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In web design, everything easy is hard again

frankchimero.com

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Re: In web design, everything easy is hard again

#121

Post by cousin_it »

gaius wrote: post #118
cousin_it wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think JS is fine. The root of the "problem" is that the web is an unusual platform. It actually punishes bloat, in a way other platforms don't. A native app can use a hundred libraries and a gigabyte of download size to do something trivial, but on the web that won't fly. That means web developers must learn that code reuse is a tradeoff instead of seeing it as a pure positive. That's a good thing in my book. Eithe…

* A native app can use a hundred libraries and a gigabyte of download size to do something trivial, but on the web that won't fly.* Except that native apps, in practice, don't do that, and websites routinely load 10Mb of JS when the user only wants to read a 5Kb article.

The New York Times app for iOS is 119.8 MB.

Re: In web design, everything easy is hard again

#122

Post by dvfjsdhgfv »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #102
BjoernKW wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can share files. In the cloud, each application defines its own half-assed abstraction over data storage, and you're limited to what the service allows you and/or the company was bothered to implement. proposal-2-final-new-FINAL-draft-02-2018.docx isn't exactly sane data-sharing. With desktop environments you could use a version control system for that but that hardly ever happens in a consistent manner. You ca…

> proposal-2-final-new-FINAL-draft-02-2018.docx isn't exactly sane data-sharing It is, when you can freely move it onto a USB drive, or attach to an e-mail, an IM message, or transmit over countless other systems that have no relation with Microsoft Office. > You can create walled gardens both on the desktop and the web. That's a question of ethics not technology. Yes, but that's pretty much a tautology. Technology i…

> Ultimately, the web is what killed end-user open source. A web application is an ultimate anathema to both open source and free software - you don't get to run the program as you like, you can't inspect it in any way (even if it's "open sourced", you can't verify if this is what really runs on third-party server), you can't distribute it, you can't modify it, and to top it off, you no longer own the data you work on with said software.

On the other hand, there are many people who are aware of that and are actively using, developing and promoting the so-called "self-hosted" solutions - that is, completely free and open software that is in direct competition with closed web apps.

Have a problem with a commercial, closed solution? Look here: https://github.com/Kickball/awesome-selfhosted Still haven't found what you need? You're always free to create one on your own. So you can't really argue that it is the web that "killed" end-user open source as it's very much alive, from VLC to WordPress.

Re: In web design, everything easy is hard again

#123

Post by sureaboutthis »

TheCoreh wrote: post #115
sureaboutthis wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a fad but an example of what I mean (and the only one I can think of this early in the morning). "box-sizing". This seems to have been created because people are unwilling or unable to understand the standard "box model". People find box-sizing is easier for them but it is not necessary as it only combines already available and well understood sizing properties. Worse, many even use the '*' hack to apply it to ev…

Box-sizing is not a good example of a standard that was poorly engineered: it actually fixes a poorly engineered standard instead. I understand the box model, which is precisely why I think one should not have to perform mental padding calculations just to know how wide an element will be on screen. Content box sizing (the original standard) also makes CSS less composable (since the results of combining multiple clas…

I said nothing about poor engineering.

>one should not have to perform mental padding calculations just to know how wide an element will be on screen

This, and the paragraph, falls directly into my comment about not wanting to think or do the work.

>The tag also forces the browser to "do something it doesn't do natively" (enter standards mode)

Bad example. Using a doctype was not originally required and was only forced into being by Microsoft not following the standard. Technically, one does not need a doctype at all but we were forced into using it so browsers know you want to be in "standards mode" and not "quirks", but this diverts from the topic.

Re: In web design, everything easy is hard again

#124

Post by notahacker »

ktpsns wrote: post #91

Did anybody notice that the 1997's Hello World example https://frankchimero.com/writing/everything-easy-is-hard-aga... still works? Open the most easy built-in text editor on your system (even on Android one should be able to do that, isn't it), save it, open it with your browser locally. In some aspects, the evolution of the web is similar to what the C language ecosystem experienced. It was dead simple in the begin…

The Hello World works. But if you wanted to build anything more complex, it probably looked a bit more like

...

Virtually none of which is considered valid in HTML5, and which probably doesn't render properly in some modern browsers. Mostly this was less to do with "power" and more to do with a web standards turf war about forcing layout out of markup, despite the available CSS syntax and early 00s browsers struggling a lot with basic grid layouts. We've now come full circle with a lot of modern frameworks end up working with HTML markup like

which is remarkably similar except that it involves a library, custom css and quite possibly javascript polyfills or autoprefixer tools if the framework or parts of the code is written in modern CSS, all to do what HTML4.0 and late nineties browsers did natively. (And you had CSS font and colour selection if you wanted it then anyway)

That's not to say that there haven't been useful innovations like media queries and rounded corners (making them with graphics was horrible) or that a global CSS file doesn't make a lot of sense in most use cases. But there's an awful lot of wheel reinvention that's happened to vanilla layout markup.

Re: In web design, everything easy is hard again

#125

Post by codingdave »

There is a difference between web design and web application development. If you are a designer making brochure sites for small business, you don't need the modern frameworks and toolkits, and you are over-engineering it if you use them.

Everyone needs to take a step back and ask why they are building a web site in the first place. My local hair salon really just needs a brochure, and maybe a scheduling widget. A doctors office would need to add on a payment system. Both of which can be achieved by pulling in a script to use a 3rd party solution, while the core web site can remain plain, static HTML... done in Notepad, if you want to get really simple.

When you step up to needing some actual functionality, there still is a line in the sand where a few PHP scripts will do the job, and can just be pushed up to a shared web host.

When you cross that line, THEN you need modern tools. And many sites will need to go there. But a boutique design firm should be able to go a long way without, and probably could just hire some devs if they do land a project large and complex enough to need that level of code.

Just because you can go complex doesn't mean you should.

Re: In web design, everything easy is hard again

#126

Post by k__ »

hnzix wrote: post #119
k__ wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's like saying group XY of people is bad because you got mugged by one person of that group one time. While I understand that a problem like this is unnerving, it isn't the rule.

Wait, did you just call me racist for not liking JavaScript?

A chauvinist.

People throwing around strawmen in here like nobodies business.

We can do this with all languages and tell ourselve we're using the "superior" language.

Re: In web design, everything easy is hard again

#127

Post by loopbit »

pmlnr wrote: post #97
ktpsns wrote: post #91

Did anybody notice that the 1997's Hello World example https://frankchimero.com/writing/everything-easy-is-hard-aga... still works? Open the most easy built-in text editor on your system (even on Android one should be able to do that, isn't it), save it, open it with your browser locally. In some aspects, the evolution of the web is similar to what the C language ecosystem experienced. It was dead simple in the begin…

20 years ago was 1998. CSS was the modern thing. JS was called DHTML and was used for mouse trailing bouncing balls. XMLHttpRequest debuted natively in IE6, which was released in 2001, before that, it was ActiveX and nobody used it. You did create modern sites with CSS, without JS.

> CSS was the modern thing. JS was called DHTML and was used for mouse trailing bouncing balls.

Javascript was called Javascript and was used, mostly, for form validation. Dynamic menus, animations... - all of which you couldn't do with CSS alone - were called DHTML. You could even use Javascript in the server.

> [...] before that, it was ActiveX and nobody used it.

Plenty of people used ActiveX and it was useful, sometimes, although it limited you to IE. But you are forgetting two of the most widely used technologies of the time: Applets and Flash. Fortunately both are out of modern web development.

> You did create modern sites with CSS, without JS.

You did create sites with CSS, "modern" sites included JS and DHTML.

Then, as now, I found that most people complaining about Javascript were really complaining about bad coders and bad implementations; The browser's DOM back then and the mess that is NPM today. The language itself has bad decisions (weak dynamic types) and good features (functional capabilities), exactly like every other language out there.

Re: In web design, everything easy is hard again

#128

Post by bryanrasmussen »

gaius wrote: post #114
randomsearch wrote: post #9

This is my experience of web development, every time I return to it. I’m really not an expert in web dev, but it _feels_ like web dev has been badly engineered. JavaScript is a very badly designed programming language (yes, even in its modern form), which I think has caused a lot of problems. Many JS developers don’t know much about programming language design, so they can’t see how bad it is, and they make matters w…

I’m really not an expert in web dev, but it _feels_ like web dev has been badly engineered. JavaScript is a very badly designed programming language Let's take a step back here: the web is designed, from the ground up, for hypertext, interlinked documents comprising text and images, some of which are clickable and lead to other hyper-documents. HTTP - hypertext transfer protocol. "Web dev" should be referring 100% to…

it may be, on a fundamental level, an incredibly stupid thing to even try, but it also seems to have been an incredibly necessary thing and incredibly appreciated thing by most of the world.

Re: In web design, everything easy is hard again

#129

Post by gaius »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #128
gaius wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m really not an expert in web dev, but it _feels_ like web dev has been badly engineered. JavaScript is a very badly designed programming language Let's take a step back here: the web is designed, from the ground up, for hypertext, interlinked documents comprising text and images, some of which are clickable and lead to other hyper-documents. HTTP - hypertext transfer protocol. "Web dev" should be referring 100% to…

it may be, on a fundamental level, an incredibly stupid thing to even try, but it also seems to have been an incredibly necessary thing and incredibly appreciated thing by most of the world.

Necessary how? All the actually useful things you can do on the web you could have done with a 90s browser. I bet Amazon still works in one!

Moving apps into browsers is a step backwards for most apps and most users. I was using Jupyter the other day; it’s clunky as hell compared to MathCAD from 20 years ago. We use 1000x the computing power, literally, to deliver 10% of the experience. Keeps a lot of devs employed I guess...

Re: In web design, everything easy is hard again

#130

Post by sureaboutthis »

laythea wrote: post #30
BjoernKW wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with the often-heard premise that HTML is a somehow inferior tool for creating GUIs that we somehow ended up with despite better choices beings available. Yes, native GUI frameworks and widget toolkits like Swing, Qt, Cocoa and MFC have their place but it's precisely the nature and features of HTML (most notably: The link) that enabled most of the innovation we've seen on the web. If building web apps was…

HTML is inferior than a technology that is purpose built. It was not originally designed to handle the job it does today. It is possible to create a much better user experience with eg. C# using some network code to talk to the server than trying to shoe horn an application over HTML just because it hides the low level complexities of E.g C#/C++ communicating with a server. This is a classic case of HTML/web apps are…

C#, and maybe all programming language, are not designed for structuring documents inside a browser either. That is what HTML is for, not display or applications or communication, etc.
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