A page in which Craig moans about the web

26th January 2023
In my time as an adult computers have gotten faster, smaller, more affordable. So too has our access to high speed internet from seemingly anywhere in the world increased dramatically in speed. But can we honestly say that the web is faster than it was say 5 or 10 years ago?

Every site I visit, seemingly however trivial, these days will load a big lump of javascript and after everything has finished loading will likely bombard me with all sorts of nonsense no self respecting individual honestly cares about.

Hello! Can we keep unnecessary amount of data about you on file in the form of cookies?
Hello, thanks but no thanks, I'm just here for a paella recipe.
Are you sure you wouldn't like to review an additional screen of how we use your cookies and select which ones you're happy with us using?
No, I'd just like for this to go away so I can access the information I was looking for.
Say friend, would you like notifications sent to your telephone about when we post updates?
Once again, no thanks, just the recipe please.
Sign up for our newsletter and we can send you marketing updates too!
No.
How about location, where exactly are you in the world right now? We need to know this for very normal reasons.

By this point I will leave the website to find a less intrusive alternative, eventually settling on one which instead offers a smaller portion of bothering before reluctantly surrendering the singular piece of information I'm concerned with. Was the web ever perfect? Absolutely not. Did it used to be better? Arguably, yes.

I don't need to tell you tech giants that run social media sites don't have society's best intentions at heart, you already know that. You're probably aware of privacy on the web for most individuals to be a thing of the past by now. Things are rather bleak.

Caught up in all this is the creep of larger and more bloated websites which far more experienced developers than myself have talked at length about and are only a quick google away should you care to learn more from people who actually know what they're talking about.

But you know what does load fast? This website.
Yes I am now a fully motherfuckingwebsite convert! I used to run wordpress to link to my other activities on various large platforms and occasionally post updates like this one. But the thought of setting up another installation with a new hosting provider honestly just filled me with dread. The faff of managing plugins, finding a theme that isn't disgusting, dealing with spam bots, hoping that whatever I'm using works across all platforms and browsers when the whole time the perfect solution was right in front of me. Good old html and css!

There's something to be said about getting your hands dirty writing some basic html pages. I learnt how to write web pages in school as a teenager and by golly html works just as well today as it did back then! How many other web technologies can we honestly say have stood the test of time?

My website needs to do a grand total of 3 things.
  1. Display text
  2. Link to other pages
  3. Sometimes, show some pictures
I'd wager most websites these days need to do very little more than this, particularly the aforementioned recipe websites.
I think the web needs to be more simple and less bloated, which is why I've made my site what it is.

If you disagree with anything I've written here, good for you.

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