- Sites that work without JavaScript. Even better than the first, it's always a pleasure to see when a site is made properly for a change, without the toxicity of JavaScript that pervades the world wide web (WWW) as we know it.
Not sure about niche. Maybe more... understated, proprietary and confidential.
We've been doing totally vanilla HTML/JS/CSS web apps for our B2B customers for the last 3-4 years. In fact, we can't use your typical web frameworks because our contracts are measured in half-decades and due diligence against our vendors makes it infeasible to participate in that kind of ecosystem. Banking is a great industry to get into if you want to get frameworks out of your life. You have the perfect bat to use. "Oh.. I don't know about that... is Angular 12 still going to be around and supported halfway through this client's seven-figure contract?".
Doing pure web in 2022 is hard. It's mostly a human/courage thing. The technology is easier than its ever been. But, you have to stand your ground day after day against this onslaught of cargo cult web dev. The outcome is worth whatever salty arguments you get into.
>the toxicity of JavaScript
I understand the sentiment. I'd probably use similar diction if I had to screw around with NPM-style projects for a living. That said, javascript itself can be an answer to this vendor bloat if used very carefully.
Here are a few I've discovered that I've really been enjoying lately:
https://tildeverse.org (EDIT: apparently they don't like being linked to from HN; copy and paste the link instead of clicking it)
I think the main focus of those communities is recapturing the spirit of the (arguably more fun) internet of the 90s to early 2000s. They're not specifically dedicated to static site minimalism, but there's definitely a large overlap.
Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29449238
Two of the more active communities:
...ok.
See also: html.energy
To expand on this, I like thinking about how standard browser APIs can act as the framework without using third-party libraries. An early example was document.querySelectorAll obviating the need for jQuery’s wonderful $. More recently, I’ve waited eagerly for Web Components to come into their prime, which has been just a year or two away for a decade now.
I kept the colors I used before, but dropped JavaScript and tried to use CSS that is compatible with multiple browsers. It has been a learning experience, but very interesting to see how far I can get to with just HTML and CSS.
Now I've started focusing on semantic web tags, and accessibility testing. Much easier without JavaScript.
- Site: https://kinoshita.eti.br/
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I use them mainly for learning / testing new (to me) concepts.