HTTP is the Web. HTML is just the superficial face of the web.
HTML is the Web
211–220 of 341 posts
Re: HTML is the Web
#212Unpopular 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'm inclined to disagree, but I guess the real problem is that webpages on the internet are being forced to serve both purposes. Paradigm 1 - interconnected, hyperlinked web of text-and-content-based documents: open, accessible, amenable to indexing and tooling and so forth. Paradigm 2 - delivery vehicle for cross-platform, full-featured, somewhat-security-sandboxed, applications. I agree with the article that it's s…
I feel like this gives an overly rosy picture of the past—
The need to serve Paradigm 2 existed all over the place in the plain html days.
It’s just instead of having standards-based languages for Paradigm 2, we used to embed janky Flash SWFs and Java applets, were dependent on single vendors to patch zero-days in closed source code, and had to pay hundreds of dollars for licenses for developer tools.
Today’s Paradigm 2 now has multiple competing implementations, open standards, and powerful DOM inspectors in almost every web browser to tear apart any modern Paradigm 2 app you come across.
I think today’s Paradigm 2 gives more power to users than the Paradigm 2 of the past :)
Re: HTML is the Web
#213Taking a linguistic perspective, one can analyze HTML usage through the lenses of prescription and description.
Prescriptively, HTML was designed to be used a certain way. "Proper" use of it supports a variety of use cases beyond graphical browser-based publications and applications.
Descriptively, there is no "right" or "wrong", "proper" or "improper". s and s are often enough because they get The Job™ done, for some critical subset of all "jobs." It is true that web scraping and machine parsing of content becomes harder when tags aren't applied semantically, and that text- and speech-based browsing is more difficult. It would seem that those needs are simply not substantial enough to the commissioners of web development work to warrant the extra attention and care, especially in the hyper-competitive, sink-or-swim environment of tech startups.
It is (nominally) what it is (actually).
The real problem is a lack of exploitation and education of the secondary applications of semantic HTML and how it fits in with related technologies (HTTP headers vs , URLs and fragment identifiers, microformats and CSS semantic class naming) by product designers. This would naturally drive developer interest. In the meantime, those who do understand these things can continue to devise solutions orders of magnitude more efficient or effective.
Re: HTML is the Web
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would not consider knowing "a bit of CSS" as knowing and understanding frontend-est of frontend technologies. Alas, there are more than enough cluches available in the form of variouos frameworks so throwing enough stuff at the wall fill finally make some of it stick hence replacing the need of knowledge and understanding.
We are talking about HTML. It's really-really easy and I don't think there is a problem at all that the author claims.
It's easy to use. It's not easy to use well.
Re: HTML is the Web
#215You could actually do that with XHTML, and it was perfectly valid.
Re: HTML is the Web
#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm inclined to disagree, but I guess the real problem is that webpages on the internet are being forced to serve both purposes. Paradigm 1 - interconnected, hyperlinked web of text-and-content-based documents: open, accessible, amenable to indexing and tooling and so forth. Paradigm 2 - delivery vehicle for cross-platform, full-featured, somewhat-security-sandboxed, applications. I agree with the article that it's s…
I feel like this gives an overly rosy picture of the past— The need to serve Paradigm 2 existed all over the place in the plain html days. It’s just instead of having standards-based languages for Paradigm 2, we used to embed janky Flash SWFs and Java applets, were dependent on single vendors to patch zero-days in closed source code, and had to pay hundreds of dollars for licenses for developer tools. Today’s Paradig…
Absolutely agree with this. The Internet-as-appplication-platform has never been better, from a developer's perspective.
From a user's perspective, it's maybe a bit more nuanced... I'm tired of websites trying to get around my adblocker, and everyone attempting to enable desktop notifications, for example. If I'm trying to read someone's document they've published, I'd like it to just be a document, thanks. But, increasingly, "Paradigm 2" webapps like Spotify and Google docs are as good or better than "rich" desktop apps.
Re: HTML is the Web
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
> very few sites in the grand scheme of things were solely rendered with Flash ...yeah, because that's not what Flash was about. Flash was an application platform (ok, so more like an Animation platform) first and foremost. Why would anyone run their whole site in flash? It wasn't the right tool for that job.
Yet people did this all the time (2advanced, HomestarRunner, etc) because the web as an application (a product) was served particularly well by an application platform.
But for every 2advanced studios there were tens of thousands of people not using Flash as their entire site.
If people really wanted a no constraints platform to build any UI they want with a blank slate then web development as we know it today would be a completely different environment.
Instead, 20 years later, we're still trucking along with HTML as being the primary focus, and everything else can be loaded as needed.
You can build some pretty amazing things today with a combination of HTML, CSS, JS, fonts and websockets. But at the same time, if you don't need an application and just want to serve a HN style site, you can render HTML with a bit of CSS and everything works well. To me, that's one hell of a success story.
Re: HTML is the Web
#218Web Assembly, it might not become everything I hope it does, but it has the potential to be a game changer.
WebAssembly does nothing for for CSS or DOM. If WebAssembly would change any of this we would just start using `` five years ago like flipboard did for a while: https://engineering.flipboard.com/2015/02/mobile-web
The Web, when properly used (and perhaps also when it's not) is much, much more powerful and useful than just painting on a screen and running logic underneath.
Re: HTML is the Web
#219I 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,...
If you can't produce proper markup in react or vue then that is the fault of you, not the framework. Those tools give you every opportunity to produce good markup.
Re: HTML is the Web
#220No, HTML was the web. We are building web applications now with Javascript. I hope that Web Assembly will end the need to write any HTML tag ever again in our web apps.