I recently wrote about How I massively improved my website performance by using the right tool for the job, and the TL;DR is that being mindful and purposeful about using less JavaScript, CSS, third-party scripts and whatever else we build websites with these days — dramatically increases site performance, accessibility and the end-user experience.
This got me thinking about a great post by Cassidy Williams about adding less.
Your websites start fast until you add too much to make them slow. Do you need any framework at all? Could you do what you want natively in the browser?
Websites are natively fast. And at the heart of every website is pure, unassuming, unadulterated HTML. At the dawn of Web 1.0, there was only HTML. The first website ever is still online, and yes — it's just HTML. It's fast and it just works™.
On a quiet Sunday afternoon I threw out a tweet in support of this. In a world full of JavaScript frameworks, SPAs, cutting-edge CSS animations, powerful devices and fast internet connections, I wanted to celebrate the perfect validity of HTML-only websites and see what people were building.
HTML-only showcase
After kicking off the showcase with this iconic website (don't click if you're uncomfortable with profanity!), I received some great submissions. It was wonderful to see that there are plenty of developers out there who are unashamedly building HTML-only websites.
Alan Smith had fun with creating pixelart using HTML tables and a few deprecated HTML tags on https://pixel-art.alanwsmith.com/.
Taylor Hunt shared a very clever HTML-only math quiz built by his friend Michael Bryant.
Alex Riviere showed us what's possible using HTML table attributes to "fake" CSS on https://html-only.netlify.app/. I love that Alex calls out that "Pretty HTML only pages are difficult to make well, and accessible. But here we are. I'm trying my best."
Design engineer Lochie Axon shared their website with us. "My website has been html only for years now, excluding one very important element."
Dom shared a popular blog site in Germany — and it comes complete with an RSS feed!
Stephanie Eckles showcases nojson.dev — a site "lovingly crafted with NoJSON HTML". Read the full story here (it's a good read!).
And finally, Adrian baked us a delicious HTML cake he made using a delicious HTML table.
HTML-only is controversial, apparently
Amidst the fun showcase of HTML-only websites, as with anything on the internet, there was of course, some controversy.
HTML is all you need to build a website!
Some people asked, "Why?" I say, "Why not?"
Some people claimed that websites without CSS and JavaScript are "bland". Who cares? If your content is readable and accessible without the noisy bells and whistles of loading animations and a fancy-pants design, then ship it.
Someone else said HTML-only websites are "ugly as hell." I disagree. They're beautiful.
Why all this backlash against HTML-only websites? It is, after all, the fundamental tool of the web — our history. In the web ecosystem of the 2020s, developers are inundated with shiny things. Build tools, JavaScript frameworks, CSS frameworks, and more. These are all fun toys to play with — and a lot of them do a great job — but at what cost? Do we run the risk of losing our roots and where it all started? Or do we view HTML-only websites as being too easy? Too simple? Not impressive enough?
I'm not sure. But what I am sure about, is that websites don't need to be complicated to be effective. Add less. Ship less. Worry about less. And remember — HTML is where it all started. And it's all you ever need to get started.
Do you need complicated and impressive code in your portfolio?
Oldest comments (18)
This is well written and I enjoyed it, but somehow loses the focus on the core part: That there are requirements, that could be implemented by only using HTML and/or CSS or at least be limited to the necessary technologies. Then suddenly examples are provided showing in an enjoyable way, what you could do with HTML, but if you want to be serious and need to convince a customer with your results, of course you will use what is needed to design a nice website. If it needs a lot of JavaScript, then you would add it. Anyway the more your Website actually is a Web App, the more you will need to do some programming, which cannot be done only with HTML.
But I like how your article reminds people of the importance of understanding the main parts of any website, beginning with HTML, most likely with some CSS and in case of need the code which could be extended by Frameworks etc., when it is acceptable.
Thank you!
markata.dev/ is html only out of the box and I argue its beautiful.
That uses CSS 😜
It fits @peerreynders description down below. It's one network request for one document.... plus an oversized favicon thats significantly larger than the rest of the page.
Ah I missed that, not sure how 🤦, in that case if you don’t mind excessive profanity / swearing I have a follow up for “motherf**kingwebsite” I built you might enjoy:
ultimatemotherf**kingwebsite.com
Love that series of sites, your implementation is superb, possibly my favorite one. I'll have to look closer at some point to see if I have made any of these mistakes. satire aside I have taken a lot of inspiration from these to build my personal site (not the home page with it's bloated video at a whopping 4.7kb raw, but the rest of the site.), as well as markata.dev.
Love both sites, sometimes simplicity is better as the information should be the star!
Adding css vs inlining css feels a bit of a moot point, same effect, but potentially less network traffic if you reuse the same sheet on multiple pages. right?
The target is to produce a page that isn't larger (give or take) than 14Kb (10 TCP packets worth, typically the maximum a server will send on the first round-trip on a new connection). And the inline CSS is typically for the above-the-fold content. Hypothetically that should improve First Contentful Paint (FCP) for the page.
HTML only websites? Child’s play!
How about html only “video encoding”? 😜🤣
Animations without JS...or CSS...or IMAGES??!? 😲 Pure HTML animation!
InHuOfficial ・ Apr 16 '21 ・ 2 min read
Clever :D
Now this is something you don't see every day :) Brilliant!
Nice piece.
I totally agree with you on this for building websites, but I can't say the same for web apps.
Also I don't think I'd agree with this
Because honestly I don't think an HTML only website is beautiful in most people's eyes, it can appear well structured, but not beautiful.
But again they say "beauty is in the eyes of the beholder ", if you and your clients find it beautiful, then it is what it is.
I’m new to my coding journey and I was told I should not learn HMTL because it is useless. Can you give me more insight?
HTML is fundamental to understanding how a browser page works! What else would you start with? Check out freecodecamp.org and the FIRST module is HTML.
Thank you!
I'ts an amazing article and good to share. Very helpful for creating a html website. Many important things are considered for developing a good and interactive website. This might be help me for implementing many good functionalities into Wheels & Tires. Thanks for sharing.