links I click to from HN.
But it also works when searching for information. When I close the tab of an unfriendly site, which, remember, likely has lower-quality information than an accessible one, I am immediately freeing myself to click the next link in the search results and get my information from an accessible site with higher-quality content.
Given the disparity of the quality of content, it is quite likely that I would have ended up at the latter site anyway.
Certainly a reasonable choice on your part. We all want what we want.
I have a friend who, when he goes grocery shopping, grabs the first item he sees from each of the items on his list. As far as I can determine, this is without regard to price, quality, or any other factor.
More profitable for the store. The actual expensive stuff is on the top shelf. Eye level will probably be the store and the national brand which skew average or a little below.
It’s one of the instances where your interests and that of the grocery store are mostly aligned. Grocery store wants you to buy more and rotate inventory not necessarily pay a lot for it.
Unless it's a personal site/blog I typically open a site to find information I came for, and close it as soon as that task is done. Anything that makes this take longer than it needs to gets blocked. Sites should strive to stay open for as few seconds/minutes as possible while still giving me the requested information.
Regarding text/image-focused sites that require JS: I generally find sites made by people who haven't figured out how to send text over HTTPS to have low-quality content befitting of their low-quality stacks. I'm all the better for using my adblocker to block them from my search results page forever; it saves me time in the long run.
They actually could have translated it 1:1 as “featuritis”. It basically means the same as “feature creep”.
After all having some people see and complain about things getting worse doesn't mean that said things will stop getting worse if most people don't care or even noticing them getting worse to do something about it.
For a chuckle try running old software on a modern computer (fire up dos box and run WordPerfect or something) and be amazed at the speed of the thing. that is why we built a faster computer :)
One of my favorite examples: Lego Island's driving mechanic is tied to frame rate, so on a modern machine tapping left or right will fling your car 90+ degrees: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CmqbccCqI0
I discovered this playing the old DOS RPG Drakkhen, where there was a tower with a shark in its moat, circling around. It would jump and eat your characters if they happened to cross the bridge at the wrong moment. The funny thing is its speed was based on the processor clock (the game was released in 1989) and if you played the game with a faster processor, the shark would be too fast to be avoided. Push the turbo button, reduce clock speed, problem solved.
Then this thing starts becoming profitable in the sense of bringing street cred and money and new kind of people rush in with their new ideas how to use this new thing. These new people don't share the same ideas with the original believers but they know how to build machinery around it to make it profitable and appeal for the masses. The new thing that was supposed to change the world becomes a concentrated and optimised version of the things before it.
The believers then become bitter purists and try to fight the new order by disowning the current technologies or methods and cater for the niche hipster elitist circles when the rest continues do their thing.
You can see it in everything, you can see it in printing press you can see it in Radio, you can see it in TV, you can see it in things that are not media: cars, clothing, shaving, coffee - everything.
Things don't become worse, they just become mainstream and that mass adoption is run not by purists but by people with no regard to the original ideals of the technology and masses love it this way and stays this way until its made obsolete by something else.
The feature where Firefox repeatedly changed your preferences and helpfully showed PDF with the JavaScript jank was pretty terrible. Changing that preference a third time won't make it any more charming. Yes, yes, the cattle are supposed to be OK with the "movement" of their cheese, move along now, nothing to see here.
> ... clothing, shaving, coffee - everything
Uh, no. Coffee in America started out cheap and for the masses (following some sort of Tea Party, I think it was) and then even more for the masses (now with pre-ground beans, instead of using the mill in the stock of your Sharps Carbine) and only very recently has there been a movement towards not-mainstream "hipster elitist circle" coffee made by purists.
> Things don't become worse
This is not what I've read; for example, British church organ making went through a rough patch around the decade of 1900 or so. With a little study of history more such examples could doubtless be found. One might even be optimistic that the modern web might pull itself out of the "big miasma"[1] that it has sunk into. But if the powers that be are blind to criticism, and go on about "tooling issues" or whatever, eh, it might be a while before changes can be made for the better.
By the way, Arnold Toynbee said some pretty funny things about blind elites.
[1] gemini://diesenbacher.net/
This is not about ideals, this is about foisting crap on the world that literally nobody wants or needs.
For things like security patches, pushing updates has been a net positive IMO.
For absolutely everything else, it's a disaster. I always used to think that the "free software purists" were a bit too radical for my tastes ... but now, in the era of SaaS, I find myself agreeing with them. I want to own and be in control of my hardware and software. Let me decide if upgrading is worth it.
In other words, the criticism is fair but the solution of attempting to freeze time or even try to go back is not right. Sometimes though, when things get very bad going back to the basics and re-do everything can work.
"Who knows whether a new version will be available and usable when the current one stops working?"
With SaaS products the company can go out of business; they can change the product on you without your opt-in, making it unusable (or less usable) for your purposes and there is no way to downgrade to the previous version; they can stop supporting your web browser; your account can get disabled or compromised; new policies and regulations on data retention and privacy could render a particular SaaS product unusable for your purposes.
What are you meant to do if a SaaS tool you depend on suddenly stops working? How do you install the old version and get back to work?
When a program needs 3 build systems to build (ninja, meson, make) is probably a manifestation of exuberation.
A browser that can render text, and not much beside the text, emphasizes the text of a page, which, for many pages, is the content the user came for. Everything else is fluff.
In modern times, "Reader mode" in browsers does the same thing: removes fluff to make reading easier.
Of course it's great that now browsers support advanced features and enable amazing interactive pages like https://ciechanow.ski/internal-combustion-engine/, or just "simple" GMail. But such pages, and such highly interactive web applications, are fewer and further between than most pages that provide value by showing just static text and static images.
But for browsers there is an obvious need for apps that are not “vb in an empty vba-enabled document”. This ugly heap is only stable because an enormous effort and skill goes into making it so.
Just kidding, back in my day kids assumed the same thing.
Also, this exact conversation has been happening since the web was created. Linked article is evidence of that.
In a more practical way though, some new things are good, some new thing are bad. It makes sense to adopt good stuff and cut off the bad. Deck? Mostly good. Requiring phone number to play a game? Bad. Naturally, it is a very subjective process and we are bound to disagree on details.
Not that long ago a family member tried to use the same argument used here ( its a generational thing; old people just hate new stuff ) when trying to convince that Venmo is actually good as I was trying to gently indicate that maybe a payment system that by default announces to the world[1] I just spent X on Y may not be the best thing since sliced bread. Working near that space I was amused, but each to their own ( and I certainly am not going to tell the guy how to raise his kids ).
[1]https://www.cnet.com/news/privacy/venmo-explains-why-transac...
Most people on HackerNews remember when they were the target demographic for most software. And they no longer are.
If you're under 40, this is how we all started. The target demographic since the explosion of the internet is no longer software engineers. That feels bad for people, and they lash out conservatively.
Because they're not wrong - the software IS worse. For them (us).
It is one of those things where in theory if absolutely everything was done right and no other stuff was done differently it can work. E.g. if the only difference between a JS-enabled and a JS-disabled version of the site was the content change and nothing else (no additional JS frameworks, functionality or whatever) then yes it most likely can be faster (though for the difference to be noticeable the site needs to be rather heavy in the first place).
Problem being that in practice this comes with a bunch of other baggage that not only throws the benefit out of the window but introduces a bunch of other issues as well.
The reality is, with node junk, the average site uses 10mb of js, taking 5s to render, to show 1kb of text.
Get rid of that 10mb of js, all those fonts, and you don't need to update only part of a page.
It will load and render in 10ms.
Conditional loading certainly can improve perf. in theory. I've yet to see any evidence it does so in practice. The aggregate of bundle-size, bundle-parse, client-side execution resource-usage & added latency of the plethora of metadata normally bundled with API responses is more than enough to negate any actual perf. gains.
As for "easier to maintain", I've never seen anyone even try to make that argument in theory, nevermind practice. Pretty sure it's widely accepted even by advocates of this architecture that it's a trade-off of perf. gains for ease-of-maintenance losses.
It moves some of the rendering work from the backend (having to query the data and generate markup) to the browser (query the API and generate the content based on the responses).
At my current job, it's made a significant improvement. The server returns compact JSON data instead of HTML, so it's easier to generate the data and uses less bandwidth.
It also looks faster for the user, because they change search parameters and only part of the page changes, rather than reloading the entire page.
As for "easier to maintain", that may be subjective. Code to generate a simple HTML template from results is replaced by JavaScript code to hit the API and generate the DOM. Although HTML5 templates makes that much easier.
If most examples of a strategy make things worse, and only one person uses that strategy to improve things, then going around saying "everyone is doing it wrong" rather than questioning the strategy isn't particularly sound.
I've build plenty of (small) client-side rendered UIs myself that lazy-load content; I know the trade-offs and I even believe I can achieve a performant outcome on my own. But that's anecdotal. In the wild, I have not seen a single major website improve perf. via lazy-fetched content rendering.
> My modern version of this is browsing with JavaScript disabled. Most of the sites that don’t work weren’t worth my time anyway.
I think a lot of sites that require JavaScript are worthwhile.
(Whether they are all well implemented is another matter.)
For the main content, yes, yes, most will. Why are they on the website in the first place?
Especially the main content. Sure, some things you can load later, like comments, etc
Many years ago smart frameworks implemented smart stuff like you can display only what is visible. For example you could have a table with 1 million rows but in your html page you will not create 1 million row elements, you can create GUI widgets only for the visible part, as the user scrolls you can recycle existing widgets.
As a practical example , you go to a yotube channel page and they load only 2 or 3 rows of videos and you have to scroll to force more to appear, this means you can't do a Ctrl+F and seatrch and is also less efficient because as you scroll the items at the top are not recycled and reuse so probably more memory is used.
The json for all the videos is not huge,some strings with title and thumbnails, maybe some numbers but the issue is that is not possible to natively do the best/correct thing, only recently we got lazy loading for example so basicaly html was desibned for documents and frameworks/toolkits designed for apps did the correct thing many years ago... this is an explanation but no excuse why things are such a shit show with pagination today.
Today's Google Maps is a shadow of its original self, which did have a no-JS version, by the way. It has gradually gotten simultaneously heavier, less convenient, more annoying, and less useful, and I've just about had it.
Just off the top of my head, it no longer displays zip codes, takes a long time to load, has missing street names on the map, often promotes features I do not want while taking away features I do want, and is covered so thick with paid-promotion items that I can barely find somewhere to click that isn't an ad.
Strange, it does for me, everywhere where it shows an address.
Should be no need for any website to require JavaScript to function.
Ignorance is bliss I suppose.
As for music streaming and instant messaging, not everyone has/needs Discord, Slack, Teams, or anything like that. If you absolutely need it for work, just whitelist it. No problemo. And, not everyone streams music. I barely used Spotify myself until I got an office job and needed something to fill the boredom.
The issue isn't about stopping Javascript as a whole. The issue is about permissions management. Not every site needs it, so not every site should have it. If you need it to work for a webapp, just enable it.
I kind of disagree though, most websites do need javascript even if they simply contain only an article. Extremely few devs will care about the astonishing minority that disables javascript by default and saying that the websites that do this is trash, like so many people that favor this kind of thinking does, is being ignorant.
The javascript hate is strange because it's like people would hate programs written in python for no other reason than the program being written in python. I think it comes down to devs not being able to chose and that the only real choice is already made for them so then they end up hating it.
But even alternatives like Phoenix Liveview / Hotwire that minimizes the usage of javascript requires javascript to work properly. In time I believe most websites will ship a wasm binary and then this debate will be over forever and javascript will become irrelevant.
But what do I know? :)
Why? Well probably because if the site developers themselves don't have adblockers, they are clueless.
Sites that are built to show content but depend on ads to sustain the operation usually show a plea to support the site in a different way (by a donation or something) if they notice that ads are blocked. I find this more honest.
True story, I re-uploaded a website that I wrote in 1999, only now I discover that my header was never centered, if was just floating left. It's the only thing that look off, everything else is working perfectly. HMTL/CSS/JS is really a stable stack for the computer field.
Yep agree it's a stable stack. I have a few archived sites I made in the 90s that work fine in today's browser, rollover JS buttons and all. My disdain for IE is visible in code. I was a Netscape guy for sure!
if(navigator.appVersion.indexOf("MSIE 3")== -1) {
imageObjectSupported = true; // this line only executes in browsers that
support Javascript 1.1 except of course for IE3, which thinks it supports
Javascript 1.1, but doesn't.
}Centered max-width without going all out reader mode.
I have a button in my toolbar called "dammit" which strips away every iframe, embed, object, audio, and video from the page, multiple times per second. These are considered foundational elements in the web platform and yet, when they disappear, pages seem to magically collapse into something readable.
(function dammit() {
setTimeout(dammit, 100);
let els = document.querySelectorAll('object,embed,iframe,video');
for (let el of els) {
el.parentNode.removeChild(el);
}
})();
http://www.netscape-communications.com/netscapes-throbber-an...
No wonder the startup failed. Imagine trying to make a useful product with one hand tied behind your back!
With that attitude you likely were writing for IE5/6 only too. We're still dealing with the fallout from that 20 years later.
They were happy to force javascript but wanted it to work on early smart phones.
The VP product was losing her mind fighting the CEO over this.
Edit: Ok, now I'm laughing the idea of having a reserved parking spot for trucks hauling giant windmill blades.
With the rise of renewable energies, there might be a business case hiding here... ;-)
The question is, if a startup can't make a site that works without JS, are they actually focused on the product? Assuming it's not a webapp, of course.
I've built several SaaS products and I can't imagine building a complicated product that supports both a JS and no JS version with a small, startup team.
(as related to features such as HTML frames and tables)
Thanks for this quote attributed to Bernd Paysan I can now cite rather than formulating this over and over (for CSS grids, subgrids, columns, flexbox, functions, variables/custom properties and whatnot).
Off-topic: The author is one of the orignal authors of Gforth, one of the main Forth implementations.
So there is at least one example where it isn't a good thing.
People commonly want things that are linked to negative health outcomes: alcohol, sugar, fast food, lack of physical activity, working a high stress job, living in a city, watching the news, etc.
Personally, I take the position that people best know what's good for them because I don't see good alternatives to that.
But "people do it == people directly desire it" is a manifestly wrong metric. When something is in short supply in a store, people will line up to secure the chance to buy it. But Apple would be insane to think that people lining up to buy a newest Macbook on the day or release want lining up, and that more lining up is what they'd enjoy. People tolerate lining up to get what they desire. Equally, people tolerate more clicking in order to get what they desire, and what they'd likely prefer to obtain with one click.
This is a bit of a philosophical question.
Are there things we want that weren't somehow influenced by society (e.g. family, peers, advertisements, culture, etc.)? I'd argue very few things, aside from the basic biological needs. By corollary, almost everything we want is the result of external influence.
> But "people do it == people directly desire it" is a manifestly wrong metric. When something is in short supply in a store, people will line up to secure the chance to buy it. But Apple would be insane to think that people lining up to buy a newest Macbook on the day or release want lining up, and that more lining up is what they'd enjoy. People tolerate lining up to get what they desire. Equally, people tolerate more clicking in order to get what they desire, and what they'd likely prefer to obtain with one click.
If you measured line up times at Apple stores, you would almost certainly find out that its effect (of longer line ups) is a decrease in revenue (and therefore not something people want). If your point was that metrics can be misinterpreted and misused, I absolutely agree with you.
My question was specifically about the revenue/engagement metrics commonly used for software. To me they seem like reasonable proxies that you are building software people want.
Went to McDonald for the first time in a year and used the touchscreen to order. I had to dismiss over 7 popups, including a few that look like they were internally trying to get drunk people to accidentally order more (eg. cancel bottom from the previous popup is aligned with an extra order on the next one). It made the process a lot more panful than the minimalist interface they had before, but I'm sure a group of people got praised for it internally.
Last-Modified: Sun, 07 Mar 1999 17:07:32 GMT
[1] http://web.archive.org/web/19970106091058/http://www.complan...
Too long for a tattoo but damn do I believe in this!
http://hep.itp.tuwien.ac.at/~www/particle/Doc/debnotes.html
Debian 1.x/2.x days, likely a prominent mirror?
Otherwise, see here for his CV, interests, links which may trigger your memory
Looks like his most recent work is with RH https://developers.redhat.com/author/dj-delorie
I do think that the screen typography department has been seriously lacking here, though. Scrolling a single column can't really be the end of wisdom.
But the main problem we've got is that the ad people took care of on-screen typography once we progress far enough that screen sizes and resolutions actually would've made more things possible. Not the tradition of typography that made newspapers, books etc., but the flyer and full-page-ad demographic. PageMaker, not FrameMaker.
Browsers barely have the tools to make reading effective and enjoyable. CSS is oriented towards other purposes, and the browsers themselves only have the bare necessities – practically hidden "user stylesheets" or the one-size-fits-all "reader mode".
My Postscript is somewhat rusty but I think defining a fixed page size is THE first step in any postscript file. I don't think that's really better than PDF in that regard.
From what I remember of that time, Windows Explorer seemed a little faster, but most importantly it also seemed to require fewer reboots.
I find it ironic that his website looks like hot garbage on a modern ultrawide display.
I realize that it's over 20 years old and it still looks bad at 1280x1024 which was the resolution I was using back then as a poor college student with a second hand 19" Sony Trinitron that had a dodgy VGA cable you had to hold up just right with a coat hanger.
So the author, having lived through the computing sea change of the 80s and 90s, who said "those who have content generally value being readable" should have anticipated higher resolution displays and took steps to ensure readability.
Answer: Don't worry, they'll tell you about it.
Answer: Don't worry, they just won't be able to use your site.
The solution is to develop sites with accessibility in mind. Use a screen reader; experience what ALL your users will experience. Experiment with various rendering tools to emulate color blindness.
There are even more tools to performance tune your website.
This all comes down to the site author taking the time to cater to as many users as possible. It is not inherently a problem with the use of JavaScript, or dynamic elements.
So, yeah, there are a lot of shitty websites out there. Folks that choose to deliberately cripple their browser are more likely to see these shortcomings.
Hmm. No.
I think other poster wrote something to the effect of 'once something becomes popular and adopted by the masses, it ceases to be the ideal believers once strived for'.
If anything, it would appear that when you attempt to please everyone, you have to trade-off in places that some users may find unacceptable.
Only if you're making websites by photographing a picture on a wooden table. https://thedailywtf.com/articles/Web_0_0x2e_1
But if we're talking about text-based websites that are basically brochures, all you have to do it fill in the alt attribute. Nobody is asking anyone to make their website of paintings cater to the blind, it's a strawman position.
I think it is really [something] that you refer to someone's choice in how to optimally configure their browser for their own use as "crippling"
Crazy wild assumptions given that the web was brand-spanking-new and changing rapidly and unpredictably by the day. I'll never understand these needlessly-minimalist perspectives on interacting with the internet (yeah, I'm talking to you no-JavaScript folks). That approach only result in you missing out on things, and that was even more true in the 90's.
Today, almost 25 years later, not even turning your phone or computer on will cost you just as much in ISP monthlies as it costs to load the heaviest, client-side-JS-generated, 4x resolution image websites nonstop all day every day.
We used to have a slightly better reason to prefer lean, content-first web pages than we do today.