What do we mean by ‘no-frills’?

At this site, ‘no-frills’ means minimal client-side processing. No matter what goes on in the server, your browser should be served up plain old HTML 4 and, in fact, only a subset of that. With the exception of a few lines of Java to make the hit-counters work, you shouldn't get anything else.

Pros	Cons
Best speed possible (as far as permitted by the considerable necessary graphic content on some pages).	Looks plain.
Browser agnostic; works with older browsers.	Looks plain.
Works when Java is disabled.	Looks plain.

It also means no unnecessary graphics, including tiled background images (which only make a page harder to read anyway) and no bollocky ‘hip’ Internet jargon.

Plain English spoken here!

Much similar advice about web site design is available at Jakob Nielsen's excellent site, www.useit.com.