While I agree with the overall sentiment, browsers like Dillon and Lynx don't even implement HTTP caching correctly (they cache everything regardless of the headers).
JavaScript is not their biggest problem, as they can plug in one of the existing engines (in fact one of the links forks does just that).
Perhaps from the implementation standpoint, but from the user standpoint it's second to none. For example, it's the only one I know that supports dual subtitles (--secondary-sid in mpv). For more advanced features, it also allows you to pass CLI flags to mpv, e.g. for things like `--video-stereo-mode=sbs2l` (subtitles and UI for 3D videos).
Also, enable "Run mpv in its own window" under Preferences -> Advanced. This removes all the issues caused by the default mode of embedding the mpv window (such as subtitles being on the video and not in the black bars).
I've played around with it. These CPUs are fast enough (certainly faster than Heroku and the like). However, ScaleWay still does not provide automated disk backups, and manual snapshot requires you to shut down the instance first, so I went back to Linode.
We've built the Thredded forums engine (https://thredded.org) with the same goals in mind. The entire CSS is 10KiB, JavaScript loads asynchronously and is optional.
For the homepage, I'm going to try removing the vertical spacing between the cards.
> on a desktop [...] maybe put the name besides the post instead of on top
Definitely going to try that!
> A lot of elements have dynamic positions (e.g. the date, the author) which makes it quite hard to quickly scan the overviews for them.
I didn't realize there is a use-case for scanning through these. No good ideas yet on how to improve this.
> Image support?
By default only externally referenced images are supported, but integrating with third-party uploading services is easy. For example, here is how to do it with Shubox.io:
We wrote the Thredded forums engine focusing on these things:
1. Client-side performance. Little JavaScript and lean CSS. Even the KaTeX math plugin renders math server-side.
2. Clean but discoverable UI. The focus is content. Not a single dropdown nor a hamburger menu.
3. Extensible, but critical features are built-in to provide a foundation for plugins. Features such as notifications, moderation, permissions system, and full text search.
4. Pleasant on mobile for both browsing and content creation. This means a textarea instead of a rich text editor (by default).
5. Everything degrades gracefully when JavaScript is off. For example, preview-as-you-type becomes a "Preview" button if JavaScript is disabled.
6. The relational database for everything, including full text search. Data integrity is easy, no out-of-sync elasticsearch databases here. Runs on Postgres, MySQL, and SQLite.
Boring technology => easy to deploy and run in production.
The codebase is written in Ruby, has slowly developed over the years, and has extensive test coverage.
I am very curious to hear what you think, and whether you've ever felt a need for a forum like that.
> I haven't gotten around to using turbolinks but its strongly makes me question whether I should I stop using js frameworks all together and go full on into turbolinks and go back to a simpler time of rapid development.
Exactly this. It is still faster to build websites with Rails, mainly thanks to the maturity of the ecosystem, so I still use it when render-HTML-on-the-server fits the bill. And Turbolinks 5 is surprisingly snappy, here is a demo of a forums site that I've just deployed running vanilla Turbolinks 5: https://thredded.org/.
You might like Thredded then. It is somewhat similar to Discourse, but runs just off the database alone, including full text search, and it is a Rails Engine so can be seamlessly interated into an existing Rails app. https://github.com/thredded/thredded