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HTML is the Web

petelambert.com

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Re: HTML is the Web

#281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I remember people warning that having an official Android Market would make distributing via side loading not a viable option... Lo and behold, these days Fortnite gets criticized for being delivered via an .apk because it's "unsafe" !

It was unsafe. Edit: Corrected Link https://www.cnet.com/news/fortnites-battle-royale-with-andro...

Something that has nothing to do with sideloading or even Android?

Re: HTML is the Web

#282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like I'm going to be in a huge minority here but I am one of those developers that builds websites that won't load without js. Hear me out though. I primarily work with ecom, and we build highly dynamic sites in an increasingly rapid arms race for engaging design. Before vue I worked with jQuery like everyone else, controlling the dom manually to react to changes in application state. Those were dark days. Now…

I am not protesting the idea that a site should work without JS - quite the opposite, I accept that active content and user interaction requires JS (as much as I loathe the language). What I am protesting, however, is that graceful degredation doesn't happen. The entire site either breaks or blocks you from viewing static content unless you enable JS. Why am I prevented from viewing a product's information page befor…

The dynamic dom frameworks (and webpacks) have a tendency to encourage moving everything into javascript. Generally this means that enabling gradual degredation requires building most things twice, once in static form and again for when vue et al have been loaded. Separating the two takes significant time and effort, which also introduces extra surface area for bugs and odd interactions. It is expensive to build this way, and there are other things worth prioritising.

Ultimately all website are optimised for their target audience, if 30% of our users used IE6 then we would (sadly) target that. If users value ease of use on a baseline browser then that is prioritised, and if static information and nojs turned out to be what most users valued highly then we would do that too.

Re: HTML is the Web

#283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was unsafe. Edit: Corrected Link https://www.cnet.com/news/fortnites-battle-royale-with-andro...

Something that has nothing to do with sideloading or even Android?

Wrong link above:

https://www.cnet.com/news/fortnites-battle-royale-with-andro...

A storm of security issues is closing in on the Android version of Fortnite. And it isn't likely to pass anytime soon.

Developer Epic Games just fixed a security flaw with Fortnite's installer for Android devices, but researchers are expecting a flurry of problems for the online game as it gets more popular on Android.

That's because Fortnite isn't available through Google's Play Store. Epic instead chose an unorthodox -- and more dangerous -- route for the game's fans. Rather than download it through the official Google app store, players need to download the game and "sideload" the app on their Android devices instead.

Re: HTML is the Web

#284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like I'm going to be in a huge minority here but I am one of those developers that builds websites that won't load without js. Hear me out though. I primarily work with ecom, and we build highly dynamic sites in an increasingly rapid arms race for engaging design. Before vue I worked with jQuery like everyone else, controlling the dom manually to react to changes in application state. Those were dark days. Now…

I am not protesting the idea that a site should work without JS - quite the opposite, I accept that active content and user interaction requires JS (as much as I loathe the language). What I am protesting, however, is that graceful degredation doesn't happen. The entire site either breaks or blocks you from viewing static content unless you enable JS. Why am I prevented from viewing a product's information page befor…

This. on the side,

> banner or overlay that darkens the page

Sometimes with ABP or UBO you can right-click and blow out that which their JS would have cheerfully made invisible. Also, sometimes FF's "reader view" blanks everything but the meat of the article even if the article was hidden. (you probably know that-- for future reference and any passers-by, until the world breaks it all again. vive la révolution)

Re: HTML is the Web

#285

I always chime into these articles with the exact same sentiment: this is a business problem, not a developer problem. Developers love simplicity and semantics. But when a UI gets to a certain level of complexity (I say 10 interactions per page) then semantics get hard to maintain or translate. I'm building a recommendation engine for a client right now. Lots of wooshes, whirring and moving parts, a good amount of it…

Since the article's main point is that you should use semantics as much as possible, it's probably better that you used the "wrong" tag when choosing between or , than using the wrong tag and choosing s for lack of not even having asked the question "what should this be?". While rewriting what's already out there may be a business decision, choosing between what HTML tag to use when changing/writing new ones, is comp…

There are plenty of apps out there where you cannot apply HTML document semantics or that would be a waste of time (money) doing so.

If using canvas or web-assembly would be easier/possible than using HTML tags for a rendering layer, nobody would ever disturb the HTML document designers with this div "soup" :)

Semantic HTML serves 2 purposes: lets search engines correctly index your content and makes it easier for a human to edit this HTML directly. Other than that, there is no other reason which requires semantic HTML.

True accessibility is achieved through other means.

Re: HTML is the Web

#286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not protesting the idea that a site should work without JS - quite the opposite, I accept that active content and user interaction requires JS (as much as I loathe the language). What I am protesting, however, is that graceful degredation doesn't happen. The entire site either breaks or blocks you from viewing static content unless you enable JS. Why am I prevented from viewing a product's information page befor…

The dynamic dom frameworks (and webpacks) have a tendency to encourage moving everything into javascript. Generally this means that enabling gradual degredation requires building most things twice, once in static form and again for when vue et al have been loaded. Separating the two takes significant time and effort, which also introduces extra surface area for bugs and odd interactions. It is expensive to build this…

You would think that SSR could take care of the problem and not require one to build twice. Most of these frameworks are very opinionated, if they cared about doing the right thing I don't think it would be hard to extend their opinions to make it so that content is tagged in ways that allow the framework to automatically generate the multiple views needed for graceful degradation.

Re: HTML is the Web

#287
post #89

I recently used Semantic-UI ( http://semantic-ui.com/ ) in a project. Semantic-UI is a web framework where "semantic" means there are human readable class names like Compared to Bootstrap, Semantic-UI ships with high level "components" ("views", "modules", "collections"). And here comes the ugly: They all abuse HTML as if it was 2008. Div soup everywhere. Even lists have to be formatted as Divs, something I havent do…

On the practical side, that could get one sued for ADA (accessibility) violations. The "reading machine" will not understand framework-specific classes.

Re: HTML is the Web

#288
post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> any of the browsers I have access to on linux I use linux as well and I have yet to find a webpage that doesn't work with Firefox and Brave. Maybe you shouldn't block javascript and instead block trackers and ads. There are a lot of tools to do that like uBlock Origin, pi-hole, privacy badger etc. Javascript is used by pretty much all websites today to do mostly other stuff than tracking. Why are you blocking it if…

> [not] block javascript and instead block trackers and ads That sounds like it would be great if it were even possible. What about the million times that someone relies on ajax.googleapis.com and forces me to either allow it or walk away? Am I really supposed to believe that Google isn't logging my visit, each and every time I get a script from there to restore the functionality to or even put text into someone's pa…

Sure but what about sites that are hosted on the GCP? Google will surely log that visit as well and there is no easy way for you to tell.

I think privacy is important, but to a certain extent. I think I am pretty tin foiled when it comes to integrity. I don't use any social networks, I don't publish my images and location to everyone. I use services that encrypt my information like SpiderOak for backups and I use encryption on my disk.

That said, some things ought to be allowed like loading a crappy jquery file from google cdn. Sure they will log that visit, but comon that is just like visiting a GCP site. The same amount of logs can be made from that.

I think you provide some valid points, but I think your fears are a bit too far fetched. I also fear Google and Facebook. I use DuckDuckGo as my main search engine and I try to not use Google products. I don't think you can do so much more than that to be honest.

Re: HTML is the Web

#289
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Web pages should be designed to load without js.

Or rather anyone starting a new project should think long and hard "is this a page or is this an app?". Too many web pages think of themselves as apps without any real reason to do so.

Developers used to building apps find it much more efficient to build that way and, to an extent, it is. I've had developers straight up refuse to build "legacy" pages, and I understand their reasoning. Sometimes that is the reason, when another is not apparent.

Re: HTML is the Web

#290
post #5

A 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…

Re: [A Web page is a document.] No it's not.

It started out that way, but grew to TRY to replace GUI's, Flash, etc.

We need three different standards: one for documents (HTML may be good enough); one for media, art, and games; and one for desktop-like GUI's. There may be some overlap between these, but the one-size-fits-all of HTML/CS/JS has been a big messy time-sink where otherwise simple UI tasks take rocket science and luck to get right.

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