Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

All you may need is HTML

fabiensanglard.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 328 posts

Re: All you may need is HTML

#171

Post by Vrondi »

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 (…

In most browsers this basic style is user configurable, but 99.9% never bother.

Re: All you may need is HTML

#172

Post by Vrondi »

ghusto wrote: post #43
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.

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

Yes. HTML gives the structure and hierarchy (if done properly) which is also what then gives the accessibility. CSS can do lovely things that will help a blind user with a screenreader not one bit unless you're kludging in "hacks" to give them extra hints for specialized use.

Re: All you may need is HTML

#173

Post by dgb23 »

roblh wrote: 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 like this take!

It confirms my issue with using tailwind. I like it! But as you mentioned “style” typically has a global, systematic, component based notion, and not a hierarchical one.

A perfect example is typography AKA font style and color. Yes, it has a structural/hierarchical notion, but only on an abstract component level.

Typography almost _always_ comes in aggregates. Font size, line height and more, even margins - they are very rarely orthogonal and composable.

Designers typically take great care to fine tune these things as components. Ask a designer to disentangle then into tokens and you get a very weird look!

On the structural level you want meaningful component classes to refer to them and maybe one or two modifier classes, if at all.

Thankfully tailwind offers @apply, so you can still leverage some definitions where it makes sense.

Re: All you may need is HTML

#174

Post by abathur »

roblh wrote: 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…

It's both HTML and CSS, though. HTML is also bleeding over the boundary between layout and document.

HTML was mean to _be_ the document. CSS was meant to be a language for styling and re-styling those documents. That makes sense in the logic of decades past. You might have a bunch of documents, and go re-style them all when you move. Or a company might do this when they change their logo or get acquired.

But for a long time now almost every HTML document served on the web has long been a mix of design elements and one or more things that a human would call distinct documents, and CSS has kept up with styling those.

With a true "document", it's pretty sane to expect that you can readily style and re-style the same document with different stylesheets for different contexts without needing to go fiddle content. With full complex designs implemented in HTML, the HTML and CSS for at least those parts tend to be very tightly coupled and very likely to get rewritten together.

The fuzzy boundary between the content and the layout are a problem for both HTML and CSS.

I picked at this problem in a post this fall: https://t-ravis.com/post/doc/what_color_is_your_markup/

Re: All you may need is HTML

#175

Post by kstrauser »

janjones wrote: post #25

> 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.

I've been a huge fan of nearlyfreespeech.net over the years. Hosting some static pages there costs me about $20/year.

Re: All you may need is HTML

#176

Post by tinus_hn »

enriquto wrote: post #136
ryloric wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 7 fucking declarations. That's how much CSS it took to turn that grotesque pile of shit into this easy-to-read masterpiece. Such drastic difference with basic adjustments, damn

I honestly prefer the original version without css. Plain browser styles have a kind of raw beauty that it's very hard to surpass.

Good thing you can just block styles and get exactly the style you prefer.

Re: All you may need is HTML

#177

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

enriquto wrote: post #136
ryloric wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 7 fucking declarations. That's how much CSS it took to turn that grotesque pile of shit into this easy-to-read masterpiece. Such drastic difference with basic adjustments, damn

I honestly prefer the original version without css. Plain browser styles have a kind of raw beauty that it's very hard to surpass.

You and me both. Perhaps we're relics of a bygone age where tech people cared more for function than form.

Re: All you may need is HTML

#178

Post by ryandrake »

horsawlarway wrote: post #119
myfonj wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that defaults are not perfect, but I'd like to add that the initial idea was that they are, well, defaults, and you -- as a user -- are supposed to adjust them to what you prefer. In some dashboard usually called "preferences" or "settings". And fact is that you still can: you can tell your browser "for this script, for serif, use this font family, for sans use that one" etc etc. You can set you preferred tex…

Yes, I know. Back in the fun days when a browser was supposed to be my "user" agent. Before they became the mini-os they are today. There's nothing here that would stop you from still doing that. But if we're talking about practicality... I think far more people would get a benefit from improved defaults (as long as they're not breaking existing sites). While I've modified the user styles for my chrome profile as a p…

I want to hug this whole thread. Yes, 1. browsers should improve their defaults. 2. web sites should respect user preferences over their own style, if the preferences are set. 3. browsers should make user preferences more prominent and provide an easier way to override web sites that refuse to honor them.

My browsing experience should not be determined by an artist or product designer 1000 miles away from me in an office somewhere.

Re: All you may need is HTML

#179

Post by mvexel »

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…

prose.sh hits a sweet spot for me. Not just in the minimal-but-rich-enough presentation of blog posts[0], but also (off-topic for this thread I guess) the simple interface: just scp your markdown to prose.sh.

[0] example post from my blog https://mvexel.prose.sh/20230227-keeping-osm-database-uptoda...

Re: All you may need is HTML

#180

Post by dogcomplex »

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…

Eh, doable but you do need the JS layer for updating/changing information dynamically (unless you avoid that sort of feature altogether, or just dump ALL your data onto the page in XML). I'm not that opposed though, really. CSS stuff might get kinda ugly quick as you're essentially doing OOP with it though hmm. This all + a basic JS request/response layer to just fetch more XML (rewriting/overlaying previous data) and you're possibly in business.
Post reply on HN