Programming

I.d rather take any website than being continuously forced to download apps, or being told to go to Facebook for some business's information.

There's 2 things a website should respect - simple do it more often -, and not doing these will earn you my wrath:

• you should be able to at least zoom/shrink text. Some websites have things so locked down, I can never read their teeny tiny text. Fuck you ESPN. Why would you let desktop zoom, and stop it on mobile where my screen is smaller and I most need it? (I'll leave alone the original intent of the web of separating presentation from content for another day).
• Browser Back button should take you back to the previius 'page'. I'm terrified to use it because you're really showing multiple 'pages' on 1 real page, so who knows where I'll end up.

Hidden benefit: never having a cookie acceptance popover, because you don't have cookies.

I love simple sites, takes less resources to load & lightweight.

Obligatory:

https://motherfuckingwebsite.com

I once went to a professional to get a website done (as my ability (read: patience) to code websites had proved inadequate) and they constantly tried to upsell me on just the most stupid bullshit. When I pointed out how a lot of moving parts just means more things that could possibly break they blew me off and acted like it was a completely unreasonable concern. Needless to say ended up using a website builder instead and despite a few small glitches it works pretty well with JS completely disabled.

EDIT: I was particularly concerned with how heavily they were leaning on JS, to the point it flat out wouldn't load at all for some users. Having JS flair is perfectly fine on the side but when you can't even get fucking text to load without it, that's a problem.

For style examples, take Paul Graham's site

Nope, doesn't display nothing with no JS on mobile. While the other two examples seem to be desktop-only. You can do better with only HTML and CSS.

Agree with the article (and the 10 other ones I've already read on the topic) but Paul Graham's website looks like ass on mobile as of 2024. I couldn't even figure out how to get to the content, at least on cursory examination.

Good point about solo/team or simple/scalable though. Right tool for the job and all that. Good stuff

Static websites can be beautiful and easy to use without being complex.

PG's blog and HN can definitely use some CSS tweaks. I can't remember how many times I clicked the wrong thing in HN.

On the other hand, it's easy to get reader mode/custom CSS/alt frontend working for such websites, so maybe it's alright after all.