I added the following style to my ~/.pentadactylrc:

" Tired of these shits, CPU suckers
style * <<EOF
* {
  border-radius: 0 !important;

  box-shadow: none !important;
  text-shadow: none !important;

  animation: none !important;
  transition: none !important;
}
EOF

These days, websites all look fancy, even sadly same. I’d really hope they would realize that content is a more important element than unnecessary complex representation. If you have modern computer, then you probably wouldn’t care, since you couldn’t tell how awfully some HTML/CSS/JavaScript could suck your system resources. It seems the money you pay for your computers are just for those effects.

Initially, I only planned to axe (disable) CSS3 Transition1, but I added some others. Unfortunately, not all rely on Transition, some do on their own using JavaScript. I haven’t seen any websites would break with the CSS above, but after all, I tend to stay away from those websites.

If you ask me: does it work? A little bit, I could feel a slightly speed-up, really not much, but noticeable.

These days, websites automatically and dynamically manipulate DOM elements like nobody’s business, I used to think that’s great, sliding down and up, fading in and out, fancy effects, but it becomes more troubling since our web browsers do much more.

Web sockets, Web GL, Web Audio, Web Worker, Web whatsoever, Web <Insert Here>, and it goes on and on and on. If you are scared of your weekly shopping list, if you think you have longest list in the world, the technologies that current web browser can provide is a longer list for sure.

What type of program is it?

“Web browser?”

No, it’s more like a ridicluous swiss knife, one with 525,600 functions that you can switch to one another every minute, just enough time play with all the functions. How great is a modern web browser?

They get fatter and slower in every release, even the developers have tried to boost the performance once a while. Unavoidably, you just can’t improve the performance any more when you are asking a web browser to do everything.

Please mark my word, someday in the future, one would say: “I need a new computer because my web browser is running slow.” Not because of a video game, editing or encoding media files, or a certain program, but a web browser.

I really do think those specifications have gone overboard, unfortunately, it seems like the desire of everyone except me.

I miss the time when we had real static HTML pages, they might look ugly, but there were souls under the skins.

[1]Don’t know if you can disable in compilation, but if you have tried to compile modern common web browser, you know it takes longer time than years ago. I haven’t compiled any web browser for more than a year, they are just too fat to be compiled on my computer.