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HTML is the Web

petelambert.com

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Re: HTML is the Web

#301

Post by masswerk »

onion2k wrote: 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…

To be fair, HTML started as an SGML application, meaning, as a declarative language. In this aspect, it's not so much about static vs dynamic, but about two cultures of programming. However, there's a place for both approaches – and probably it's about the right mix.

Re: HTML is the Web

#302

Post by masswerk »

dsr_ wrote: post #40
nickjj wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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". Flash tried to do this 15-20 years ago. Flash was basically "here's a canvas, do whatever you want within reason". It had its use cases back then but the general web vastly prefer…

The case against Flash was, I think, not so much about what it was, but everything around it. - It wasn't visually scalable. (Today we say "responsive", mostly, but that's too easy to confuse.) - It didn't integrate with HTML and CSS in any interesting way other than sitting there in the middle. - Performance was mediocre to terrible. - A rent-seeking company was in charge of it. As you say, eventually JS supplanted…

The case against Flash was (apart from the horrible security issues) mostly about stacked libraries, including Adobe's own UI library. You could code applications with remarkable performance and small footprint using the pure Flash Player target (neither Flash nor Flex, but pure AS3).

Regarding integration, some text elements featured basic HTML capabilities. Nothing terrific, but you could extend on this. (And, of course, XML parsing, but this is another story.) Also, later Flash Player applications (Air) featured a full-fledged WebKit element for rendering web views. That said, it was good thing that Flash had eventually to go, and, at times, the state of the web today is pretty reminding of this.

Re: HTML is the Web

#303

Post by pjmlp »

pixelbash wrote: post #259
gargravarr wrote: post #38

The biggest takeaway is that HTML was originally designed to degrade gracefully. If your browser didn't support the intended graphical layout, it would still be able to extract the hierarchy and display a usable web page, even if you were using pure text (e.g. lynx). This kept the web accessible no matter what you were using. These days, none of that occurs. Just try switching off Javascript (I use NoScript heavily t…

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…

There is a big difference between 100% JavaScript everywhere and having Vue component to manage cart state though.

A large majority of whizz bang the design team decides, can be done just with HTML 5 and CSS 3.

Re: HTML is the Web

#304

Post by feanaro »

krapp wrote: post #187
feanaro wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Well there is a pretty fundamental tension between programs written in a Turing-complete language and a program written in one that is not. Resorting to too much power to…

>Well there is a pretty fundamental tension between programs written in a Turing-complete language and a program written in one that is not. Maybe, but you still can't consider anything running javascript an "app" and anything not a "document," since interactivity and state isn't bound to running javascript, and most javascript is just used to render documents. My point is that the distinction people draw between the…

> To be fair, notwithstanding exploits in the underlying browser or hardware which lead to things like Spectre, at least javascript is sandboxed. No one is going to be able to sneak "rm -rf /*" into a script and have it work the way they could a native application.

It is fair to note this, but I would still take those examples as indicating the inherent dangers and failures of the paradigm. It's obviously infinitely better than just naively sticking native code execution into the browser without any protection at all, but that does not mean it is ultimately a good approach.

Re: HTML is the Web

#305

Post by ricardobeat »

sureaboutthis wrote: post #230
ricardobeat wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With XHTML any syntax error completely aborts rendering, there is no fallback - the browser will display a native error page instead.

Has nothing to do with what I said. IE couldn't handle XHTML until IE9 https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/ie/2010/11/01/xhtml-in-ie9/

Sorry, but you’re mistaken. The parent never brought up IE - he was referring to the fact that when serving XHTML with the correct mime-type (application/xhtml+xml), any error causes the page not to render at all. This behaviour is intended per spec and was the same across all browsers, not due to lack of support. It’s called “draconian error handling”, consequence of being XML, and was a major factor in the death of XHTML.

Re: HTML is the Web

#306

Post by dgellow »

dijksterhuis wrote: post #144
dgellow wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... and make emails completely useless.

Ever head of copy & paste? Won’t make them “useless”, maybe inconvenient for non-security minded individuals.

if You make emails inconvenient for non-security minded people by removing something as important as links, you will push mainstream users to move away of the medium (because other way to communicate will definitely support links and not force people to copy paste), which doesn’t help or solve anything.

Re: HTML is the Web

#307

Post by gargravarr »

dbtx wrote: post #284
gargravarr wrote: post #268

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…

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 )

I'm savvy enough with the dev tools and CSS to set `style="visibility: hidden"` on most overlays, but yeah, I can imagine that trick isn't going to work forever either.

Re: HTML is the Web

#308

Post by dspillett »

komali2 wrote: post #128
dbtx wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Web pages that don't show anything without JS are broken. Ones that show only a message about enabling JS are worse. It seems JS;DR was already a thing long before I felt the need for it yesterday, when I simply missed that article about synths at ableton.com because it was broken. https://indieweb.org/js;dr

What about web applications? I am the office champion of accessible web, but recently we made a web based game, in canvas. Without js, there's no game engine, so we had a noscript tag. That synths article uses built in JavaScript synths (using audio apis). I agree the text should display without JavaScript but the purpose of the article (get hands on with synths) is eliminated without JS. Basically, the web not only…

> > Web pages that don't show anything without JS are broken.

> What about web applications?

I would say is depends upon the application.

A data entry and simple reporting service? That should definitely be accessible and can easily be made to work without JS. Though some scripting might be acceptable: modern screen readers will cope and holding back for people with ancient screen readers is no different to holding back because some people still use IE or Android 4.4 (though do some research/testing to see what they actually w{ill|on't} commonly cope with).

If it is an interactive game or similar then you are not going to replace that practically with form submissions and no JS, so by all means don't bother caring that it doesn't work without JS. Though do make sure you include a tag if otherwise nothing useful would display, just so users know what is going on and there isn't a fault at their end or a fault in your app that they should report.

Anything between is a grey area: you'll have to use your best judgement of your actual and potential target audiences. Though again, make sure something useful displays for everyone even if that is just a polite "sorry, we can't get this working for you" message.

Re: HTML is the Web

#309

Post by sureaboutthis »

ricardobeat wrote: post #305
sureaboutthis wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has nothing to do with what I said. IE couldn't handle XHTML until IE9 https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/ie/2010/11/01/xhtml-in-ie9/

Sorry, but you’re mistaken. The parent never brought up IE - he was referring to the fact that when serving XHTML with the correct mime-type (application/xhtml+xml), any error causes the page not to render at all. This behaviour is intended per spec and was the same across all browsers, not due to lack of support. It’s called “draconian error handling”, consequence of being XML, and was a major factor in the death of…

The death of XHTML was brought on by the then crop of kids who don't want to understand how computers work and want it all done for them with someone else's code cause computer science is too hard and they'd have to think and thinking is too hard.

While I often hear this "draconian error handling" about XML/XHTML by such people who then complain that a language compiler is just as draconian and real programmers complain when it's not and doesn't catch their every little mistake.

It's this lack of education and drive for the pursuit of knowledge and understanding that caused XHTML to fall out of favor and no other reason.

Re: HTML is the Web

#310

Post by thatoneuser »

manbearpiggy wrote: post #55
gargravarr wrote: post #38

The biggest takeaway is that HTML was originally designed to degrade gracefully. If your browser didn't support the intended graphical layout, it would still be able to extract the hierarchy and display a usable web page, even if you were using pure text (e.g. lynx). This kept the web accessible no matter what you were using. These days, none of that occurs. Just try switching off Javascript (I use NoScript heavily t…

Web pages should be designed to load without js.

Get off my lawn old man.
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