IIRC, around the time of NCSA Mosaic, SGML was a developing standard for being able to do <b>bold</b> <i>italics</i> and <u>underline</u>. I think I like markdown better but I digress.
Speaking of shady SEO leeches, "Block pop-up windows" was a dominant preference. In my browser TenFourFox (Firefox), this "off by default" preference has moved to about:preferences > Content > Block pop-up windows. But, it doesn't matter because JavaScript has brought back the annoying popup. At least, popups are constrained within the browser window. uBlock Origin and uMatrix help to the point where some/many "modern" web pages render as a blank page.
Speaking of shady SEO leeches, "Block pop-up windows" was a dominant preference. In my browser TenFourFox (Firefox), this "off by default" preference has moved to about:preferences > Content > Block pop-up windows. But, it doesn't matter because JavaScript has brought back the annoying popup. At least, popups are constrained within the browser window. uBlock Origin and uMatrix help to the point where some/many "modern" web pages render as a blank page.