Why can't we have a static vintage web?

Submitted ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨j4k3@piefed.world⁩ to ⁨nostupidquestions@lemmy.world⁩

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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rauls5@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
justfuckingusehtml.com

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- StopSpazzing@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  
  Your framework? The hipster café that"s “temporarily closed” every time you need it.
  
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- pemptago@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Can’t easily verify on mobile, but iirc last time I inspected the html that site had a google tracker and there’s a commented line acknowledging the irony and challenges you to fight them. I could have it mistaken with another, similar site, though.
  
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- Matriks404@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Haha, there are other language versions links at the bottom. I just started learning Czech at university, and I think I will send my group link some time, because it’s pretty funny.
  
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- mapleseedfall@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  One thing that I struggle consistently is how to display images nicely.but I suspect its all my lack of css skill
  
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rolypolyman@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I’ve been around since the early 1980s on BBSs. To me, 1996 to 2005 was the peak of the Internet experience. 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.

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- ctrowat@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  For a more modern take on gopher consider also checking out gemini if you haven’t already. It is somewhat different yet familiar.
  
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- Serinus@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Check out Chinese internet. There’s shit everywhere.
  
  It’s Image vs Image
  
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  - Flax_vert@feddit.uk ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    They still use web badges and sometimes lack https
    
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  - Cataphract@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    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.
    
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jeena@piefed.jeena.net ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
It wasn’t better. Static pages are just boring, you read it one time and then that’s it. Not enough people can write plain HTML so it would matter.

The internet today with Lemmy, Mastodon, etc. is way closer to what Tim Berners-Lee imagined that everyone would be a publisher, not only consumer.

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- clmbmb@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  You don’t have to know or write plain HTML. There are plenty of static page generators that take markdown and generate a site for you. Also, boring is good and yes, read once and don’t care next is also good: it’s how books work for thousands of years. If you like a site or article/post you’ll get back to it sometime, if not that’s OK.
  
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  - Tywele@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    It’s easier to learn and write plain HTML than it is to use a static page generator. I will die on this hill. Static page generators are all needlessly complicated because they are made by developers for developers.
    
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  - jeena@piefed.jeena.net ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Static page generator is already half way to a blog with a database.
    
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- moseschrute@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  It is kinda ironic having this debate on a platform that isn’t static html
  
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  - Slotos@feddit.nl ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    This is one of those times when the attempt to address the wrong part of a statement immediately goes into Ackermann-like recursion.
    
    The only irony present is the pretense of validity of the supposed contradiction.
    
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DaGeek247@fedia.io ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
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.

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grue@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
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.

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- primrosepathspeedrun@anarchist.nexus ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Tl;Dr: capitalism. Capitalism cannot allow nice things to exist.
  
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  - blarghly@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    I mean, the alternative is that all those people who want a way to offset server costs don’t find a way to do so, and therefore pack up and go home. And then we don’t get those websites.
    
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- j4k3@piefed.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  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.
  
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  - Lumidaub@feddit.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    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).
    
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  - blarghly@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Guy who wants to offset the costs of his diy fursuit forums by hosting banner ads in the sidebar.
    
    Uuuuuuuuuhhh…
    
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- MITM0@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  You do know that there’s a less intrusive way of advertising ? Right ?
  
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  - 9point6@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    You do know that advertisers want the ads to be as intrusive as they can make them? Right?
    
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ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Neocities encourages static 90’s style webpages.

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SwooshBakery624@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
512kb.club

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.

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
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- abbadon420@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  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
  
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  - dihutenosa@feddit.nl ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Used to, until Letsencrypt started proiding free ones. These days, cost is no excuse.
    
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Lumidaub@feddit.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
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.

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- rodneylives@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  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.
  
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  - blarghly@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    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.
    
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  - Lumidaub@feddit.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    I don’t disagree.
    
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- j4k3@piefed.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  It tales 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.
  
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  - Lumidaub@feddit.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Huh? I don’t understand, are you saying you can’t gave static websites on today’s hard/software? I’m so confused.
    
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  - bryndos@fedia.io ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    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.
    
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  - bridgeenjoyer@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Permacomputing
    
    100 rabbits.
    
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rauls5@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
justfuckingusehtml.com

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arsCynic@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
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.”

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- gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I honestly tend to think that instead of using search engines where you already have to know what you’re looking for, it might be better to use something like lemmy where you can advertise what you made with a post in a related community.
  
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  - arsCynic@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    
    I honestly tend to think that instead of using search engines where you already have to know what you’re looking for, it might be better to use something like lemmy where you can advertise what you made with a post in an appropriate community.
    
    Obviously both have their place, but POSSE is the magic sauce:
    “POSSE is an abbreviation for Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere, the practice of posting content on your own site first, then publishing copies or sharing links to third parties (like social media silos) with original post links to provide viewers a path to directly interacting with your content.” ―https://indieweb.org/POSSE
    
    ⚜︎ arscyni.cc: modernity ∝ nature.
    
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sol6_vi@lemmy.makearmy.io ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I run a website where my community and I all contribute to a free shared database that houses settings for machines we can use. I don’t know how I’d really do that without managing every single submission manually. I think that like all things there’s a way to use js responsibly.

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- j4k3@piefed.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  [deleted]
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  - sol6_vi@lemmy.makearmy.io ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    No worries it wasn’t an attack on you or your totally fair question. I’m no where near knowledgeable enough to give any valid responses to the inquiry, I just thought I’d share why I feel like I (we?) need it. I wanted to do X for my community and I was told I need Y to do it, thus for me for this use case its necessary. That’s all I was sayin.
    
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ICastFist@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
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

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bridgeenjoyer@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
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.

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TachyonTele@piefed.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I miss webrings. Especially for mods.
Nexus is great, but i remember when darkone started it with Morrowind mods.

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ace_garp@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Everything2.com

feels like the old 'net.

Tons of content.

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- rodneylives@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I’m an old E2 member!
  
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  - ace_garp@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    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.
    
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over_clox@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
There are still fragments of the old internet around, though I agree that it’s nothing like it once was…

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harambe69@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
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.

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MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Uhm, Gemini web?

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- sol6_vi@lemmy.makearmy.io ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I made a Gemini site once and then I was like “that was fun” and then it was over. 😅
  
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cley_faye@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
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.

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jpj@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I have one browser profile with js disabled and have been slowly migrating to it. It’s soooo fast. Barring any issues with the website, each click-and-render is waaay faster than any SPA, back button is instantaneous.

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chunes@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I would just like to add my favorite way to surf the old web is to go to wiby.me and click “surprise me…” and then either keep doing that or scour their link sections for more similar sites.

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whoAmI@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

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.

There are many ways to get that. There is the Gemini protocol, of which is plaintext, and there is also I2P, of which is a dark net (gee!) that feels somewhat like the old internet (at least, that’s what some oldies in the forums say). A way to browse through there without installing a client would be via looking at here.

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vane@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
You can open websites in lynx.

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- quick_snail@feddit.nl ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Mastodon required JavaScript
  
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  - pmk@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    You can use a mastodon frontend that doesn’t require js.
    
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quant@leminal.space ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Market demand. A “boring” static website isn’t going to attract VC funding and management approval.

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gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
lemmy isn’t a static vintage web, and that’s a good thing, i guess.

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Fizz@lemmy.nz ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
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.

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HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Because people don’t want it compared to the current Internet.

There is nothing stopping people from creating the Internet of old.

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- i_am_somebody@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  This is, sadly, the correct answer
  
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howrar@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
We can have static HTML websites, but that basically limits you to sharing static information (which, by the way, still have “bugs” in the form of typos). There’s already lots of great resources for that. Wikipedia, personal blogs, books (physical and electronic). That’s not usually what we’re on the internet for though. We’re here for interactivity. We want to connect with other people (e.g. Lemmy), and we want tools to help us with various problems we have (e.g. any portable software that just needs a browser to run). Avoiding JS would hinder that goal. If you just want to read, go to your local library, take out a book, and start reading. Or get an e-reader and download some e-books.

You also point out the problem of online privacy. While JS does empower the tracking, it also does way more than that. The solution shouldn’t be to throw out the baby with the bath water.

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- BCsven@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Static page reads from the webage serving folder and index file, you just ftp a new corrected version to the server. At least that’s how I updated mine way back.
  
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fodor@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Except we do, in so many ways. I think one simple example is RSS.

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MacNCheezus@lemmy.today ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Okay boomer, why don’t you go to a museum or something like that?

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