The web was far better before AJAX and client-side javascript. Pages were actually in HTML, fonts were adjustable, and ads were tiny and unobtrusive.

No, I remember the web back then, it was terrible. Banner ads everywhere. Pop-up ads too. Content that worked in some browsers but not all. Horrific typography and color choices. Flash based "mystery meat" interfaces.

Geocities sites were not some special dark corner of the internet they were representative examples of the extant design of the era.

You're just seeing history through rose-colored glasses. Nostalgia is a pleasant diversion, but when you start believing that things were truly so much better in the past you have a serious problem.

That post just confused me greatly

In the modern web, pages are still in HTML, font's can still be adjusted, and ads are automatically filtered out.

In modern web pages, much of the content is delivered through AJAX and isn't in the actual HTML of the page, adjusting fonts often breaks layouts, and for people who can't figure out how to use AdBlock (or are on a mobile device), ads are big, obtrusive, hover over the page content affairs.

I think you're thinking about the OLD web, when adjusting fonts would break table-based, graphic-intensive websites. Unless you want to go even further back - to a time when gif backgrounds of the stars were common and text was displayed through Comic Sans.

> ads were tiny and unobtrusive

Huh? I remember loads and loads of pop ups

> The web was far better before AJAX and client-side javascript.

Ah, yes: Java applets that made your system crawl.

Flash interfaces that likely 'worked', but had been designed by an alien with no comprehension of human cognition or interface design.

Text that was delivered as a set of lossy JPEGs because the designer really, really wanted a font that was only installed on a dozen people's computers. (Good luck accessing that if you were blind or, more likely, stuck behind a slow, unreliable dial-up connection.)

Pop-up ads your browser was too stupid to block.

Endlessly looping MIDI making you forever hate Skye Boat Song and The Entertainer.

Good times, good times.

>Flash interfaces that likely 'worked', but had been designed by an alien with no comprehension of human cognition or interface design.

How is bad interface design a problem specific to Flash? Surely you can create a bad interface with modern tools just as easily?

Not just bad interface design: Incomprehensible interface design. Interfaces which have nothing in common with any other interface the user has seen before.

With HTML you at least have a stronger pressure to use the same text boxes everyone else does, for example: There's more standardization of basic building blocks. You can go whole-hog with reinventing the square wheel only this time making it diamond-shaped and made out of cream cheese, but it's harder.

In Flash, apparently, there's less of a counterbalance to going off entirely on your own and making something only you can understand.