Anti-Web-Design Manifesto (2013)

&gt; With regards to visual design, the fact is that any individual has a far better idea of what constitutes comfortable-to-read text for them than a designer could. A designer either designing for his or her own tastes or trying to find some best-of-all-worlds design will ultimately fail to satisfy the vast majority of visitors to the sit<p>&gt; Designers, it may come as a surprise to you, but not everyone loves your work.<p>Computer scientist, it may come as a surprise to you, but there are competent people outside of your field of expertise. You&#x27;re not a genius, and everyone else isn&#x27;t stupid.<p>If a designer (or whoever decides) chooses to have custom fonts, client-side scripting or custom style sheets, it&#x27;s because he weighted the downsides of said choice and still opted for it. If he did not, or he is not aware of the downsides, then it&#x27;s a matter of incompetence, not web design. So, your pseudo-manifesto should be anti-incompetence, not anti-web-design.<p>Being &quot;anti-web-design&quot; only tells us that a) you know nothing about design (you don&#x27;t have the smallest idea regarding methodology or even simply what a designer actually does); and b) it&#x27;s no more than a rant - all your valid points (which are a few) are obscured by the arrogant and oblivious attitude.

&gt; 6 No non-standard fonts<p>I really hate those. Especially sites like github who capture the Tibetan Unicode block for their font, as this is a character set that I need. <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;kephra.de&#x2F;src&#x2F;WylieUTF8&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;kephra.de&#x2F;src&#x2F;WylieUTF8&#x2F;</a><p><i>ok</i> I&#x27;m likely one of the few who can read Tibetan, but this shows a typical US ignorance, and certainly gives github a bad karma, as they make it impossible to display any Tibetan text on github.<p>11: Sites that can be viewed better without CSS, if you are a NoScript user. e.g. main page of Medium shows a grayed out layout where its not possible to click on articles without JS. But the become readable again once you disable CSS also. eBay does similar.

&quot;If you are trying to make a web application, just stop. Build a native application. It&#x27;s nicer for everyone.&quot; &lt;-- On which platforms? Windows + iOS + Android + OS X + ...? Or, I could just make it a web application. Not a hard choice. This point was ill-considered.

Just found this: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;motherfuckingwebsite.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;motherfuckingwebsite.com&#x2F;</a> I think it passes on all points.

Old Man Yells At Cloud

That seems quite excessive and only applicable for web sites that display articles.<p>Amazon without javascript and multi-column pages would be unbearable. Ad-supported content is fine and keeps the web free, as long as ads are sufficiently on-topic and unobtrusive (sponsored posts, light banners à la The Deck, native advertising...).<p>Also, the fact that the page is unreadable without either using a custom CSS or resizing the window does not add much to the credibility of the author.

I don&#x27;t see the point of these manifesto-rants. To quote : &quot;designers with goals often counter to our own interests&quot;. Well of course and it&#x27;s perfectly fine. The website you visit is not yours, and is not made to comply to all of your demands. If you don&#x27;t like what you see don&#x27;t visit it. The day you pay to visit a website, you will have the right to complain.

Somehow all the annoyances, abuse and clutter mentioned in the manifesto have won after the mobile app&#x2F;javascript framework duo dominated to influence the newest web apps.<p>Maybe we should build a new &quot;sub-web&quot; for hackers with a unique safe browser with no plugins, ajax, javascript, css-animations, html5-* with only non obstrusive sound, video, image and form support.

One point not mentioned in the OP: the people in charge of Firefox, Opera and Chrome have been and will continue to be a hindrance, not a help, on net to users who agree with the manifesto. The qualifier &quot;on net&quot; is intended to acknowledge that they do some pro-manifesto things, such as allowing any user to install any third-party extension, but that those things are cancelled out by anti-manifesto things, such as web fonts. (Note that these years, the company behind Opera gets most of their revenue from advertising.)<p>The people in charge of Safari, Edge and Internet Explorer have not been much of a help either although I suppose there is a chance that will change some day since their sponsors don&#x27;t make most of their money from advertisers and other professional persuaders. (Although one could argue that the people in charge of Internet Explorer helped a lot in the 1990s and the first half of the last decade, I have seen no signs that they have been helping since then.)<p>Sometimes I think that the only way for users who agree with the manifesto to get free of the need for regularly writing new user CSS, installing new add-ons and extension and continuing to tweak about:config settings is for them to migrate to a browser whose maintainers have some sympathy for the manifesto.<p>I sometimes believe that what I just wrote would make a good business plan for a startup.<p>If I were to buy a phone or a tablet today, I would probably choose one from Apple just because of the content-blocking API Apple promised for iOS 9. (Yes, theoretically, the fact that much or most of Android is open source makes it possible for some new organization or project to offer an Android fork that offers even better ad-blocking than iOS 9 will allow, but after 23 years of experience with open-source software, I know that merely the existence of a particular software freedom does not mean that programmers and designers will do the hard work of converting that freedom into actual code that I will want to use.)

This article is suggesting not using any js library, no XMLHttpRequests, no single-page aps. Just go back to 1990?

I would love to browse proper internet described in this manifesto. Too bad that noone will listen to it, and many people are forced to disable JS, disable CSS, etc, just to be able to read articles without much annoyance.

I agree a great deal with some of this. I disagree a great deal with other parts.

These arguments are poisonous for the web. This may shock some people, but JavaScript is not evil. Its use should be limited, yes, but declaring that it should never be used is just ignorant.

I think the article is a bit extreme but he does raise a lot of good points. I actually went and checked my website without css, and even tried it in [links](<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.jikos.cz&#x2F;~mikulas&#x2F;links&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.jikos.cz&#x2F;~mikulas&#x2F;links&#x2F;</a>). I very much agree that the the use of JavaScript for the simplest of things has gone overboard, but I wouldn&#x27;t be as harsh as the OP. Cross site scripting is out of the question in my book.

tldr; anything beyond unstyled, purely textual HTML in a single column, without plugins (and <i>definitely</i> without javascript) is objectively wrong and bad and people shouldn&#x27;t be allowed to do it. I&#x27;m assuming images are fine but I wouldn&#x27;t be surprised if not.<p>The last paragraph in this manifesto is the author pre-complaining about every possible change that will be made in HTML in the future. How much more &quot;hipster yells at clouds&quot; can you get?<p>As I too am a Person On The Internet, allow me to retort:<p>HTML was never entirely about displaying plain text, but content. That that content is primarily text doesn&#x27;t imply it <i>must</i> be primarily text. That train left the station when img tags became a thing.<p>The ability to embed plugins was a breakthrough, not a mistake. Plugins are the reason video on the web is possible, and video on the web is <i>revolutionary</i> for sharing culture and expression. Flash and Java applets, for all their faults, allowed applications to be accessible by URL, and thanks to HTML5&#x2F;Canvas and tools like asm.js and whatever-to-js transpilers, we&#x27;re on the verge of having the web become a network of hyperlinked applications. When you think about the ramifications of that, it&#x27;s a really big deal.<p>To want to forbid the web from even reaching the complexity and richness of HTML 1.0 is, frankly, asinine and presumptuous. Notwithstanding that, yes, simple text-based sites have a place and, yes, most uses of javascript to display simple text are kind of pointless and absurd, the author is wrong to want to limit the world&#x27;s creativity and the web&#x27;s expressive potential to the boundaries of his own personal elitist prejudice.

All the shitty things we do to websites is to make money. We stuff them full of ads because ads make money. We load 10 megabytes of JS trackers because it helps the ads make money. We paginate articles in order to show more ads, to make money. We add unnecessary columns of social media streams, related articles, and share widgets to trap people in an endless cycle of clicks (to see more ads. To make more money.)

9) No abusive account requirements<p>9) bis - If your site&#x2F;app&#x2F;product&#x2F;service requires an account, show me what I&#x27;ll get BEFORE forcing me to sign-up!

&gt; Fonts are subtle, in that most people probably do not pay much attention to which one is in use<p>False. Fonts make a massive difference in how people perceive a brand, and different fonts can be used for different types of content.<p>Imagine if every company used Comic Sans for their logo font. <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;comicsansproject.tumblr.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;comicsansproject.tumblr.com&#x2F;</a>

Of course the web is full of crap design – there&#x27;s a very low barrier to entry. That&#x27;s a good thing. There&#x27;s also some great design. And a lot of in-between stuff (otherwise decent sites compromised by too many ads&#x2F;scripts). It serves whoever pays for it and makes it. Don&#x27;t use it if you find it &#x27;abusive&#x27;. This guy needs to get over himself.

This reminded me of Dogma 95, a similar manifesto for film directors. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Dogme_95" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Dogme_95</a><p>It&#x27;s not practical, but something uniquely valuable can be grown from the constraints.

body { max-width: 1000px; }<p>Ahh. Much better.

My favourite part was when, after reading a rant about the evils of web applications, client side scripts and plugins, I was encouraged to visit his Bandcamp to load up a web app with client side scripts and plugins.

6.1 No tiny font size<p>Don&#x27;t expect your users to surf your website with a magnifying glass, e.g. <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;smittenkitchen.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;smittenkitchen.com&#x2F;</a>

<i>Under very few circumstances do you actually need the visitor&#x27;s email address</i><p>how do you retreive a forgotten password?

The Church of HTML send thy 10 commandments. Only the purest of websites will make it to our kingdom.<p>obey you heathens.

First, I agree strongly with Brandon on virtually all of this, with one minor clarification.<p>My read is that his &quot;no foo&quot; requirements <i>don&#x27;t disallow</i> sites from using CSS, javascript, plugins, etc, but <i>require that core functionality be available without these</i>. At the <i>very</i> least the ability to <i>read</i> the page.<p>I&#x27;m leaning strongly to sites focusing on a small number of basic design templates and allowing strong user deference in how those are styled: article, homepage, gallery, slideshow, catalog page. That may be a vain hope, but most sites operate with a small set of basic templates, and tools such as LaTeX have achieved tremendous mileage from a small set of standard document types. Yes, they tend to look similar. ThatsThePoint.jpg.<p>As a strong counterexample, take another current HN story, &quot;On doing things other people can&#x27;t&quot;, a Blogspot post:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10136955" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10136955</a> <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;pathsensitive.blogspot.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;08&#x2F;sources-of-power.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;pathsensitive.blogspot.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;08&#x2F;sources-of-power.h...</a><p><i>Unless I specifically enable JS</i> for pathsensitive.blogspot.com, www.blogger.com, and www.blogblog.com, <i>the article displays as a blank page.</i><p>Even <i>with</i> these enabled, the page is awkward to read -- a pop-out menue overlays the top of the scrollbar, the fonts are too small, the line length too long, and an annoying persistent header overlays the top 25% of the page (including browser elements: titlebar, tabs, navigation, and menus). I literally transcribed raw text to Markdown to read the entry<p>Of major blogging sites, Blogspot&#x27;s among the worst for default themes, and its &quot;dynamic&quot; themes are especially bad.<p>I&#x27;m among those who&#x27;ve been ranting about the horrible state of the Web <i>for basic reading</i> for some time:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;redd.it&#x2F;256lxu" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;redd.it&#x2F;256lxu</a> <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;redd.it&#x2F;29eqrk" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;redd.it&#x2F;29eqrk</a><p>So, if I may offer some interpretations of Brandon&#x27;s suggestions:<p><i>Completely override-able CSS:</i> Not &quot;don&#x27;t use CSS&quot;, but &quot;use a standard, minimal page structure which allows elements to be readily identified and styled, and don&#x27;t go fucking overboard with styling.<p>Compare, Mark Pilgrim&#x27;s <i>Dive Into HTML5</i>, which 1) has a really nice default stylesheet, and <i>a really fucking minimal page structure</i>:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;diveintohtml5.info&#x2F;index.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;diveintohtml5.info&#x2F;index.html</a> view-source:<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;diveintohtml5.info&#x2F;index.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;diveintohtml5.info&#x2F;index.html</a><p>The entity nesting depth is mostly <i>one</i> (there&#x27;s not even &lt;article&gt; tags), rarely more than two.<p>Contrast that with pages in which every single element is explicitly styled inline and absolutely positioned. I&#x27;ve got a &quot;bruteforce.css&quot; which strips most such nonsense. As Brandon notes, excessive div nesting is almost always a sign of such breakage.<p><i>No client-side scripts:</i> Again, <i>to simply read the site</i>. See the Blogspot example above.<p><i>Plugins:</i> As before. Better: look through old sites featuring A&#x2F;V content and note the instances of RealPlayer requirements. I&#x27;m not sure that plugin&#x27;s even available any more, I certainly wouldn&#x27;t want to rely on it. Sites which provided WAV files, or better, MP3 or OGG downloads, <i>still work</i>. Sites reliant on proprietary plugins, not so much. Flash and client-side Java are rapidly heading here, similarly Silverlight (specific to Microsoft MSIE).<p><i>Advertising:</i> Many or most of the problems online are a direct consequence of advertising: bloated pages, cross-site scripting, security vulnerabilities, and crap content. I see a fundamental need to change the funding model, though no clear path to doing so.<p><i>No frames, multi-columns or other visual clutter:</i> On this I agree. I&#x27;ve restyled many sites to push sidebars, asides, floats, etc, either <i>above</i> or <i>below</i> the main content. I&#x27;ll occasionally encounter such sites unstyled and ... it&#x27;s usually a shock.<p>See: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;redd.it&#x2F;1tm4ox" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;redd.it&#x2F;1tm4ox</a><p>Examples:<p>Stock&#x2F;multicolumn: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;80zmE3i.png" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;80zmE3i.png</a> <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;M2OiyOU.png" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;M2OiyOU.png</a><p>Modified&#x2F;single column: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;nBdCZoY.png" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;nBdCZoY.png</a> <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;sNoOdZp.png" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;sNoOdZp.png</a><p><i>No non-standard fonts:</i> The problems I have here are, variously:<p>1. WebFonts which simply <i>do not render.</i> Medium.com on my (ancient) Android mobile device is completely blank, as is Wired.com. This is annoying.<p>2. Fucking with font-weight, letter-spacing, and&#x2F;or text-shadow. You do not want to do this for body text <i>EVER</i>. My instant response on seeing such a page is to simply sigh. Usually I&#x27;ll move on.<p><i>Pagination:</i> This is an absolute. There&#x27;s no need to break up content any shorter than a book chapter (though improved content navigation for longer works <i>is</i> a weakness of HTML).<p><i>Account requirements&#x2F;registration:</i> Data. Are. Liability. <i>Any</i> time you request user data, you should ask yourself, &quot;can we not do this?&quot; You cannot lose what you do not have. You <i>will</i> lose what you do have, though when, where, to whom, and how far after the fact you realise it are all open questions.<p>What&#x27;s really sad is <i>how old most of these guidelines are.</i><p>Jacob Nielsen compiled his <i>original</i> list of 10 mistakes in Web design <i>in 1996</i>. Modulo a few technology nomenclature changes, <i>they all still apply</i>:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nngroup.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;original-top-ten-mistakes-in-web-design&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nngroup.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;original-top-ten-mistakes-in...</a><p>1. Using Frames (now: iFrames)<p>2. Gratuitous Use of Bleeding-Edge Technology<p>3. Scrolling Text, Marquees, and Constantly Running Animations (carousels, autoplay video)<p>4. Complex URLs<p>5. Orphan Pages<p>6. Long Scrolling Pages (for landing pages. For articles, not so much)<p>7. Lack of Navigation Support (also: mystery-meat navigation, see &quot;hamburger&quot;).<p>8. Non-Standard Link Colors (now: nonstandard <i>any</i> colours. Fad now is fucking with ::selection colours).<p>9. Outdated Information<p>10. Overly Long Download Times<p>Nielsen&#x27;s returned to that topic many times, see:<p>&quot;Ten Good Deeds in Web Design&quot;:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nngroup.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;ten-good-deeds-in-web-design&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nngroup.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;ten-good-deeds-in-web-design...</a><p>&quot;&#x27;Top Ten Mistakes&#x27; Revisited Three Years Later&quot; <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nngroup.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;top-ten-mistakes-revisited-three-years-later&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nngroup.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;top-ten-mistakes-revisited-t...</a><p>&quot;113 Design Guidelines for Homepage Usability&quot; (October 31, 2001) <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.useit.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;113-design-guidelines-homepage-usability&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.useit.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;113-design-guidelines-homepage...</a><p>&quot;The Ten Most Violated Homepage Design Guidelines&quot; (November 10, 2003) <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nngroup.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;most-violated-homepage-guidelines&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nngroup.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;most-violated-homepage-guide...</a><p>Note especially: 2. Use a liquid layout that lets users adjust the homepage size. Yes, responsive design. In <i>two thousand fucking three.</i>

&gt; 2) No client-side scripts If your website cannot be viewed properly with Javascript disabled, it is broken.<p>Completely disagree with this one. The web has evolved into a landscape that exceeds its original intended use. It&#x27;s not just about semantic documents any more - its community, interaction, and more in the most portable format we&#x27;ve ever seen.<p>The web has taken on a life of its own, beyond what it was initially designed for.

Not everyone has these demands and well.. cares this much, to be honest. I would say that the majority of web browsers (the human kind) simply don&#x27;t mind the different fonts, and colors and what not, it&#x27;s part of the experience and who the hell even knows what CSS is?<p>This is of course obvious to all of us, and probably to this author as well, but I felt like I had to point that out.<p>Strange.