Amen! The only things that made the early web bad by comparison were popup ads and the lack of tabbed browsing. Popup windows that didn't rely on user interaction were always a bad idea and should never have existed. But besides that, yeah, I miss those days. I miss the days when I was a kid and I could stick some HTML on a server and people would actually find it. No SEO, ads, or shameless self promotion required.

> popup ads

Have you open any US news website in 5 years? Usually there are 2 or 3 layers of popups: subscribe!, cookies box, and news video stream playing on top of everything.

Lack of tabbed browsing? Opera begs to differ.