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HTML is the Web

petelambert.com

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Re: HTML is the Web

#21

Post by okaleniuk »

As an experiment, I started https://wordsandbuttons.online/ in plain hand-crafted HTML+CSS+JS (JS for the interactive bits only). Every page is self-sufficient, there are no dependencies, no dynamic data exchange, no HTML generators, - nothing. And it works so well, I don't really want any frameworks now.

It's perfectly malleable - I can make every page do exactly what I want it to. It's lean and fast - every page even with all the interactive plots, games and quizzes, and syntax highlighting, is still under 64K. And it doesn't accumulate technical debt. There are no dependencies, even within the project. An occasional bug from the past wouldn't bite me in the future.

At the beginning, I thought that typing the HTML by hand would be too tedious. But it's not. It is a bit boring, sure, but it's only like 5% of all the work so usually I don't really want to automate it.

And when I do, I just write scripts that handle HTML just like any other text. Works wonders for me.

Re: HTML is the Web

#22

Post by ecmascript »

flohofwoe wrote: post #9

Unpopular opinion... but I think this is a too limited view of the web. My contrary opinion is that the actually important feature of the web is the URL, and the important feature of the browser is that it provides a sandboxed platform for running untrusted code without a builtin "walled garden moral police". It would be nice if operating systems would be exactly that, but for some reason "commercial" OS vendors are…

I don't think that is an unpopular opinion, since I am of the same.

I agree with you that the URL is the most important feature of the web. Without it, you could just as well deploy native apps because it wouldn't really make that much of a difference.

Without javascript and a heavy client side, I wouldn't have a job today since the application I build is simply not possible to create with just html+css.

Sure there are many web pages that don't need to be a SPA, but a lot of other webpages do need it. I think an increasing amount of webpages are not simply text documents but we can easily see a move from traditional applications to web applications.

It's obvious why, it is truly a "write once, run everywhere" scenario, it's easy to scale on many different devices and there is little to no advantages to write a native app in most circumstances.

The document web has already been done, just use wordpress or whatever framework to create those sites but the new exciting web for me is the more interactive web where we can seriously move heavy apps into the browser.

Re: HTML is the Web

#23

Post by yunruse »

revskill wrote: post #18

I 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,...

That’s a very narrow view. Machine code is ran in one context – the CPU – with the compiler worrying about this one context. Meanwhile, HTML is parsed by much more than a browser.

Like the article says, there is literally zero drawback to being slightly more semantic. In fact, semantic HTML probably improves your own code, making it easier at a glance to see what components do.

Re: HTML is the Web

#24

Post by janpot »

flohofwoe wrote: post #9

Unpopular opinion... but I think this is a too limited view of the web. My contrary opinion is that the actually important feature of the web is the URL, and the important feature of the browser is that it provides a sandboxed platform for running untrusted code without a builtin "walled garden moral police". It would be nice if operating systems would be exactly that, but for some reason "commercial" OS vendors are…

Couldn't agree more, html should be just one implementation amongst others. It's good for documents, it's lousy for richer experiences. The rich experience shouldn't be built on top of HTML, it should live next to it.

Re: HTML is the Web

#25

Post by enlyth »

lpcvoid wrote: post #16
enlyth wrote: post #11

HTML 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?

Opinions about what the modern web "needs" are great but they're just that, opinions, and everyone is full of them.

What's important is what people actually want and use.

I routinely see people bashing everything about the current state of the web, saying we should go back to static HTML documents, while their whole industry only exists because of the modern web, and they use Jira and Slack and similar tools to do the job that pays their bills. I just don't understand the logic behind this kind of thinking.

Re: HTML is the Web

#26

Post by pistolpeteDK »

flohofwoe wrote: post #9

Unpopular opinion... but I think this is a too limited view of the web. My contrary opinion is that the actually important feature of the web is the URL, and the important feature of the browser is that it provides a sandboxed platform for running untrusted code without a builtin "walled garden moral police". It would be nice if operating systems would be exactly that, but for some reason "commercial" OS vendors are…

This. absolutely this! We didn't get the crossplatform UI framework we needed, we got the one we deserved. SwiftUI looks amazing - but again - apple only. React looked promising, but mainly for desktop, and it's not without its own issues.

I think the W3C are a big part of why the web works so well cross-platform... even though the web was supposed to be "so much more". It's quite hard to imagine a similar kind of body for cross-platform UI frameworks.

Re: HTML is the Web

#27

Post by revskill »

yunruse wrote: post #23
revskill wrote: post #18

I 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,...

That’s a very narrow view. Machine code is ran in one context – the CPU – with the compiler worrying about this one context. Meanwhile, HTML is parsed by much more than a browser. Like the article says, there is literally zero drawback to being slightly more semantic. In fact, semantic HTML probably improves your own code, making it easier at a glance to see what components do.

Imagine a newscomer learn directly React and its abstraction to produce a website.

He actually did it without any knowledge of "real html".

Re: HTML is the Web

#29

Post by enlyth »

ksec wrote: post #20
enlyth wrote: post #11

HTML 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,…

This is grossly underestimating the complexity of IG, FB and the likes.

Everyone likes to tell other people how they should build their stuff, that's the easy part.

Do you think React would have been created if "HTML and a little Javascript for interactivity" was enough for Facebook to deliver the UX they wanted to? No, there was a business need, and what existed simply wasn't good enough, maintainable enough or easy enough to reason about to work.

Re: HTML is the Web

#30

Post by kowdermeister »

What is the point the author is making? That the knowledge of HTML is going away? That's obviously false.

> And it is becoming increasingly clear to me that there’s a whole swathe of Frontend Engineers who don’t know or understand the frontend-est of frontend technologies.

I would need some data on this, since it sounds like this claim is backed by anecdotes. None of my co-workers struggle with this and there's lot of frontenders in our company. Semantic HTML's usage is now baked into VS Code in a tooltip.

Yes, every web developer should be at least moderately good with HTML. Can we agree on that? Good :) Learn a bit CSS and now you have superpowers.

HTML only provides the LEGO blocks for the web, but the web is much more than that. It's an interconnected network of information with rich media. What matters is the information persistence, quality and accessibility.

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