Built to Last Web App

By Joel Dare - Written April 28, 2026

The Built to Last Web App is a web based application that is designed to have a service life of more than 50 years. It allows you to design an app today with the expectation that it will still work 50 years from now.

MUST be written in pure HTML
MAY use CSS inline or in seperate files
MAY use JavaSript inline or in seperate files
MUST NOT have build steps
MUST run, as-is, on a static web host
MAY be hostable from a file:// URI
SHOULD be responsive for many screen sizes
SHOULD be accessible

Modern browsers haven’t been around for 50 years yet, but some of the first web pages still work today. This is because of browsers persuit of backward compatibility. It’s my hope that, by following these rules, a web app written today will still work in the standard web browser 50 years later.