The revived No JS Club celebrates websites that don’t use Javascript, the powerful but sometimes overused code that’s been bloating the web and crashing tabs since 1995. The No CSS Club goes a step further and forbids even a scrap of styling beyond the browser defaults. And there is even the No HTML Club, where you’re not even allowed to use HTML. Plain text websites!
The modern web is the pure incarnation of evil. When Satan has a 1v1 with his manager, he confers with the modern web. If Satan is Sauron, then the modern web is Melkor [1]. Every horror that you can imagine is because of the modern web. Modern web is not an existential risk (X-risk), but is an astronomic suffering risk (S-risk) [2]. It is the duty of each and every man, woman, and child to revolt against it. If you’re not working on returning civilization to ooga-booga, you’re a bad person.
A compromise with the clubs is called for. A hypertext brutalism that uses the raw materials of the web to functional, honest ends while allowing web technologies to support clarity, legibility and accessibility. Compare this notion to the web brutalism of recent times, which started off in similar vein but soon became a self-subverting aesthetic: sites using 2.4MB frameworks to add text-shadow: 40px 40px 0px hotpink to 400kb Helvetica webfonts that were already on your computer.
I also like the idea of implementing “hypotext” as an inversion of hypertext. This would somehow avoid the failure modes of extending the structure of text by failing in other ways that are more fun. But I’m in two minds about whether that would be just a toy (e.g. references banished to metadata, i.e. footnotes are the hypertext) or something more conceptual that uses references to collapse the structure of text rather than extend it (e.g. links are includes and going near them spaghettifies your brain). The term is already in use in a structuralist sense, which is to say there are 2 million words of French I have to read first if I want to get away with any of this.
Republished Under Creative Commons Terms. Boing Boing Original Article.
JavaScript, AJAX, and modern web frameworks have pushed us away from displaying information in a pure and clean way. We need to go back to a better time!
Looks at no-HTML websites
Shit, we’ve gone back too far!
counterpoint: https://bestestmotherfucking.website/
Those websites are amazing, thank you.
I checked the source to find the song only to realized I already had it in my playlist 😂
That is made by someone who had a Geocities website, or went 1000% in on MySpace back in the day.
What we need is a subset of modern web, without any bloat, especially JS frameworks.
A lot of websites can be static HTML + CSS.
Some of these are extreme, but what you’re talking about is the https://512kb.club/, just keep it small, but no limits on what you can use.
Maybe a little JS, as a treat?
It’s fun for hiding little easter eggs.
The subset exists. What you’re referring to is an agreement or convention.
We have that, it’s called Gemini and is accessible with Lagrange
And Offpunk.
I guess all that’s left is to form a no-utf club.
I can get behind no JS club, I can’t get behind no CSS club.
CSS is 🆒
A subset of css is cool, but man does it go too far.
Sure, but you can’t be tracked via css so it’s okay in my book. Have fun with your whacky css sites.
whacky css sites.
I do wonder if we’re going to see some websites popping up that kind of hit the reset button on social media and go back to smaller communities of folks with something in common.
I kind of miss the days of actually having online conversations with folks you know are real people (not bots), that aren’t trying to be an influencer, or get famous, or some how many money off your interactions.
I think it’ll happen, but I don’t think it’s happening yet.
The unease is already there (“the internet used to be a place”/“why isn’t the internet fun any more?” sentiments and #OldWeb #SlowWeb hashtags), but I don’t think people are ready to do anything about it.
I’m only one guy, with a small internet following, but I recently had a go at launching a small “Gaymers” webring (well, a simplified version of one). I promoted it on my socials, I laid out why I think it’s a good idea, I paid to “Blaze” it on Tumblr – I even emailed some like-minded creators directly.
I rewrote the webpage multiple times, to try to make it more persuasive and more concise. I added a contact form in case people felt uncomfortable emailing me. I loosened the rules to allow commercial websites, as long as they were still independent. I worked hard on the widget and incorporated feedback (made it respect
prefers-reduced-motionand made a static version for sites where animation would feel out of place).I got some good feedback; lots of people said it was interesting, and a good idea. But literally no one joined or expressed any interest in joining. 🤷♂️
I’m going to have one more go at promoting it next time I’ve got money to spare, but I’ll most likely end up quietly deleting it along with any evidence it existed, because a webring of one is fucking embarrassing. 💀
I guess if you build it, they will not necessarily come lmao
Is there any way to go back to running these things on an old Dell in the corner of a bedroom next to a fire extinguisher?
That’s when we have truly won
There is indeed
Just earlier I was reading about this website hosted on solar power and the extremes they went through to get the website to be simple so very little data is transmitted to save precious watts.
The website https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/about/the-solar-website/
This is genuinely inspiring to me, may be my new ADHD hobby for the next couple of weeks.
Looks like the geocities websites of my youth.
I’ll say one thing for the No CSS philosophy - at least it eliminates light-colored text on a light-colored background using the thinnest possible font, which is probably the stupidest stylistic trend since the web began.
In the future there will be media queries for how old the reader is.
Will teenagers with shitty vision be able to get away with lying about their age or will there be verification?
Oh neat! I’m working on a forum that doesn’t use any javascript
phpBBB??
No, it’s my own that I’m building from Scratch. It’s C#/Asp.Net Razor Pages. Plain CSS on the frontend, no javascript
How do you use hyperlinks without HTML?
Copy and paste the url
I rather have these people embrace gopher
Gopher is cool, but none of my friends will install a gopher browser.
Let’s not. It’s a terrible protocol with amateur design errors.
Gemini protocol is fab btw. Come join the tildeverse
I love this.
I thought I was being “bare-bones” when I remade my website with PHP & XML (no framework or database). What would they think about a python app that delivers plaintext or html? Is that still kosher for the no-js gang? Or does it have to be static files?
Maybe we could have
No-JSandNo-Client-Storage(which would include cookies) headers added to HTTP. Browsers could potentially display an icon showing this to users on the address bar.Theoretically, browsers could even stop from the JS engine from being started for the site in the first place. Though I wouldn’t be surprised if the engine is too tied into the code of modern browsers for that to work.
Theoretically, browsers could even stop from the JS engine from being started for the site in the first place.
The NoScript extension is basically this. Most of the client side stuff is off by default and you can enable it per-domain. It breaks a whole lot of websites, but often in ways where the main content of a website is still readable. Over time, you can build up a list of “allow by default” domains and most of the web you care about works. Though, you may have to spend a moment or two sorting out permissions when you visit a new site.
love this
