Yes, to be fair, Nielsen essentially has had the last laugh. Simple navigation, consistency, fast loading times, and ruthless minimalism, and the full Flash intro page is a relic.
It's a different package, but it's the same junk.
Makes connecting from bad cells a royal pain.
But some of the dependency libraries can be almost as bad.
I don't like 1MB pages, so a button can be animated.
Modern websites have none of those. It's all pop ups asking you to subscribe and/or give feedback before you have even had a chance to read anything, content that jumps around as images (ads) load, and huge blobs of JavaScript. I feel like the web has regressed massively in the last few years
NNGroup "best practices" have been obsolete for at least 15 years, because the purpose of a website is no longer about displaying free information. Websites have become a fully commercial enterprise focused on conversion, so every trick in the book is used:
- Infinite scroll and autoplaying video on social media and blogspam sites
- Layouts shifting after content load because of the Javascript ad delay
- "Other Articles you might like" blocks in the middle of an article
- "Subscribe to our email newsletter" popups/modals everywhere
- "You are reading 1 of x free articles" dickbars
and that's just scratching the surface.