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All you may need is HTML

fabiensanglard.net

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271–280 of 328 posts

Re: All you may need is HTML

#271

Post by slmjkdbtl »

Octokiddie wrote: post #15

> THE PROBLEMS A GENERATOR SOLVES One problem not listed is source code syntax highlighting. If you provide source code listings in articles, then highlighting is a big help to readers. Generating it in HTML is not fun.

Tbh 
 + monospace font + padding already makes a lot of code snippets readable, you can also write a 10 line js function to generate highlight for only the comments (to make them lesser shade of gray), i think that solves a lot of readability with very minimal work. Also I think there's no shame in using highlight.js

Re: All you may need is HTML

#272

Post by xigoi »

cmdialog wrote: post #209
xigoi wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your idea of a good site is a 3MB monster full of useless whitespace, hero images, carousels, hamburger menus and other modern design trends, maybe that's a sign we shouldn't let designers create visual interfaces.

I really dodged a bullet there huh? Since that isn't my idea of a "good" site necessarily. But if your idea of a "good" site is all function and no form, then maybe stick to designing abstract interfaces and not things actual people have to see.

Don't get me wrong, I like a website to look good. But it shouldn't compromise on speed on functionality.

Re: All you may need is HTML

#273

Post by [deleted] »

calsy wrote: post #259
cmdialog wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like you ought to be doing the Richard Stallman approach to reading webpages and not commenting on whether or not CSS and design is needed. Back to the terminal with ye

Sounds like you should do less stereotyping of roles. You’re assumption that programmers don’t understand UI and need to stay away is exactly what the blog refers to when talking about ego. You think programmers output all their work in a terminal?

[deleted]

Re: All you may need is HTML

#274

Post by deafpolygon »

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…

oy, that last link made my eyes strain. astigmatism ftw!

Re: All you may need is HTML

#275

Post by TheRealPomax »

H4ZB7 wrote: post #95
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…

"CSS" is as complex as you need it to be. Just because you're not a three star chef doesn't mean you can't cook at least good tasting food, and just because you have no idea how the hell to implement a fluid CSS grid with parallal and keyframe animations that work at all breakpoints for all devices in both light and dark mode doesn't mean you can't make your document better with even a modicum of dead simple basic CSS.

Don't pretend that CSS is hard.

Yes, of course crazy CSS mastery to make vanity artworks on the web is hard, and yes doing stupid things with z-layer ordering and absolute vs relative positioning is the classic "family guy trying to work the blinds" gif, but decent CSS that makes information easier to read for a wide variety of people (including ESL, visually impaired, etc.) is barely any effort, and pretending we're all worse off because of CSS and that having a document format that lets you style your content with is a terrible idea is just willfully stupid.

(on that note: oh look, something that every single DTP product ever made supports, guess those are all terrible too, and I suppose that sarcastic joke about us all just using .txt files should get repeated here)

Re: All you may need is HTML

#276

Post by chrismorgan »

kerkeslager wrote: post #270
chrismorgan wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox: Settings → Fonts → Advanced → untick Allow pages to choose their own fonts, instead of your selections above. It’ll still load web fonts for Private Use Area code points (icon fonts) and Google’s misbegotten Material Icons with its awful ASCII + ligation technique (see the browser.display.use_document_fonts.icon_font_allowlist pref in about:config), but other than that will stick with your preferred fonts. I…

Sure. But this isn't a viable solution for a lot of people.

Why not? Are you saying “because a lot of people don’t use Firefox”, or because of some problem you perceive in turning off custom fonts?

Re: All you may need is HTML

#277

Post by GoblinSlayer »

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 (…

I never saw a program that has good default settings. How people can use them like that?

Re: All you may need is HTML

#278

Post by GoblinSlayer »

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…

If they can't be bothered to change the settings, it means they don't care. Why would you force salvation on them?

Re: All you may need is HTML

#279

Post by GoblinSlayer »

cmdialog wrote: post #209
xigoi wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your idea of a good site is a 3MB monster full of useless whitespace, hero images, carousels, hamburger menus and other modern design trends, maybe that's a sign we shouldn't let designers create visual interfaces.

I really dodged a bullet there huh? Since that isn't my idea of a "good" site necessarily. But if your idea of a "good" site is all function and no form, then maybe stick to designing abstract interfaces and not things actual people have to see.

All function and no form is much much better than broken function and broken form which is the modern web 2.0.

Feel free to find a site better than http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/

Re: All you may need is HTML

#280

Post by GoblinSlayer »

Kerrick wrote: post #199
calsy wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because reading words requires substantial styling enhancements over what the browser is already capable of? Has anyone picked up a book lately? You need a UI team to create a page of readable text? That sounds like an expensive waste. But it sounds like those 'UI' people think they know better and don't need suggestions from programmers about reading words, even though its what they do all day.

Fun fact: your text will look nothing like a book if you use HTML with no CSS and rely only on the user agent default style sheet. Books are designed, too.

If you don't like default settings, change them, that's why the options dialog exists.
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