unnecessary javascript sn't just a hauty web-design hangup, it's a literal low-level human rights issue, and i'm not joking!!!. (Read this good blog post)

shkspr.mobi

Submitted by twovests in just_post

I held this opinion strongly, but this post from Terence Eden really explains it best: https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2021/01/the-unreasonable-effectiveness-of-simple-html/

The site is down right now, so here is an Archive link:

https://web.archive.org/web/20210201121439/https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2021/01/the-unreasonable-effectiveness-of-simple-html/

The post argues a pretty obvious point: Poor people with limited access to the internet on weak and slow devices should still be able to access important online resources!

I'm in a bit of a tight situation, personally. I've been looking at legal help in my area. I have my browser set to, by default, JavaScript off, and so many sites just don't work!

Sites for people seeking restraining disorder from abusive partners, for seeking low-income legal advice, etc. Like, it doesn't impact me, because I have a strong computer with a good internet connection and great English language skills and some serious technical chops.

The post also argues the following:

If your laptop and phone both got stolen – how easily could you conduct online life through the worst browser you have? If you have to file an insurance claim online – will you get sent a simple HTML form to fill in, or a DOCX which won’t render?

What vital information or services are forbidden to you due to being trapped in PDFs or horrendously complicated web sites?

and the post concludes with a lil fact ( https://twitter.com/TheRealNooshu/status/1356191997854412802 ) that a few thousand users are accessing the Gov.UK site from videogame consoles.

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voxpoplar wrote

Also people who use screen readers and other accessibility tools that have trouble dealing with div soup.

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cute_spider_ni_srsly wrote

Interestingly we have 3,574 users visiting http://GOV.UK on games consoles:

• Nintendo 3DS - 16

Whoof, I remember that browser. It was hard to use GameFAQs on it.

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musou wrote (edited )

i wish a lot more people in web dev thought like this person does, i am tired of building frameworks on top of frameworks on top of containers on top of on-demand cloud instances. i feel like a good 75% of what we use the internet for doesn't need that wasteful garbage.

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noammitski wrote

wiby might be a tool you'd be interested in

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noammitski wrote

additionally, i'm glad to say you're not alone in this. Project Gemini is a protocol that builds on the ideas from the Gopher protocol, both of which address the whole bloated web issue. also, on our web we have movements like: 250kb club

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emma wrote

happy that i can access vital services, like motherfuckingwebsite dot com, on my wii

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twovests OP wrote (edited )

Oh I have heard of all these!

Also, I just checked, my personal website would qualify for this club. I feel special indeed. (^:

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noammitski wrote

currently refactoring mine to fit! it's funny because i had gone through several frameworks to make my stuff, realized it was creating bloat so i made my own static site generator and learned so much. i think everyone should try to learn about how to make software more accessible, you pick up so much understanding about how things work.

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twovests OP wrote

!!! I did this too! It was pretty educational and fun. What is your software stack? I'm just using Apache + Nginx to host the site, and Bash + Python + Pandoc to generate the site from markdown. In retrospect, markdown doesn't save that much time over raw HTML so I think I'd just use that in the future.

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noammitski wrote

stack:

  • Ngnix on a Raspberry Pi
  • Deno and Bash to generate static pages

it's funny, i found the same to be true about markdown so now i basically just write HTML and serve that plus some metadata into .ejs templates. for certain use cases markdown is really clutch (i like to collect quotes and words each month) but for most other things it's just not worth the fuss. with vscode i can use the liveserver extension to do live reloading but i kinda wanna keep adding some more functionality to the project.

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twovests OP wrote

Oh wow, so this is a curated search engine? Oh wow. I'll check this out, thank you!

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noammitski wrote

yep :) the whole point is to mimic how the old web operated and increase functionality for older devices.

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