Ask HN: What are weird and/or novel ways to do web UIs? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What are weird and/or novel ways to do web UIs?

#141

Post by collyw » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 1:56 PM UTC

mosselman wrote: post #10

I've heard that some people build UIs with thousands of dependencies, in JavaScript that hits the server for text that is then parsed to object that are then passed through all sorts of classes that each spit out HTML. They also do some weird stuff with events like key-ups in order to re-render input fields based on objects rather than letting the browser manage those kinds of things. Sounds pretty weird to me.

Server side rendering is very underrated.

Re: Ask HN: What are weird and/or novel ways to do web UIs?

#142

Post by haolez » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 1:56 PM UTC

I’ve always liked the approach of http://intercoolerjs.org/.

But I’m not a web dev and I don’t know the real reasons why it didn’t get traction :)

Re: Ask HN: What are weird and/or novel ways to do web UIs?

#143

Post by 0x445442 » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 1:58 PM UTC

icedchai wrote: post #76

mosselman wrote: post #10

I've heard that some people build UIs with thousands of dependencies, in JavaScript that hits the server for text that is then parsed to object that are then passed through all sorts of classes that each spit out HTML. They also do some weird stuff with events like key-ups in order to re-render input fields based on objects rather than letting the browser manage those kinds of things. Sounds pretty weird to me.

Yes! Web development is "weird" because we (developers) are basically constantly trying to put square pegs into round holes. Over the past ~25 years, a document delivery system has been perverted into a application delivery system. The underlying, fundamental technologies were not intended for "UI" app development.

Yeah, the main problem web apps were meant to solve was the delivering of a client and keeping that client up to date on the desktop. This was during the era where most client software was delivered on disk in a shrink wrapped box. But shortly after that software like iTunes essentially solved the problem. This is borne out by the fact that most users don't have a problem installing or keeping up to date the browser which is required for all these web apps. And of course there's phones, phablets, tablets, chromebooks and the like where it's essentially all client apps.

Re: Ask HN: What are weird and/or novel ways to do web UIs?

#144

Post by Zarel » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 1:59 PM UTC

Pokémon Showdown uses a two-column layout on desktop, where you can drag panels between the columns:

https://play.pokemonshowdown.com/

I don't have a good sense of whether or not users actually like it, though.

Re: Ask HN: What are weird and/or novel ways to do web UIs?

#145

Post by dynamite-ready » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 2:02 PM UTC

I'm a bit confused by the title. Does the OP mean, 'tools and techniques to create (do) UI'?

Or is he or she referring to the look and feel of the final product itself?

Re: Ask HN: What are weird and/or novel ways to do web UIs?

#146

Post by WillPontificate » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 2:02 PM UTC

Xelbair wrote: post #99

WillPontificate wrote: post #77

I favor brutalism. A 1998 style design completely contained in inline code in the header. Using base fonts and features that are supported by all browsers. It has a unique capability: it loads quickly.

https://motherfuckingwebsite.com/

I love it. The simplicity of Bill Gate's resume.

"I build the biggest software company of its time"

I mean seriously, what more do you need? A list of coding languages that includes both Java and Javascript?

Re: Ask HN: What are weird and/or novel ways to do web UIs?

#147

Post by collyw » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 2:03 PM UTC

ransom1538 wrote: post #100

Craigslist. Here is something novel: let html and browsers do their job. Let your browser process simple html at light speed. Let GET be idempotent. Let users be anonymous while getting information.

Hacker News is pretty minimal in terms of UI. I like it for that.

Re: Ask HN: What are weird and/or novel ways to do web UIs?

#148

Post by pssflops » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 2:06 PM UTC

I've always had an affinity for weird image hotmaps at SuperBad[0].

[0]http://www.superbad.com

Re: Ask HN: What are weird and/or novel ways to do web UIs?

#149

Post by jeffhuys » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 2:08 PM UTC

necovek wrote: post #28

jstimpfle wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's indeed weird. How would they not lose track of their dependencies? How do they keep their code lean and load times fast?

Relatedly, how do they track security issues in their dependencies?

npm does this for you.

Re: Ask HN: What are weird and/or novel ways to do web UIs?

#150

Post by petilon » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 2:09 PM UTC

mister_hn wrote: post #71

I think the weirdest way is using React. I mean, it feels so unnatural for me, compared to the jQuery way. You have to download thousands of packages, keep track of various dependencies and their security holes, adding an overhead for auditing them. HTML5 with jQuery IMHO still beats everything in simplicity and getting work done fastly

Here's the perfect React replacement for you: https://github.com/wisercoder/uibuilder

It is a 200-line library, and you get React's templating technology, which is the best part of React. You can use jQuery for updating the screen.