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TheFacebook.com’s darker side (2004)

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Re: TheFacebook.com’s darker side (2004)

#101

Post by lmm »

at-fates-hands wrote: post #38
noway421 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pure HTML y'all. No megabytes of css, no bootstrap, no webpack with plethora of dependencies to load, parse and execute. We went the other route.

which is odd since a lot of css "frameworks" are now back to promoting inline css. https://acss.io/ I like this idea, but I wonder how long it would take my brain to think like this.

I've been saying for years, once we stopped hand-writing HTML there was no reason to use CSS, at least in the "cascading" sense. Whatever generates your content should generate the styling - HTML is already a presentation form, and you already have a component that renders your semantic content into HTML for view.

Re: TheFacebook.com’s darker side (2004)

#103

Post by lmm »

noway421 wrote: post #6
tdkl wrote: post #5

I'll just comment on the stanforddaily website how clean it looked and loaded fast even without any crap like AMP. Just compare it to the current site.

Pure HTML y'all. No megabytes of css, no bootstrap, no webpack with plethora of dependencies to load, parse and execute. We went the other route.

Bootstrap is fine - frankly it's stuff that should have been the browser defaults already. There's no reason that something like motherfuckingwebsite shouldn't, in a modern browser, look like it would under bootstrap (that is to say, it should have thin but nonzero margins, high-contrast text but maybe slightly off-black on off-white, and any form controls should be bigger than the standard browser ones).

Re: TheFacebook.com’s darker side (2004)

#104

Post by lmm »

donretag wrote: post #39

Not sure why the author is so perplexed about thefacebook.com. Friendster and Myspace were already in existence and popular. Facebook was just another competitor with slightly different features (or lack there of (no customizations))

Yeah, that was the killer lack-of-a-feature in the early days. A MySpace/LiveJournal-equivalent with no customizations was always going to be huge.

Re: TheFacebook.com’s darker side (2004)

#105

Post by bencollier49 »

bluecmd wrote: post #77
laurieg wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Orville Wright (of the Wright brothers) went from developing early airplanes to seeing the development of international travel and the jet engine. He lived until 1948 and his last flight was in a Lockheed Constellation[1] In computer science we are similarly privileged. We've gone from basic ideas of transistors and turing machines to having a global network of interconnected supercomputers in our pockets. [1] https:…

Quite interesting that super-sonic flight was achieved 1946. I don't know if Orville was informed, but imagine that - from barely flying to supersonic in 40 years.

There is an often-quoted truthoid that says that any technology takes 50 years from inception to maturity.

Re: TheFacebook.com’s darker side (2004)

#106

Post by bartread »

noway421 wrote: post #6
tdkl wrote: post #5

I'll just comment on the stanforddaily website how clean it looked and loaded fast even without any crap like AMP. Just compare it to the current site.

Pure HTML y'all. No megabytes of css, no bootstrap, no webpack with plethora of dependencies to load, parse and execute. We went the other route.

The hilarious thing: I have this CSS book, and it bangs on about how old skool table based layouts, and styling with old skool HTML elements, is BAD because it leads to slow loading, bloated web pages. And speaking purely from a technical perspective, that could be true... but the reality. Like you say, we went the other way. Any of those old 90s/early noughties sites is going to be rocket fast by comparison with many modern sites.

Re: TheFacebook.com’s darker side (2004)

#107

Post by bartread »

ehnto wrote: post #52
at-fates-hands wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

which is odd since a lot of css "frameworks" are now back to promoting inline css. https://acss.io/ I like this idea, but I wonder how long it would take my brain to think like this.

That is crazy. Why make it an entirely new syntax with an entirely new lexicon? Bgc () instead of background-colour? I feel like new people keep entering the web field and forgetting all the lessons learned from the (very very recent) past. The inline approach might work for a small site. But in that case, why use a pre-processor at all and why would you need config objects? CSS doesn't need to be rocket science. If…

Yeah, it feels like somebody's taken some sensible advice from the HTTP 1.1 era too far. (I realise we're still very much in the tail end of the HTTP 1.1 era.)

Putting styles needed to render your above the fold content inside is a sensible thing to do, assuming you've been able to restrain yourself by not animating the buggery out of everything, and have kept your stylesheet small. It saves a roundtrip to the server or CDN that will block your content from rendering.

Putting all your styles inline? Sheer madness. Inventing your own syntax to do it? Even worse. The whole thing with CSS is, used well, it does actually reduce page weight vs. old skool HTML table and element based styling. You lose all that if you start bunging all your styles inline.

Still, I suppose if your page is already 4 #@

Re: TheFacebook.com’s darker side (2004)

#108

Post by zapu »

flashman wrote: post #42
terminado wrote: post #7

Jesus christ. It's so hard to believe that's only from 2004. I feel like that era transpired 40 years ago. The period of time before smartphones feels like it happened in the 1970's to me. The difference between 2000 and 2015 is so absurdly radical it begs disbelief.

> It's so hard to believe that's only from 2004. It's surprising Holt could still get away with writing "Cornell girls are hideous" as late as 2004!

I assumed there is some sort of rivalry between Stanford and Cornell - I'm not in US so I wouldn't know. But you would not see this kind of statement in a paper nowadays, that's for sure.

Re: TheFacebook.com’s darker side (2004)

#109

Post by coldtea »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #81
laurieg wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Orville Wright (of the Wright brothers) went from developing early airplanes to seeing the development of international travel and the jet engine. He lived until 1948 and his last flight was in a Lockheed Constellation[1] In computer science we are similarly privileged. We've gone from basic ideas of transistors and turing machines to having a global network of interconnected supercomputers in our pockets. [1] https:…

I don't disagree, I'm just saying that there is a certain design ugliness that seems to be unique to turn of the century technology.

>I'm just saying that there is a certain design ugliness that seems to be unique to turn of the century technology.

And I'm saying that this is highly subjective and/or controversial.

There are tons of beautiful 80s and 90s electronics devices.

Re: TheFacebook.com’s darker side (2004)

#110

Post by coldtea »

flashman wrote: post #42
terminado wrote: post #7

Jesus christ. It's so hard to believe that's only from 2004. I feel like that era transpired 40 years ago. The period of time before smartphones feels like it happened in the 1970's to me. The difference between 2000 and 2015 is so absurdly radical it begs disbelief.

> It's so hard to believe that's only from 2004. It's surprising Holt could still get away with writing "Cornell girls are hideous" as late as 2004!

One could as well write it today. Assuming it's a free country and they do find them hideous or doing it for joking purposes (as the author does).
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