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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

I want the Web as in its heyday: circa 1999, give or take. When sites loaded blazing fast on my 256k DSL modem--faster than they do on my 50 Mbps connection today. No JS, no flash ads. Just text, images, and hyperlinks like TBL originally intended.

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I seem to remember the web of 1999 very differently: Java applets for navigation trees, stuff that requires ActiveX and only works in IE on Windows, HTML tables with background images in cells for layout, almost nobody used SSL, almost no server could max out a reasonably fast connection (if you were lucky enough to live/work where broadband was available). Barely any audio/video.

Yes, some things were better and easier then, but it wasn't all great.

In my opinion, most technological problems have been solved: Broadband is widely available, we have fairly good standards for HTML/CSS/JavaScript, reliance on plugins and stuff like ActiveX and Java is at an all time low. The question is now what we do with our newly-gained freedom – and as usual, this one is trickier than the technical stuff.

This is the 1999 I remember as well, with the addition of visual clutter (see present-day excite.com for a reminder), JavaScript everywhere (DHTML, not AJAX), and pop-up and pop-under ads making the Flash ads of today look tame and gentle--those that don't autoplay video, at least. I've heard OP's tale before, but it was certainly no more than a tale by the late 90s.

And "blazing fast" is definitely a relative term. I remember the feeling of liberation when we got rid of dial-up, but there were still plenty of seconds-long load times just to see the main content--only to find it scrunched between two fixed-width sidebars (arranged in a table). And it was quite possible that the page would do its utmost to slow your browser down with custom scrollbars and cursors.

Image maps for site navigation, font size=1, and precious little free hosting of user content without ads pasted at the top and bottom of the page, more prominent than ever.

> almost nobody used SSL

Sad part is that this wasn't an issue back then.

Oh, unencrypted data was an even bigger issue back then. I remember still having ethernet hubs at the time and watchin the data go to and from my buddies computer on the our network.

It feels we've all been through a huge circle that landed not far from where we were, except built on different foundations and with higher resolution content (hd images, and videos). Still loads of crappy websites full of popup and void of content, javascript only webpages, some good surprises from time to time though, lots of dusty tech still worthy (IRC, ML, boards). As if we were optimizing the wrong variables.

I hear what you're saying, but even inline images weren't originally part of HTML...

http://1997.webhistory.org/www.lists/www-talk.1993q1/0182.ht...

If I'm being extra nitpicky, Flash and JS were both doing the rounds in '99, but that's beside the point, I understand you want a 'linked documents' web.

In a hypothetical situation where that happened, would we have a different tech stack for zero-install client-server apps? I suspect people would still want to have them. What might this tech stack look like? What currently available software might be a good fit?

Whats wrong with Java? Its bloated, but if OS X's energy meter isn't lying, less so than a Chrome-based "native" app.

You could use Java, but it doesn't solve the zero-install issue, updates aren't as seamless as web apps, both for the JVM and the apps itself. You could rework it into something that could work better, but the same could be said for web apps.

That's the web I want too, which is exactly the reason I re-worked my whole blog. The best way to ask for stuff like this is to show it.

Your blog design is awesome, especially on mobile.

You might be interested in uMatrix https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix

Point & click to forbid/allow any class of requests made by your browser. Use it to block scripts, iframes, ads, facebook, etc.

I'm a pretty happy user of uMatrix, it takes a while to get used to but it is very powerful and gets the job done.

I think static content generators get us really close. Something like Jekyll creates easy to maintain, and optionally very low tech, sites of almost any size.

Jekyll and octopress out of the box with their 'standard' themes are still quite bloated.

Then don't use the standard themes, it's not hard to find minimal themes.

http://qrohlf.com/posts/5-best-jekyll-designs/

Or make your own...

My blog runs on Jekyll and a longish post (~4000 words) doesn't get above 32kb, I would say that is pretty small, even by dial-up standards it wouldn't take long to retrieve.

Where is your blog?

Sites going down on the regular because they hit their bandwidth cap and couldn't pay hundreds of dollars in overage fees.

Frankly I love flash advertising banners since my browser supports click-to-play on Flash.

I came to this conclusion recently as well. There are certainly use cases where JS et al are appropriate but otherwise the style of 99 is much more pleasant.

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