Haters gonna hate.

"Fast", "sleek" internet browsers, with plugins that somehow steal window focus when invoked, excruciating amounts of CPU-killing javascript, having to click links twice, the boneheaded decision to use Direct3D for rendering web pages, etc.

The internet COULD be faster. Back in the day IE3 was fricking smooth and slick in its time and on its web. What happened?

I think around 2005 the internet (and browsers in general) started to take a nosedive in performance. This isn't rosetinted goggles or anything, and I don't think i'm crazy when a blurry streaming 240p video somehow eats more CPU than Half-Life 2 on a 1GHz..

At least Opera still is smooth, and the only good thing to come out of the modern internet is ajax and css

On the bright side though, higher sys req for internet = computer upgrades = more abandoned retro PCs for us! 😁

The internet of today is a sprawling, bloated beast, but that stick figure yawnfest we chugged around in with our 486's had nothing on today's interwebs. It's just so much more entertaining and useful.

The latest version of Chrome takes up ~ 900mb, which is ridiculous, but I'm hopeful that as people shift to mobile devices, web developers will once again be forced to focus on leaner, better performing web content. The MHz race is over, the next 5 years will be less about brute force, and more about smaller and smarter (I hope).

Yup... it's all about software bloat.

Take the version of phpBB that vogons uses - it's 10 years old, and on today's machines it's fast as a shark. Compare to another message board that runs on 2012 software - you get 400kb of javascript to display 30kb of content, and a metric shit-ton of client-side processing for DOM manipulation and such while the aforementioned js is already busy choking your cpu to within an inch of its life.

On the other hand, we no longer have web pages written in blinking red comic sans text on eye-gouging tiled backgrounds, with scrolling rainbow separator bars, and cheesy animated gifs of peeing monkeys.

...oh alright dammit, yeah, I miss those urinary little simians too. *wipes a tear*

Actually we still do have those sort of pages. Kids these days and their webz pages and ucoz's.

It *is* seeming kind of ridiculous when a gigahertz processor and cable modem access barely gets you on the internet anymore.... especially when you consider processing power is at least 10x to 20x times what it was back in the 486 era.... (at least)

I am curious - does anyone actually use (phone line) modems anymore? I was going though a box of parts and found my old 33.3 modem - couldn't quite bring myself to throw it away.........

Dunno if anyone's noticed but pages on my website load faster than just about every other website on the net. ;)

This is a combination of:
1. No scripting
2. Using only 16-colour images save for screenshots
3. No ads

I'm disappointed that so many websites are dressed up to such extreme levels, but a part of it too is easy updating. Many of these websites can be updated through an interface of some kind. My website, I actually have to edit every page's HTML by hand and re-upload in place of the old page.

But hey, it works, doesn't it? ;D

True, dynamic page frameworks / content management systems are guilty as hell when it comes to unnecessary bloat. They don't HAVE to be, but they often are due to their general purpose nature.

If you need something simple, you can always roll your own with php and a minimal set of includes, just to avoid having to update every single html file if you add an entry to the left side menu for instance. Very small performance hit if at all.

Which reminds me of another annoyance of the early web: frames = EVIL

Of course, you don't need static HTML for a page to be small and fast-loading, and you don't need megabytes of assets to have a page that's easy to update.

If you make smart programming and design choices, you can have a page that looks rad, loads quickly, and is a snap to manage. It's part of the reason I wrote VogonsDrivers.com from scratch, rather than using a bloated, flashy, pre-rolled file hosting script.

VileRancour wrote:

Which reminds me of another annoyance of the early web: frames = EVIL

Do modern browsers even support frames still?

Gemini000 wrote:

VileRancour wrote:

Which reminds me of another annoyance of the early web: frames = EVIL

Do modern browsers even support frames still?

They do.

I agree old school FRAMESETs are evil.

IFRAME is still useful though, for when AJAX is overkill, or XSS restrictions are too, er, restrictive?

I do feel the web is slowly moving forward, and that is a good thing. New features in HTML5, CSS3 along with AJAX and JSON are making some websites more feature rich.

Now, bad design is always out there. Sure, some sites have sloppy code. While others blow my mind with their design and flow. I cannot allow myself to ban new ideas due to some poor development practices out there.

I used to be a JavaScript hater. These days writing JS is almost half of my overall time. I'm a huge fan of JQuery and what they have done to level the playing field. I now worry less if my code is going to work on a particular browser.

Banners don't use gifs anymore. They use huge videos of 10 megs each. I break easily my 3gigs limits without paying extras.

I agree with the above - I think the banners have a lot do with it. Couple the with the fact that they are often pulling the banners off other sites. That's why you see "contacting sitexxxxx: at the bottom.

One of my pet peeves is this - when you press stop it should stop - everything - stop loading banners, stop contacting other sites, end of story....

I am witnessing the end of an era here. The most modern version of Firefox I can run on Win98 is 2.0 - and browsing with that is rapidly becoming intolerable. Every other site the computer goes off into never-never land and I have to manually end the program. Yes I also have opera, which is faster and more recent, but it does not seem to be as compatible.

I guess the next stop is PCLinux.......

you get 400kb of javascript to display 30kb of content,

That made me laugh 🤣

ncmark wrote:

I am witnessing the end of an era here. The most modern version of Firefox I can run on Win98 is 2.0 - and browsing with that is rapidly becoming intolerable. Every other site the computer goes off into never-never land and I have to manually end the program. Yes I also have opera, which is faster and more recent, but it does not seem to be as compatible.

I guess the next stop is PCLinux.......

Use KernelEx

http://kernelex.sourceforge.net/

That will get you up to Firefox 10.

I have heard about that program - does it really work? Is it stable?

ncmark wrote:

I have heard about that program - does it really work? Is it stable?

There's some little things that need to be worked around like setting Firefox as default browser and automatic updates don't work, but otherwise it seems to work ok.

Here's the KernelEx Firefox page with all known issues listed

http://kernelex.sourceforge.net/wiki/Mozilla_Firefox