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All you may need is HTML

fabiensanglard.net

161–170 of 328 posts

Re: All you may need is HTML

#161

> 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.

[deleted]

Re: All you may need is HTML

#162
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see you got downvoted but people don’t get that choice of technology based on who you can hire is a valid point. I remember a guy who wanted to make company documentation in LaTeX. Well yes it is great tool and we could put it in a git repo and render nice documents for the customers easily. Downside was 15-20 sales people who were not thrilled to use it and spend time learning how to use it.

I think a lot of devs are frustrated with the state of modern Javascript. As I speak I am waiting for "mvn install" to run for a system that has a Java back end and a Javascript front end which compiles both. I think the Java part would finish in about 20 seconds, the Javascript bit is more like 250 seconds. There would be 250 seconds of working instead of posting to HN if the system was "100% pure Java". (To be fair…

I never understood why you would need to compile frontend javascript code. Yea maybe a minimizer, obfuscator, some coping etc during a build process. But thats it. My frontend apps are running on the fly. Change in code requires a save and browser refresh. No ammoying compiling .

Re: All you may need is HTML

#163
post #46

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…

Not that I disagree per se, but if your job is to dress up CONTENT provided by others as a website or web app, there can also be the reverse problem:

An UI made of disintegrated, inconsistent and half-assed tries at writing CSS/JS. Not a rare problem in my experience.

Also happens to me when trying to write a "tiny web app for fun" where the CONTENT is interactive and created by myself.

Re: All you may need is HTML

#165

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.

In my personal, obviously anecdotal, experience it's always the "technical" guys who think things like this. This is why we have UI/UX teams and we don't let programmers create visual interfaces.

Re: All you may need is HTML

#166
Here's my weird opinion on html/css/general styling of websites:

The biggest problem with CSS is it's one language that's trying to do two things. I think that layout (grid, flex, anything that changes the shape of the page) and style (font, color, text sizes, etc...) are two separate things, and CSS makes it incredibly tempting to try to do both of those at the same time, which inevitably causes trouble.

Working on a website is easier when you can break those two things out into separate concepts. People love to praise/hate tailwind, but I think the best use for it is specifically for modifying layout. Layout changes deserve to be built right into the HTML itself because that's where you're looking when you need to reason about it, whereas style is more general and should be broken out into actual CSS rules to keep it more consistent across a site. Layout is much more directly tied to context than style is, at least as soon as you get into anything non-trivial. There really needs to be a better way to segment these two concepts.

At least, that's my hot take as a semi-passable css user.

Re: All you may need is HTML

#167
post #166

Here's my weird opinion on html/css/general styling of websites: The biggest problem with CSS is it's one language that's trying to do two things. I think that layout (grid, flex, anything that changes the shape of the page) and style (font, color, text sizes, etc...) are two separate things, and CSS makes it incredibly tempting to try to do both of those at the same time, which inevitably causes trouble. Working on…

I think you're right and I'd love for the html spec to expand to enable control the layout instead of css

Re: All you may need is HTML

#168

> A host for your index.html files Hostgator $33/year plan. > A DNS pointing to the host Hostgator for an extra $12.95/year. Why not use Netlify or GitHub pages? They can host static files for free.

Yeah that paid hosting + dns services combination is complete overkill when going for static html.

I host a bunch of files and static html on my domain and I’ve moved it to github pages. The dns services bundled with the domain at gandi are enough to set it up on top of the free github pages, so my hosting is effectively free, and if I wanted I could still run a site generator.

Static html gets even easier by using something like simplecss, because that gives a basic design with zero effort on top of semantic html. https://simplecss.org/

Re: All you may need is HTML

#170

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.

But, you can get all of these things from HTML. Especially visual hierarchy and accessibility. The cornerstone of accessibility on the web is: does it display legibly and is it navigable without any CSS? CSS is eye candy. It's aesthetics. Those are not without value, but the value is not in the things you list.
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