Remember when creating a simple toggle meant pulling in an entire library?
Those were the early 2010s. You wanted an accordion effect? You’d fish out MooTools or Spry widgets. Maybe you wrote your code inside Macromedia Dreamweaver. That was just how things worked.
Today, modern HTML hands you <details> and <summary>. That’s it. No heavy lifting. No extra libraries. The basics are built in now.
What used to demand a whole toolkit needs just a sprinkle of markup.
Going from flip phone to smartphone. That’s what this feels like.
Browsers grew up. The web became friendlier. And we got our time back. Time we used to spend on grunt work now goes to the fun stuff. The stuff that actually matters.
Think about it. How many hours did we lose managing dependencies that solved problems browsers should have solved themselves? How many KB did we ship just to make a div collapse?
The lesson here isn’t about nostalgia. It’s about progress. The platform improved. Our tools matured. And we adapted.
Which means the next time you’re about to npm install something, pause. Check if the browser already does it. Chances are, it might.
What’s one old school web dev hassle you’re glad is history? Drop your thoughts below.
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