Like fuck all the proprietary junk and versioning, and just have a bare bones HTML ASCII extranet designed to be simple and without any bugs to patch? Obviously a naive question.
But seriously, the 56k dialup world with Napster GeoCities and AOL Instant Messenger was better. Add capacitive touch screens, current data throughput infra, and lithium batteries to 1999 and we are peak Matrix internet territory. Yahoo and net navigator were better than chrome stalkerware and google digislaver fascism.
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I’ve been around since the early 1980s on BBSs. I think what OP is describing is gopher:// links which were common in the early 1990s. I recall getting news and music tablature that way, but like others said it was boring and there wasn’t much else.
To me, 1996 to 2005 was the peak of the Internet experience, especially in the early 2000s when content was increasing. Big business was still oblivious about it, and little forums were able to truly thrive on their own without being on a billion dollar platform.
Web 2.0 was when it all went to shit. I remember the look when it was happening… every website went to white webpages, tons of white space, big-ass sans serif fonts, rounded buttons, and very little actual content, just minimalist screens everywhere. Every website was doing it. I knew at the time that this was symbolic of the vacuousness of the coming Internet.
For a more modern take on gopher consider also checking out gemini if you haven’t already. It is somewhat different yet familiar.
Check out Chinese internet. There’s shit everywhere.
It’s
vs 
They still use web badges and sometimes lack https
Wait, are we suppose to be in favor of the first one? I think like maybe a 25% tone down/declutter of the one on the right is a good sweet spot that’s comfy and livable.
For all y’all talking about the old private internet, it’s having a bit of a renaissance. Neocities is on of the big ones, but lots of people are straight up selfhosting them too. It’s not like you actually need anything more than a phone to run a static website for the tens of visitors you might get each month.
Here’s an example of one. Check the post dates. And the webrings. And the Glitter. And the, well, you get the point.
We can. Individual sites still exists. Simpler pages still exist. In some way, wikipedia is a large project that’s mostly “old school” (despite many attempts to change that). Old communication tools still work, mail can still be done with ease by small or even individual providers. Forums are still a thing in some communities. RSS to get informations about many sites in one place still exists and never stopped existing (it’s surprising how many recent websites still implement it). Some people still use IRC and newsgroups on a daily basis.
I’d even argue that google search, the old, simple, easy one, still exist. Look up udm14, set this in your browser, and your done. And contrary to the apparently largely accepted trend, this one still gives great results.
Firefox, despite recent attempts (that will probably keep coming) can still be trimmed to be a basic browser for the most part. Large surface to open an HTML page, bookmarks, tabs on top (fancy), and nothing else in the way. I don’t know how long this will persist, but it’s still possible.
There are many things that are still around, the presence of huge behemoths in the front row doesn’t change that. The only difference is that using the web in this manner requires a bit of involvement and a bit of work. When it was the only way to do things, people got involved and spent effort to do so. Nowadays, with large services providing one click stop to seemingly everything, most people won’t put up the effort to look somewhere else. And they don’t care about the consequences of this centralization on privacy, bias, censorship, etc.
But a lot of the old web is still available. Heck, even old reddit is still around (although the content itself is still reddit).
And it is a simpler life. Taking back control of our digital activities requires some minor involvement, but not being crushed by the endless content and notification machine is real nice in this overstressed world.
Because people who make websites want to get paid for them, payment is based on showing ads, ad companies want to maximize tracking via javascript, and if the only javascript is for ad bullshit it’s easy to block it so they force the content to load via javascript too.
It’s systemically fucked up in a way that goes beyond just the technology itself.
The people that want to make money are not de facto legitimate. Some people want analog slavery too. Some people want fascism. Some people are serial killers. Some people are Google. I see no value in those people. They do not create content I find interesting. The things they fund are opposed to my principals and democracy. Those people buy and sell a part of me to exploit and manipulate me. Those people are criminals. Those people are bad neighbors and have no place in our communities and neighborhoods. We have a right to open public commons free from piracy, pillaging, and slavery. That is the fundamental flaw. The internet is public commons, not a slave market.
Are you denying the fact of capitalism existing on the internet? All you seem to say is idealistic non-statements that don’t engage with the answers you’re getting to the question you asked (or seemed to ask).
Guy who wants to offset the costs of his diy fursuit forums by hosting banner ads in the sidebar.
Uuuuuuuuuhhh…
You do know that there’s a less intrusive way of advertising ? Right ?
You do know that advertisers want the ads to be as intrusive as they can make them? Right?
We are talking about us not them
https://marginalia-search.com/
“The need for discovery
Nothing you do to try to make the web a better place matters if nobody can find what you did. There are a lot of precious websites out there that deserve an audience, but instead are languishing in obscurity.
This makes alternative discovery mechanisms an urgent priority of the free and independent web, both document search as well as blog and RSS-feed discovery.”
⚜︎ arscyni.cc: modernity ∝ nature.
Neocities encourages static 90’s style webpages.
The 512KB Club is a collection of performance-focused web pages from across the Internet. To qualify your website must satisfy both of the following requirements:
- It must be an actual site that contains a reasonable amount of information, not just a couple of links on a page (more info here).
- Your total UNCOMPRESSED web resources must not exceed 512KB.
https://geminiprotocol.net/ (The site’s certificate has expired. I really hope they fix it.)
Gemini is a group of technologies similar to the ones that lie behind your familiar web browser. Using Gemini, you can explore an online collection of written documents which can link to other written documents. The main difference is that Gemini approaches this task with a strong philosophy of “keep it simple” and “less is enough”.
Gemini might be of interest to you if you:
- Are sick and tired of nagging newsletter subscription pop-ups, obnoxious adverts, autoplaying videos that chase you as you scroll and other misfeatures of the modern web
Signed certificates cost money. Notepad++ had a similar problem where they lost their certificate recently. They temprarily added a self-signed certificate until they could find a sponsor for a signed certificate. I think they fixed that now
Used to, until Letsencrypt started proiding free ones. These days, cost is no excuse.
You can. But people want more than what static sites are able to provide. Our computers and Infra are incredibly capable and we dont need to artificially limit ourselfs to static webpages.
I love browsing static blog sites but even I’ll admit I’d quickly get bored if we had no JavaScript web apps.
I’ve been saying the same thing. I think you should check out Gopher and neocities.
You can get a blacklist of all the sites you hate off gitthub and put it in ublock. They have a massive ai and Javascript list I think.
I agree. Early 2000s was peak internet before corporate enshit. But you dont need to live in their world. You need webrings and rss.
You can. What makes you think you can’t?
The thing is that there’s no demand, not least because there’s no direct interaction between users. People yell bloody murder if a game doesn’t have some sort of multiplayer component and static content is single player internet.
Demand? What?
You can just have a site that says things. You might just get a trickle of readers, and that’s okay. Not everything has to try to rule the world. You can contribute this little part of it, that might amuse or inform some people, and not pile up yet more value to a terrible corporation like Wordpress, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit or (while I’m ranting) Fandom.
Plain HTML doesn’t break. You don’t need to update frameworks. It won’t make the user’s browser consume a ton of their RAM. Even if your image hosting goes down, the text will still be there. The biggest problems with HTML are external. Google giving attention to Reddit over your site, or de-prioritizing it if it’s not “responsive to mobile,” and web browsers choosing not to reveal by default what terrible resource hogs big sites can be. Check about:processes (on Firefox at least) some time, I’ve seen Youtube, Facebook and Twitter consume over a gigabyte of memory by themselves, apiece. (Nota bene, Mastodon consumes a lot too.)
It’s okay to be small. That was what the World Wide Web was envisioned as, its motto: Let’s Share What We Know.
I mean, this is all true. But these web sites which mostly work fine and are fine with small audiences already exist - and yet OP is here, on Lemmy. Apparently the demand actually doesn’t exist - ie, OP is choosing not to visit these sites because they find them less enticing than sites with js.
I don’t disagree.
It takes a critical mass of like minded people.
That is not really the point here. The actual question is more about stopping the evolution of hardware and software deprecation, like creating a minimum system that is never updated.
Huh? I don’t understand, are you saying you can’t have static websites on today’s hard/software? I’m so confused.
Oh right , i forget; this is not “no disingenuous questions”. Hard to tell sometimes.
You want a decent webpage AND attention / clicks?
Your problem is not the coding of the webpage. pebkac.
deleted by creator
Ad homenim attacks just make you look more wrong.
haha yeah, i i was actually so pissed that i “walked into a tree” last night. Still a wee bit merry. pebpat
Permacomputing
100 rabbits.
The why: because a lot of people have been conned into “needing” sites that can fry the client’s CPU, to the point where the con became the norm.
Another why: it’s easier to woo bosses/higher ups/clients when you show them pretty visuals. Doesn’t matter that the visuals are a fucking atrocity of spaghetti code, now they DEMAND pretty everything everywhere, fuck being practical or lightweight
Developers are dumb and/or burned out by leadership and can’t be arsed to use the right tool for the right job. New blog? React.j. Ecommerce? React.js. Wiki? React.js. A fucking landing page reading “Coming Soon!”? Believe it or not, React.js. And unless provided by whatever metaframework they’re using this week, forget about appropriately-sized images and videos. You will render a 2000x3000 pixel PNG of the letter A on your 720p smartphone, and you will like it.
Gopher , Gemini a few other protocols exist use them
I’m an old E2 member!
Hey awesome!
You are much better equipped to explain the site culture and node-structure, than I am.
I did read through various nodes during the SlashDot era, but only check-in sporadically now.
There are still fragments of the old internet around, though I agree that it’s nothing like it once was…
