> And now we have websites where clicking a link does nothing until a few seconds later the page content suddenly changes.

Worse yet, sometimes people do "page" transitions in JS event handlers, which means that all of the sudden you no longer can ctrl/shift + click these UI elements to open up the page in a new tab/window, or even copy the link.

Not that well made SPA solutions aren't pleasant to use, it's just that you can do all sorts of weird things that make using them miserable.

I agree a lot of SPA implementations suck in the way you describe, just wanted to add that this was a issue before SPA navigation too.

Some websites used iframes to render the main content, and kept navigation controls outside the iframe. So if you open a link in a new tab (or window, before tabs existed), you ended up on a page with just the content without the navigation.

Some routers still use this way for page setup, for some reason.

Shitty implementations will be shitty, no matter how you do it.

I'd forgotten about those horrible iframes! It makes me wonder what other horrors I've left behind.

My health insurance provider has a website (seems mostly server rendered but with dynamic elements) that links documents that you can only access once (it seems). They're real links that will open a new tab when middle-clicked.

... but not of the document since the document is opened through some JS crap.

Thank you, Techniker-Krankenkasse.