I feel like there's an in-between we're not talking about, that would look a bit less like a shareware site from the early 00s, used more than 30% of my screen, and would work on my phone, but isn't the modern mess of megabytes of JS bundles for a static landing page. It could load in 35-50ms, too, I wouldn't mind.
That's nice, but I value text that renders at a legible size more than I value leaving the majority of my screen empty. This layout isn't effectively using negative space, it's just wasting the entire screen. At least on mobile.
You're free to call that "negative space", it's still 70% of my screen that's just blinding white, and 30% that's a tiny, non-responsive column layout. You call it perfect, I call it annoyingly empty and bad usability on mobile.
If you are looking for Pegasus mail on a mobile device, I think you might be a wee bit outside of the target market. And btw, Pegasus is a shareware site from the 1990s.
Legibility and usability. Like many old sites this one uses small fonts, small elements, and has tiny targets. Especially when working on a large display. I make liberal use of Firefox's zoom feature to compensate, but better defaults don't hurt.
And yes it works on a phone as you can easily zoom in, but inclusion of responsive design, e.g. moving the sidebar to a footer, and use larger fonts would significantly improve legibility and usability. This is not incompatible with a simple and fast-loading site.
I guess we have very different definitions of "works perfectly". Sure, the page displays as intended, if that's what you mean. Tiny 3 pixel high links are neither accessible nor very usable.
While I did use it maybe 25 years ago, I wanted to see some screenshots to get reminded of what it looks like. No screenshots. Maybe the manual? No pdf to download.
The site leaves a lot to be desired, but it loads fast.
Exactly. Wish more sites and other bits of software followed this website's philosophy. Once you have that which is sufficient, anything more is waste.
I think that's an unfair strawman, because they are saying that UI does matter, only that their opinion of "modern UIs" is that they are often worse, not better.
Someone mentioned an "in between" option and that's where I personally tend to land as well. A lot of modern websites are so media and JavaScript heavy that they take a long time to load, have many layout shifts and feel sluggish when you use and navigate them. That is not good user experience.
On the flip side, I think there is a lot to say for "responsiveness", font choices and media that helps the user experience. I am a minimalist, but legibility of copy and making intelligent layout decisions relative to the viewport size are "modern" techniques that can greatly aid UX when understood and applied properly.
