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.

Oh, come on. You really want some at least readable output. Things like image borders, consistently positioned images/diagrams, line breaks and page borders. Some whitespace and indentations, too. You just can't read a couple of pages full of unformatted raw text without massive eye fatigue. I'm all for dumping JS and excessive frameworks, I'd prefer well-formed XHTML over any of that clients-side scripted crap, but totally rejecting CSS is pointless zealotry.

You are using ASCII? Weak. True website surfers use raw character values, like The Matrix in 1999.

Jesus. This is getting out of hand.

Sure, but you can’t be tracked via css so it’s okay in my book. Have fun with your whacky css sites.

Because then you know that it isn't easy to keep on top of it all the time.

I would appreciate it if you wouldn't just point at my mistake but say what would be right and why. If you know, that is.

They’re not standards, it’s just default styles, which you can change.

Passing information between two simultaneously existing entities? Get outta here! All cultures use the Jung collective unconscious to store knowledge!

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.

That's not even convincing pedantery. Nobody would assune that a browser's standard style might be an RFC, IETF- or in any way official standard,

I meant it’s not standardised across browsers, so it doesn’t really matter if you change them within certain bounds. You can certainly set up something akin to some basic nice typesetting, get your default margins, padding, fonts, bg color sorted. They’re all reset in basically all websites anyway.

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.

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.

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.

I host my own website, and I decided to rewrite the JS portions in React, in order to learn the framework. Boy was it a learning experience: To do the same thing required 2-4 times the amount of code—and that’s just in the scripts, let alone the all the bloat from the packages and the bundler.

I know this is a bit more radical than cutting out frameworks, but working with the JS ecosystem was such a pain, largely because there’s you need to piece together different software to make a stack work, which may or may not go together well. And since your stack is likely unique, good luck getting help on your problems. It made me miss Rust (albeit most languages do)—in Rust, you have Cargo for everything, and it’s beautiful. Rust has its own difficulties, but they actually feel surmountable compared to the dependency hell of JS.

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'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.

No HTML should rather do all-Commonmark instead, imo. Background color and text width & stuff should not be your (the creators) business but my (the users) business only. But some basic styling is nice.