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All you may need is HTML

fabiensanglard.net

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Re: All you may need is HTML

#51

Post by sodimel »

tolmasky wrote: post #3

You may not even need HTML. HTML is subject to different renderings on different browsers, confusing features that may not be supported on different browses, and may tempt you to use JavaScript (which can throw "errors" if written incorrectly). If you stick to text files, you'll never have to go to caniuse.com ever. Need styles? Just make a PDF and throw that online. During the "XML HTML" phase the web went through,…

> Need styles? Just make a PDF and throw that online.

Just use some old chars (maybe them? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbols_for_Legacy_Computing) and some spaces and boom, a nice style in a simple txt file!

Re: All you may need is HTML

#52

Post by low_tech_love »

truculent wrote: post #18

I sympathise with the main thrust of the post but, to nitpick, this is just plain wrong: > But mostly css appeals to our vanity and ego. Design isn't just about aesthetics. Good information design, clear visual hierarchy, accessibility, etc. all help with communication. The author's effective use of spacing, bold, and code tags show us that they know this intuitively, despite what they write.

I think the main point is that, balance is also a very important design decision. A bit of CSS can go a long way; a lot of CSS can become a nuisance. There is definitely some 80/20 sweet spot where you get most of the design you need from a little CSS; finding that sweet spot is the challenge.

Javascript transitions/animations, on the other hand... yeah. I won't got there.

Re: All you may need is HTML

#53

Post by throwntoday »

criticalstone wrote: post #30
truculent wrote: post #18

I sympathise with the main thrust of the post but, to nitpick, this is just plain wrong: > But mostly css appeals to our vanity and ego. Design isn't just about aesthetics. Good information design, clear visual hierarchy, accessibility, etc. all help with communication. The author's effective use of spacing, bold, and code tags show us that they know this intuitively, despite what they write.

I agree, I get the idea that a blog doesn't have to be fancy, but a simple css theme with nice spacing and good font size goes a long way. The examples they show makes me click away instantly, because it is so damn hard to read.

In his examples the content is so niche the reader is probably willing to put up with no design to get the information.

Re: All you may need is HTML

#54

Post by berkes »

truculent wrote: post #18

I sympathise with the main thrust of the post but, to nitpick, this is just plain wrong: > But mostly css appeals to our vanity and ego. Design isn't just about aesthetics. Good information design, clear visual hierarchy, accessibility, etc. all help with communication. The author's effective use of spacing, bold, and code tags show us that they know this intuitively, despite what they write.

I've been arguing that HTML would've been a much better information-carrier if "basic browser styling" did this. I'm quite certain that a large part of the web would need no CSS or just a few lines of it, if the basic (browser applied styles) were good. As in: designed by (information) designers. They could even differ per browser, as long as all of them were good (or really good).

But alas, base styles are a mess (yet still there!). They do have some hierarchy but accessibility and readability are bad. That's aside from aesthetics: just stuff like alignment, spacing, fonts, flow: very poor.

I am aware that more base styles would make that cursed "reset.css" even larger, but I guess if a large part wouldn't even need that, it would be fine. It would be a situation where everyone can choose "good styles" or "spend lots of effort to get even better, custom, styling", rather than everyone "spend lots of effort to get an even decent styling".

Re: All you may need is HTML

#55

Post by shanebellone »

cannolicannon wrote: post #48

> "This website used to be hosted by asmallorange. When I became dissatisfied, all I had to do was to open an account on hostgator, upload my html files, and change the DNS entry" At the risk of being pendantic, asmallorange and hostgator are owned by the same entity[0]. That said, I like the premise of just writing and producing content and not necessarily worrying about setting up tooling. I think devs, and "geeks"…

I self-host a minimal CMS that checks the post folder for an HTML file. I prefer the flexibility of laying each page out for the content it contains.

The more I learn, the more features look like training wheels and training wheels like restraints.

Re: All you may need is HTML

#56

Post by jerf »

graypegg wrote: post #10

It’s nice to see a “You don’t need X” article that isn’t just annoying snark. This actually answers some questions people had, which feels like a much better reason to write something like this, rather than the usual rage-bait “you don’t need JS/CSS/Framework/Technology considered harmful” medium articles.

There's definitely a lot of websites out there that are just super dynamic and flashy and complicated in ways they don't need to be, and I mean that to the owner's detriment, not necessarily the reader's. How many hacked Wordpress sites didn't even need to be Wordpress in the first place? If you don't have comments on your site, you probably don't really need Wordpress, and even if you do a Disqus-like solution on a static site is probably still more secure. Which, again, I mean in terms of bothering the owner, not just the users.

I think articles that are just all about how you're bothering your readers can be a bit tedious, but there are ways even the owners are hurt by the belief they need every whizbang thing, because they all have maintenance costs and general quirkiness costs associated with them too.

Re: All you may need is HTML

#57

Post by neoberg »

Kon-Peki wrote: post #33

Curious if I am going crazy... On the main blog page, it sure looks like some of the entries are not sorted properly. For example the 10 Feb 2020 ThinkPad review. Oh wait a second. Some of the dates are DD/MM/YYYY and some are MM/DD/YYYY!

I was wondering the same. Yeah it seems like date formats are inconsistent. Maybe they need some other stuff than HTML.

Re: All you may need is HTML

#58

Post by low_tech_love »

bombcar wrote: post #46
truculent wrote: post #18

I sympathise with the main thrust of the post but, to nitpick, this is just plain wrong: > But mostly css appeals to our vanity and ego. Design isn't just about aesthetics. Good information design, clear visual hierarchy, accessibility, etc. all help with communication. The author's effective use of spacing, bold, and code tags show us that they know this intuitively, despite what they write.

Reminds me of http://motherfuckingwebsite.com and http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com But the key, underlying point to ALL this stuff is that you do NOT NEED TO WORRY ABOUT PRESENTATION until you have the CONTENT. A huge temptation is to spend hours and hours tweaking the presentation as a way of avoiding actually creating the content; this is the real danger. (should mention https://thebestmotherfucking.website of…

Wow, thanks for those links! No joke; the CSS on the better site is literally going to become my default CSS from now on.

Re: All you may need is HTML

#59

Post by superkuh »

y3k wrote: post #2

HTML + CSS for whitespacing & viewport width + SSI | Caddy's template That combo is more than enough for almost all the websites out there, I've 3 different sites like that and they are blazingly fast, everything served from a $4 VPS (serving about 20k views per week).

This is the way. It's great for templating with .html fragments, extremely easy to maintain and has almost no attack surface. I don't know what "Caddy's template" is but HTML/CSS + SSI for gluing the fragments together is what peak personal website performance looks like.

Re: All you may need is HTML

#60

Post by ARandomerDude »

> WHY YOU MAY NOT NEED CSS

> The fluff does not really matter much.

> WHY YOU MAY NOT NEED CUSTOM FONTS

> Custom fonts are a waste of bandwidth and a visual annoyance

Right-click -> View Page Source. Top of the page is a stylesheet that loads 2 fonts. Hard to take this article seriously.

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