Conversation

my take on Gemini, Gopher, et. al.: just write HTML and mostly stick to features in HTML 2.0 as described in the RFCs (1866, 1867, 1942, 1980 (OK you can probably skip this one, imagemaps were always silly and questionable for accessibility), and 2070.)

don’t like the proliferation of JavaScript on the modern web? nobody’s forcing you to put a <script> tag in, just don’t write one. don’t like the crimes that can be committed with CSS, and believe that stylesheets should be the user’s choice, not yours? nobody’s forcing you to put a <link rel="stylesheet"> in.

you can even use good HTML5 features like srcset, and just stick to features present in HTML2 otherwise, old browsers will just ignore it. follow design guides from before the Web 2.0 era, where your website was supposed to “gracefully degrade” - don’t require new features if you use them, and then the most potato of browsers can access your site.

and, sure, those potato browsers can’t access the rest of the modern web, but they can easily access sites of people who follow these guidelines… and so can modern browsers.

IMO, be the change that you want to see in the world that everyone actually uses, instead of creating your own world that will always be a tiny niche.

(refined version of a take in reply to someone else’s private thread, written for public consumption)