Why lightweight HTML-based web pages are better.

If modern computers have more memory but websites demand more memory, doesn't that defeat the benefit?

For example, let's assume YouTube's HTML-based user interface from 2014 needed 100 MB of RAM per tab. Now, computers might have 4 times the RAM on average, but YouTube's polymer JS based UI might need 400 MB per tab, a proportional increase. In fact, the browser needs to walk through a heavy 10 MB pile of JavaScript before being able to show anything on modern YouTube.

It seems like the higher demands nullify the performance benefit from the increased specifications of modern hardware. Computers get stronger but demands and workloads rise too, so performance isn't improved because some website operators feel the need to show off their "fancy" JavaScript.


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In January 2023, the Internet Archive downgraded their search feature to a JavaScript-based web app. Half a year later, in July, they did that to the collection pages (/details/). In March 2024, they finally did that for the user profiles (/details/@). To their credit, they resisted the web app trend longer than most other sites.

They felt the need to "fix" something that wasn't broken and replaced their HTML-based search feature ( archive.org/search.php ) that worked just fine with an inferior and slower and bulky JavaScript web app ( archive.org/search ). As brilliant and helpful as the Archive is, if they do something that makes the site worse, it needs to be called out.

The HTML-based search used lightweight JavaScript for enhancements such as infinite scrolling, whereas the new search depends entirely on JavaScript, and add to that, a fairly recent version of JavaScript that kicks out any web browser not from the last ~3 years. So if you have a smart TV from as recent as 2019 with a non-updateable web browser, tough luck. You'll get a blank page.

To add insult to injury, its entire search UI is in a shadow DOM hellhole, meaning users can not customize the CSS. (It's based on the "Lit" framework, which uses shadow DOMs for every element on the page.) But hey! There is a fancy blue in-page loading bar. That makes it right, doesn't it?

The first time I saw this appy loading bar and skeleton screen, I was immediately disapponinted. "Thank you for shoving aesthetic good-looking loading screen into my face instead of search results. Just what I came for. Not."

Mozilla developer Tantek Çelik said:
> "Pages that are empty without JS: dead to history (archive-org), unreliable for search results (despite any search engine claims of JS support, check it yourself), and thus ignorable. No need to waste time reading or responding. Also known as, if it’s not curlable, it’s not on the web."

https://tantek.com/2015/069/t1/js-dr-javascript-required-dead

What an irony that Archive.org's search feature is now a blank void without JS.

Obviously, the Archive is still an enormously helpful website and I am thankful for it, but they should know better than jumping on the "fancy web app" bandwagon. It's nothing but a useless gimmick. The Archive is the one website that would not be expected to join the JavaScript hellhole.

I am not advocating that browser versions should be supported for 100 years. Imagine supporting Internet Explorer 6 in 2023. That would be ridicolous. But around the time JavaScript/ECMAscript version 6 was released, 2015, web browsers have reached a high threshold of maturity, so any browser since 2015 can be supported with little additional effort. The additions to ECMAscript after 2015 such as custom elements are largely gimmicks whose purposes can still be fulfilled in ECMAscript 6.

Loss of compatibility and creating additional barriers to access information such as complicated high-end JavaScript that operating systems released for the majority of history do not support, is what leads to a dystopian locked-down digital dark age. We should learn from history.


> "Digital obsolescence is the risk of data loss because of inabilities to access digital assets, due to the hardware or software required for information retrieval being repeatedly replaced by newer devices and systems, resulting in increasingly incompatible formats. While the threat of an eventual "digital dark age" (where large swaths of important cultural and intellectual information stored on archaic formats becomes irretrievably lost) was initially met with little concern until the 1990s, modern digital preservation efforts in the information and archival fields have implemented protocols and strategies such as data migration and technical audits, while the salvage and emulation of antiquated hardware and software address digital obsolescence to limit the potential damage to long-term information access."
(source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_obsolescence )