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The unreasonable effectiveness of simple HTML

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Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of simple HTML

#81

Post by dgb23 »

alecst wrote: post #47
apabepa wrote: post #19

I am not a front-end developer but looking at it from a distance I really don't get modern web design. Sure some sites might need fancy javascript single page features, like if your webpage is an interactive map or realtime game, but most sites are just text and some pictures. Whats with all the javascript? Your site looks just like the next one anyway! It feels like an "Emperor's New Clothes" situation or maybe more…

I agree with you. It definitely does not serve the user. I have two thoughts, as a nobody. 1. Ads/trackers/etc. need javascript 2. It's a way of flexing and saying "we have resources to put into this webpage which makes us a serious business." Any other thoughts?

Things that are running based on JS on "regular" sites from the top of my head:

- Toggling widgets such as menus, modals and other things you only want to show when the user requests it. This includes updating accessibility related HTML attributes.

- filtering, sorting etc. of larger data sets in the client.

- live updates of fresh, time related data

- search that doesn't force a complete reload, via AJAX or cached on the client.

- smoother page / content transitions via AJAX

- everything related to forms / user input: you want to instantly react

- managing and preserving state / context per user

- visualizations / graphs that are explorable / interactive

- polyfills for older browsers that don't support optimizations such as lazy loading.

- interactive widgets such as chat boxes (not a fan but still)

- testing and analytics

A website isn't made of paper.

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of simple HTML

#82

Post by grishka »

apabepa wrote: post #19

I am not a front-end developer but looking at it from a distance I really don't get modern web design. Sure some sites might need fancy javascript single page features, like if your webpage is an interactive map or realtime game, but most sites are just text and some pictures. Whats with all the javascript? Your site looks just like the next one anyway! It feels like an "Emperor's New Clothes" situation or maybe more…

As an Android developer who's now making a hobby project that has a web UI, I don't understand it either. I'm doing it the old-fashioned way and it's so fast that my browser doesn't have the time to display a loading animation when I refresh the page.

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of simple HTML

#83

Post by K0nserv »

ogre_codes wrote: post #54
elliekelly wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Very few people have the skill to turn a div into an effective button, yet over and over I see web sites with rows of buttons which are in fact just divs with javascript behind them. What was the catalyst behind this trend? I just don’t understand the reason behind it. Hasn’t been around forever? Was there some limitation on the button tag that made the div tag more desirable?

I suspect a lot has to do with the fact that it's easier to slap together a quick list/ menu thing than it is to make a select box look the way a designer wants it to. Similarly with calendar components, radio buttons, etc.

What has happened in that scenario is that the designer has failed in their job. Unfortunately it’s up to engineers to catch this, which they often don’t

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of simple HTML

#84

Post by hanniabu »

ogre_codes wrote: post #10

This is a fantastic article, it does miss one very key point about bog-standard HTML which is worth mentioning though. The standard widgets are all accessible, people with screen readers, limited mobility, poor vision, etc, all rely on pages being written so the devices they use to read the web can function properly. People who choose to eschew these standard components very frequently end up with a site which is unu…

Would be nice to have an html builder that follows all these best practices. That would also make it nice and easy to apply different crowdsourced themes.

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of simple HTML

#85

Post by bramd »

ratww wrote: post #46
pbronez wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there any automated ways to assess a web product against the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)? This should really be part of the CI/CD process.

There's a Firefox/Chrome extension called Axe that's pretty good. We use at my company it to make our products accessible and it helped us tremendously. [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/axe-devtools/ [2] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/axe-web-accessibil...

The engine behind that add-on, Axe core, can be called from JS and there are some open source tools around to integrate it in your CI. I would say Axe is kind of the gold standard at this time when it comes to automated accessibility testing. Not because it catches the highest number of issues, but if it flags something you can be pretty sure it's a real issue and not a false positive.

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of simple HTML

#86

Post by grishka »

lovelyviking wrote: post #73

Those are not ‘crappy browsers’. If we call it “Browser” it should be browser, isn’t it? It should brows pages. It was never intended to be overweighted virtal machine and not a good one by the way. Past 8 years or so Youtube has nothing really more to offer then it was offering back then. The only new things it offers for me is overweighted dumb slow shit that fails to perform what it was perfectly doing 8 years ago…

Oh, YouTube. I'll never understand how they made it such that when you open your subscriptions page it first loads the list of videos, and then, 5 seconds later, shows their durations. Or how the player UI is unresponsive for several seconds after you open a video. That took some special talent apparently.

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of simple HTML

#87

Post by kstrauser »

salutonmundo wrote: post #63

The worst web browser I have access to is the "experimental" one on a Kindle 4. Most web pages that one might want to visit will not load in this web browser—because it does not support modern versions of TLS. For the reasons mentioned in this article—it's probably a good idea to keep plain HTTP access available on your websites.

Eh, 98.24% of all users worldwide can use TLS 1.2: https://caniuse.com/?search=tls%201.2

I'm not willing to make security exceptions to support devices from 2011. "HTTPS by default" lifts all boats: people who would MITM your users can't tell if they're reading your nice blog or a critique of their local government, and that's a good thing.

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of simple HTML

#88

Post by grishka »

thehappypm wrote: post #34

Ads need JavaScript, in general. Rich logging/event tracking needs JavaScript, in general. Native Apps tend not to be HTML-powered, they're powered by APIs that can also power Web sites that use JavaScript, again, in general. A lot of these corporate-ey features rely on JS.

So, yeah, if you disable JS, you'd only improve your experience on many non-interactive websites.

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of simple HTML

#89

Post by foopod »

red_hare wrote: post #37
pbronez wrote: post #20

Love this: > Go sit in an uncomfortable chair, in an uncomfortable location, and stare at an uncomfortably small screen with an uncomfortably outdated web browser. How easy is it to use the websites you’ve created? It's so easy to get disconnected from the real-world applications of our technology. Build user empathy.

My favorite example of this was when I worked on a B2B product with a daily email report. We noticed the most common usage of this email report came from native iOS email clients first thing in the morning. As a test, my team all went home and practiced being the user. We had a test email sent to our email addresses we would open first thing in the morning and attempt to make sense of it while laying in bed. The resu…

I love examples like this, I hope you don't mind me tagging on my own.

Our team was doing in home interviews for a TV product. One of the customers subscribed to an expensive sports service and yet barely ever watched it.

When we probed it was because her two sons had left home in the last year and she knew they would come home when a game was on if she had the service. She said that she wish she knew when big/popular games would be coming up so she could invite them around and see them more often.

We trialed a fortnightly email newsletter for people that were subscribed but not very active. And saw a decent uptake in viewing almost immediately.

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of simple HTML

#90

Post by fouric »

theandrewbailey wrote: post #71
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #2

Client-side javascript is underrated. We put simple websites in embedded devices with shockingly low memory/flash. They're for configuring the device. The pages are pretty serviceable with html controls, color schemes, logo etc. Embedded javascript to make them responsive. A couple of kilobytes total html.

> Embedded javascript to make them responsive. We must have different definitions of 'responsive'. You don't need javascript to make a website look different due to different screen sizes.

What if you do, though?

Flexbox is a CSS 3 feature. Support appears to have been implemented in FF and Chrome around 2012-2014 and still doesn't fully work in IE[1].

The fact that a site uses CSS and HTML instead of Javascript does not imply that it's easier for older browsers to display.

Javascript 1.0 was released in 1996.

[1] https://caniuse.com/flexbox

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