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All you may need is HTML

fabiensanglard.net

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Re: All you may need is HTML

#91

Post by horsawlarway »

berkes wrote: post #54
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 (…

Honestly - it'd be pretty nice to be able to opt-in/out of the default user agent styles applied by browsers. If we really want to preserve compatibility - opt-in to a version.

Keep it all the same as current if there's no tag on the page, but if you add something like or something, apply an improved set of default styles.

Get rid of the need for resets with

Basically - I'd love a way to allow browser vendors to dramatically improve the defaults without breaking everything, and also giving frameworks an easy opt out.

Re: All you may need is HTML

#92

Post by TheRealPomax »

It sounds like someone forgot that CSS is not some independent technology from HTML, a webpage is "HTML+CSS", it's one thing. Sure, browsers injects a shitty default style if you just need to put some plain text data out there, but HTML just semantically marks up your data, CSS is what makes it easy to read and understand.

If you proclaim that CSS is "for vanity", your stables must have an awfully big ladder for getting on your horse.

Shall we take it one step further? Why even bother with HTML, semantic markup is just as much vanity as CSS: just put .txt files on the web. People can trivially copy-and-paste links to other files anyway, they copy-and-paste text all the time. Adding elements is basically just browser candy. As long as the information's high quality, people will want to read it, right?

Re: All you may need is HTML

#93

Post by fabiensanglard »

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!

Thank for taking the time to report the issue. Fixed.

Re: All you may need is HTML

#94

Post by fsociety »

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.

100%, and calling aesthetics an appeal to vanity and ego is a reductive take. I love that individual’s websites have different styles which reflect either them personally or their brand.

That can mean going all out in design, or having an HTML-only page like nothing. Both have value in their own way, and should reflect the creator to some extent.

Re: All you may need is HTML

#95

Post by H4ZB7 »

TheRealPomax wrote: post #92

It sounds like someone forgot that CSS is not some independent technology from HTML, a webpage is "HTML+CSS", it's one thing. Sure, browsers injects a shitty default style if you just need to put some plain text data out there, but HTML just semantically marks up your data, CSS is what makes it easy to read and understand. If you proclaim that CSS is "for vanity", your stables must have an awfully big ladder for gett…

nope, it's definitely just for vanity. it will be hard to explain that on a forum dedicated to people whose work revolves around upholding this myth, though. html not being readable without css is a bug or bad positioning. i would never design a document format that requires something as complex as css to be readable. anyway i find sites that use just plain default html readable. one big mistake people make is to let their browser take up a full widescreen monitor on such pages. the fact that the browser tries to be the OS discourages them from resizing it (windows+left on windows or gnome or the equivalent on windows is enough). its mostly the tables (iirc) that look like crap, even though they didn't have to

Re: All you may need is HTML

#96

Post by hotbeanwater »

mikrl wrote: post #90
crabbone wrote: post #87

Some years ago I was interviewing for head of automation position, and in the process was asked how'd I go about making sure a Web admin interface (to a product that by and large doesn't need a Web interface, think, in the same category as Kubernetes) is well-tested. To which I responded that I'd not use any JavaScript. Ideally, XML with stylesheets. Very light-weight, renders extremely fast, and is extremely friendl…

No one wants to write html_page.html, but html_page.js?? Now you’re talking.

Okay hear me out:

html_page_analytics.js html_page_bundle.min.js html_page_tracking.js html_page_d8fd766d76223ae.min.js html_page_user.js html_page_banners.js html_page_pardot_dfa7s778d9aa.min.js

Re: All you may need is HTML

#97

Post by magicalist »

kerkeslager wrote: post #66
ghusto wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Good information design, clear visual hierarchy, accessibility, etc. all help with communication Isn't that what HTML gives us?

Well, that was what HTML was on track to give us. But once JS and CSS were introduced, semantic HTML that was actually semantic stopped developing, under the assumption that if someone needed, for example, a tab area or slide show, they could develop those themselves with CSS/JS. What we've gotten instead is extremely vague elements like "section" that don't communicate what the elements are . If HTML were truly sema…

This...does not match history.

There was never a golden era like you describe (it was a time of conflicting philosophies, people saying "eh, let's add this, that would be sweet", and browser vendors competing to add as much as possible to out "innovate" each other and the limited specs), semantic HTML helps in some cases but is never going to give you automatic accessibility, and a one size fits all browser style is still not going to give you what you need even as you add increasingly unsemantic tags to try to improve it (which is exactly what was happening pre-CSS).

Re: All you may need is HTML

#98

Post by alduin32 »

j45 wrote: post #71
low_tech_love wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's a great example of how a little can do a lot. The balance between design & function can be at odds when the mission of the page is not clear. For consumption, these are awesome, your brain almost relaxes as it's easier than the usual onslaught.

It's also a great example of how even such a little can go wrong.

The CSS of the second website is wrong, as it uses 'color' without setting 'background-color'. Assuming anything about the default background color is not possible because it is user-configurable in most browsers.

At least http://motherfuckingwebsite.com remains readable when you change your color settings (the second one is completely unreadable on my browser).

Re: All you may need is HTML

#99

Post by bob1029 »

crabbone wrote: post #87

Some years ago I was interviewing for head of automation position, and in the process was asked how'd I go about making sure a Web admin interface (to a product that by and large doesn't need a Web interface, think, in the same category as Kubernetes) is well-tested. To which I responded that I'd not use any JavaScript. Ideally, XML with stylesheets. Very light-weight, renders extremely fast, and is extremely friendl…

> if they don't put a fashionable JavaScript framework into job description, they will not be able to hire front-end programmers.

This is exactly why we are vague with tech stack in our job reqs. Why would you want talent that is laser-focused on specific keywords? What is the average lifetime of a JS/CSS framework? The game isn't to come in knowing this crap. It's to grasp fundamentals such that you can quickly learn the next ones.

I much prefer to hire less "skilled" employees who are more interested in the problem domain or product than they are any specific tooling. Goal-oriented developers can be taught to do anything in my experience.

Re: All you may need is HTML

#100

Post by manuelmoreale »

mapierce2 wrote: post #70

This is another post illuminating the new minimalist trend in website design. The old minimalism was about "elegance", but this new trend is more about utility: we don't need CSS, just content, so why bother! I don't like this utilitarian take. It's fun to design a website.

I genuinely believe a site can be extremely minimal without sacrificing the visual component. But I also believe some people are pushing the visual part way too far to the point where sites are genuinely hard and frustrating to use.
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