HTML simply does not meet the needs of the modern web. This fact makes a lot of people emotional and angry for some reason.
HTML is the Web
11–20 of 341 posts
Re: HTML is the Web
#12A Web page is a document. No it's not. It never was. Even a long time ago when websites were static things rendered by the browser once and then left alone there was always a tree of nodes underlying everything. The only thing that's changed in the past three decades is that now when we make websites and web apps we often ship a little JS application that lets the user modify the underlying tree. That's what the web…
> We moved forwards. The same is becoming true for HTML. Users demanded interactivity, and we gave them exactly that, and browsers turned in to things that run little applications rather than things that render mark up. As I like to occasionally point out in wasm threads, the browser was a thing that ran little applications all along, in the form of Java applets. I have yet to see an explanation of how wasm applets a…
The difference is timing. Computers weren't really ready for applets back in the mid-2000s when Java was pushing to be the thing that made web pages interactive. The performance (in terms of download speed, start up, and actually running them) was usually pretty horrible. Now the hardware has caught up it's the language that's the bottleneck, so WASM might prove to be a decent idea.
Also Java tried to be a gateway out of the browser to the OS, and that's just a terrible idea for security. WASM isn't trying to be that, and hopefully it never will.
Re: HTML is the Web
#13Get on with your jobs. HTML aint ever goin away.
Re: HTML is the Web
#14A Web page is a document. No it's not. It never was. Even a long time ago when websites were static things rendered by the browser once and then left alone there was always a tree of nodes underlying everything. The only thing that's changed in the past three decades is that now when we make websites and web apps we often ship a little JS application that lets the user modify the underlying tree. That's what the web…
> We moved forwards. The same is becoming true for HTML. Users demanded interactivity, and we gave them exactly that, and browsers turned in to things that run little applications rather than things that render mark up. As I like to occasionally point out in wasm threads, the browser was a thing that ran little applications all along, in the form of Java applets. I have yet to see an explanation of how wasm applets a…
>I have yet to see an explanation of how wasm applets are a different approach to the problem, but they sure are a more popular one.
Given that almost every thread about WASM includes someone like yourself wondering why it isn't just a pointless rehash of the JVM, I have to assume you would have already seen the numerous discussions about the differences at length.
Re: HTML is the Web
#15A Web page is a document. No it's not. It never was. Even a long time ago when websites were static things rendered by the browser once and then left alone there was always a tree of nodes underlying everything. The only thing that's changed in the past three decades is that now when we make websites and web apps we often ship a little JS application that lets the user modify the underlying tree. That's what the web…
It is, definitions of HTML are widely clear: "Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser." If a document has interactivity, that doesn't mean it will lose its definition.
That's why I suggested maybe HTML isn't the right language for defining the initial tree state of a web app these days, but it's what we've got so it's what we use. I think web apps, and web pages too to some extent, have outgrown HTML.
Re: HTML is the Web
#16HTML simply does not meet the needs of the modern web. This fact makes a lot of people emotional and angry for some reason.
Maybe because people have vastly different opinions about what the "modern web" actually needs?
Re: HTML is the Web
#17Web pages started as documents, and have gradually evolved to support ever more complex uses, so that now they are effectively a platform for application delivery (and a very good one) as well as for document delivery. Oftentimes web applications are a mix of both data delivery and data manipulation, so the line is not clearly drawn. This has inevitably created a tension between those who see apps as the only future, and those who see docs as the purpose of the web, and apps as an afterthought (a camp the author of this article falls into). I don't think it's useful to attempt to set up a dichotomy between Apps and Docs and pick a side. Very few websites are pure document stores, and very few apps don't require documents, urls for resources etc.
Personally I think the web should evolve to play to its strengths: Simplicity, Flexibility, Separation of data from code and from style.
It'd be nice if instead of trying to shove javascript into every hole because it happened to be bundled with browsers, we pushed browsers to bundle more runtimes for client-side work (a WASM standard library if you like), so that the web can continue to be a place where you can post about javascript on a server running arc software, and not care which technology the server or server uses, which can be swapped out at will. One of the great joys of web development from my point of view is not being tied to a particular language or ecosystem, because the web is heterogeneous.
Re: HTML is the Web
#18I don't need to know HTMl to become a Frontend Engineer. It's the same like, i don't need to know Assembler to be a C programmer.
HTML is the compiled format which browser could understand and run, it's not for human to produce/read it.
We need more powerful tooling/language/framework/library just like what we see in React, Vue,...
Re: HTML is the Web
#19A Web page is a document. No it's not. It never was. Even a long time ago when websites were static things rendered by the browser once and then left alone there was always a tree of nodes underlying everything. The only thing that's changed in the past three decades is that now when we make websites and web apps we often ship a little JS application that lets the user modify the underlying tree. That's what the web…
The truth is both web "pages" and web "apps" are documents, and both are the web. Web pages which use javascript to render text or fetch remote content by AJAX can still be as much documents as fully static HTML pages, if their primary purpose is to convey textual or visual information. And fully static sites can be made interactive without javascript, though backend processes.
Viewing "pages" and "apps" as wholly separate and mutually hostile paradigms seems to be a recent cultural development born more out of frustration with advertising and modern complexity than any technically meaningful distinction between the two.
Re: HTML is the Web
#20HTML simply does not meet the needs of the modern web. This fact makes a lot of people emotional and angry for some reason.
My usage, as well as majority of friends that are non-geek, involves around - Scrolling through IG, Facebook, other Social Media, Forums, Online Shopping and News Site. Along with Video that in itself is a category as well as well as used within the previous few categories. News is arguably the biggest addiction of the 21st century, and IG, Facebook, Forum, are all really just "news". News about your friends, family, Celebrity, Tech, etc...
I would bet the above represent more than 80% ( if not 90% ) of today's Modern Web usage. And all of them works with HTML + a little Javascript for interactivity.
I don't see why it doesn't meet the needs of Modern Web.