Another well known one and particularly interesting since it's one of the most valuable companies in the world and this is their real website and not something they've just kept for historical purposes or something. https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/
I would pay good money to watch a clear-glasses-framed youngster pitch Buffet on turning the BH website into a progressive web app.
When I get presented with one of these I often just click out of the website.
If you're looking to spread information, make it easy by just delivering it to me unobstructed. Your GDPR bullshit doesn't apply to me anyway, I'm not in the EU.
I quite enjoy reading Chris Siebenmann's blog [https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/] which is very light on theming, as I really like the aesthetic. I have to say though, if all blogs were like this the Internet might seem a bit boring, so I chose to give my own blog some personality.
I agree that a text-focused web experience is important. The modern web makes it too easy to add trackers, consent banners, ads, and other distractions that pull attention away from the content.
There’s actually a network protocol separate from the web with a small but growing user base. It uses a Markdown inspired format called Gemtext, has no cookies or trackers, and avoids most of the usual bloat seen in 2025. It’s called the Gemini protocol. It’s not perfect from the perspective of protocol design (which some people on HN can’t seem to get over), but it works, it has real users, and you can try it today.
Maybe I see too many 16pt font powerpoints but I like images. Images don't require a cdn or cookie banner or javascript, there is ample daylight between text only and heavyweight.
Images and video are great, but everything in moderation. An image here and there to illustrate or demonstrate, but it's probably a good idea to limit yourself before loading time becomes a problem on slower connections.
The real problem that I've noticed in most cases comes from excessive JS. If you don't use JS, then you can't do tracking banner, since you can't track, can't really do ads, and video autoplay via the video tag is already disabled in browsers, so you can't do that either. With no JS, it's functionally impossible to do most of the things the ad-pilled marketers want to do with a website that makes it so horrible for the rest of us.
JS can be used in moderation too, but it opens the door to temptation, and the road from there to slow load times even on good connections is awfully short it seems.
Web design has gotten too complicated. I really enjoy a simple site that focuses on content and readability vs fancy frameworks. There are sites still online from the 90s that looks better than much of the stuff produced today. Plus keeping it basic means your site will work well and look good forever.
Remember all those nonsense Flash intros sites used to have? For whatever reason restaurants were the worst at this (probably because consultants building these sites impressed the owner with “fancy stuff”). They were horrible… like just show me your friggin menu and don’t make we watch a 30 second nonsense intro to your website.
The modern version of that are these horrible single page templates that everyone uses where you just keep scrolling and scrolling and the “menu” is just taking you to different parts of this scroll-o-rama nonsense. I’ll take basic with good content over fancy design all day long.
It doesn't have to be text only. An html only webpage has all the same benefits. The real issue everyone has a problem with is javascript applications. The images and even multi-media in a static webpage made of html on HTTP/1.1 are not really the problem. Geocities sites had plenty of images and they were just as accessible as a 'text only' page/
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[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 42.9 ms ] threadHosting images is cheap too. GitHub will even do it for free!
Text is fed into my brain and then my brain needs to generate the image related to the text so in the end it’s all images anyway.
A text based webpage just causes me to do more work and even then the image in my mind could be wildly inaccurate.
https://plaintextsports.com/
Another well known one and particularly interesting since it's one of the most valuable companies in the world and this is their real website and not something they've just kept for historical purposes or something. https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/
I would pay good money to watch a clear-glasses-framed youngster pitch Buffet on turning the BH website into a progressive web app.
Lots of examples here (although many do have some amount of styling): https://sjmulder.nl/en/textonly.html
When I get presented with one of these I often just click out of the website.
If you're looking to spread information, make it easy by just delivering it to me unobstructed. Your GDPR bullshit doesn't apply to me anyway, I'm not in the EU.
There’s actually a network protocol separate from the web with a small but growing user base. It uses a Markdown inspired format called Gemtext, has no cookies or trackers, and avoids most of the usual bloat seen in 2025. It’s called the Gemini protocol. It’s not perfect from the perspective of protocol design (which some people on HN can’t seem to get over), but it works, it has real users, and you can try it today.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemini_(protocol)
See Single Serving Sites as an example: https://singleservingsites.cool/
It kind of undermines the argument, and instead insists that the site looking like just a page of text is the important aspect.
The real problem that I've noticed in most cases comes from excessive JS. If you don't use JS, then you can't do tracking banner, since you can't track, can't really do ads, and video autoplay via the video tag is already disabled in browsers, so you can't do that either. With no JS, it's functionally impossible to do most of the things the ad-pilled marketers want to do with a website that makes it so horrible for the rest of us.
JS can be used in moderation too, but it opens the door to temptation, and the road from there to slow load times even on good connections is awfully short it seems.
https://hawkins.tech/
Remember all those nonsense Flash intros sites used to have? For whatever reason restaurants were the worst at this (probably because consultants building these sites impressed the owner with “fancy stuff”). They were horrible… like just show me your friggin menu and don’t make we watch a 30 second nonsense intro to your website.
The modern version of that are these horrible single page templates that everyone uses where you just keep scrolling and scrolling and the “menu” is just taking you to different parts of this scroll-o-rama nonsense. I’ll take basic with good content over fancy design all day long.