from Hacker News

The unbearable sameness of the modern web

by cryo on 2/21/23, 8:15 AM with 55 comments

• by onion2k on 2/21/23, 9:53 AM

  If you think the web is boring now it's because you stopped surfing the web, not because people stopped making exciting and innovative websites. That isn't meant as a criticism; people's priorities change and we do different stuff. I still find the web wildly exciting after 30 years of using it because I still seek out interesting things on it...

  Tell me this looks like every other website: https://www.anumberfromtheghost.com/asleep-in-trees

• by fbn79 on 2/21/23, 9:57 AM

  It's like complaining why books has roughly all the same shape when paper allows so many formats and creativity. It's clear, it's because uniformity can optimize costs and people is more interested in content and not on the container.

• by sebstefan on 2/21/23, 10:36 AM

  It would be nice if that standardization of UIs at least brought along some benefits for users with screenreaders and the like. But I find that the more we use frameworks, the more we end up complicating the structure of the page for alternative methods of viewing

  You would expect fully custom UIs made by non-professionals to be the most complicated to parse, but even simple single-page apps with their react-component dynamically updating sections, pop overs, modals and switching screens are rarely accessible at all

• by zhte415 on 2/21/23, 9:13 AM

  It also got... isolated. I was going to leave a comment, but couldn't, as there was no where to leave it.

  Bring back failed attempts to be the next CSS Picasso, but also bring back a social web. Offloading comments to social networks hinders discovery of networks.

• by locustous on 2/21/23, 1:24 PM

  Most front end devs I manage don't like pre built components and want to roll their own. They might quibble over the behavior or style and feel the itch to change it.

  This is also a terrible waste of resources to rebuild the wheel over and over. A few components, sure, when there is a compelling case for custom. But you do the business a disservice by consuming so much time on items just because you want to.

  I also find it incredibly demoralizing trying to advance a project and the bug log is full of bugs about basic component behavior you would just get out of the box with a pre built set.

  The most likely alternative to boring, functional, and WORKING, is BROKEN and dysfunctional. Please don't break navigation. Have predictable menu behavior. Etc... There are other ways to be creative.

• by samsquire on 2/21/23, 10:28 AM

  It's interesting: the modern web packages up web design so that every facebook, Wikipedia or Instragram feed looks the same. The design is done for you.

  The geocities approach was that everyone creates their own site design with an editor, which was actually pretty good and effective. There were many website where you could create your own website, such as maxpages and xpages.

  They would let you create pages on your site and link to other pages. There was a lot of funky pages out there.

  Maybe people decided they don't want to do design anymore?

• by ravagat on 2/22/23, 12:41 PM

  I love the message and the sentiment. It's why I value and enjoy coming across personal websites with effort. The biggest thing I've noticed is that while the adoption and ease of use the various social media websites/platforms, frameworks, boilerplates have brought on there was general decline in computer skills for the general population.

  I remember being in school and have computer class where one part of the class was dedicated to setting up a website and learning the ins and outs. I still recall as I left the schooling system the class and activities still survived albeit adapted. Time has passed and things do change but I still see the modern web exactly as it has been if anything discoverability has been the biggest factor of exposure to more uniqueness in the web.

• by trizoza on 2/21/23, 9:53 AM

  I love the message of this article. Honestly, little weird blog sites are the best and usually a great read too.

• by AstixAndBelix on 2/21/23, 12:02 PM

  I might be going against the narrative, but I enjoy the same-y web.

  I like having the same design philosophy and navigation on wildly different websites. I like knowing exactly where to find information at a glance because things have been put in roughly the same way across multiple information sources. I don't like to scour through the asinine design decisions of some guy with a handcrafted HTML website that "represents his personality".

  Sure, if you browse the web for the "human aspect" or for entertainment, having quirky website sure is fun and interesting. But the moment you need the web to actually search for stuff in the most efficient way possible the façade of the early web quickly shows its true colors.

• by TuringTest on 2/21/23, 4:50 PM

  Yes, there's still nothing like Zombo.com

  https://zombo.com/

• by rado on 2/21/23, 11:25 AM

  Leave the mouse and scroll events alone

• by lloydatkinson on 2/21/23, 11:40 AM

  The irony when the homepage of said site has broken markdown links everywhere...

• by keizo on 2/21/23, 9:41 AM

  one reason I love tailwind. literally design swapping classes until it looks decent.

• by helf on 2/21/23, 5:40 PM

  Heaven forbid we have websites with semi standard form factors and layouts so you can actually use them without having to click around randomly for 10 minutes or hope the fancy design doesn’t break your browser.

  I have zero desire to bring back the exciting mess of flash websites, vrml, etc etc. it’s bad enough that everything is endless scrolling now.