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All you may need is HTML

fabiensanglard.net

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Re: All you may need is HTML

#311

Post by mtrower »

cmdialog wrote: post #211
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.

It's very funny that you seem to think reading code and reading a website are the exact same type of activities, and the same type of reading. They are not. And I don't know where you've been for the last 30 some years, but the web is not a text only format, and the reason HTML was invented was specifically to be able to create a designed space where text can actually make sense and is not a gigantic wall of impossib…

Print is also not a text only format; it's a designed space, with a mountain of effort given to typesetting and presentation.

Yet the market for text only novels is staggering.

Re: All you may need is HTML

#312

Post by mtrower »

sublinear wrote: post #127
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 not a "pretend answer" and it's perfectly valid for devs to be picky about it. Nobody wants to work on garbage that started out as XML+CSS and mutated into a nightmarish mess that some "backend dev" cobbled together when the product team and the rest of the real world came knocking…

> the rest of the real world

I think you'd be amazed at some of the barebones functional systems that non-trivial segments of the world are satisfied with.

Re: All you may need is HTML

#313

Post by H4ZB7 »

fleddr wrote: post #215
H4ZB7 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Ah yes, the myth of rejecting nihilism. Just like my last restaurant visit where I ordered stale bread and water. Enough for survival, the rest is pure vanity.

that analogy is literally 100% invalid and you're a moron up his own ass for even suggesting it.

Re: All you may need is HTML

#314

Post by H4ZB7 »

TheRealPomax wrote: post #275
H4ZB7 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 CS…

> Don't pretend that CSS is hard.

if i was to implement a browser that could properly render CSS for some given set of real life scenarios i would be getting back to you in 100 years. paying tax, banking, trading academic literature should not rely on a magazine formatting jenga puzzle

Re: All you may need is HTML

#315

Post by kerkeslager »

chrismorgan wrote: post #306
kerkeslager wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because a lot of people don't have the technical ability. The tab is called "Advanced" for a reason. It quickly gets more complicated for some sites, which users might use often. There are folks talking about how you can use custom CSS to fix just about any site, and that's true, but how technical are we expecting users to be? And even as a user who develops websites for a living and can definitely do all this, I don…

> Because a lot of people don't have the technical ability. The tab is called "Advanced" for a reason. Come now, it doesn’t take any technical ability to use the checkbox. It’s called “Advanced” because it’s more complex tweaks that most people aren’t interested in and which take a moderate amount of space so they want to keep it out of the way lest the page get too long, not because it’s hard to use in any way. > It…

> Come now, it doesn’t take any technical ability to use the checkbox.

It's clear that you don't interact with average users very often if you think this.

Obviously you can direct the user through to the steps to check/uncheck a textbox, but understanding what that checkbox actually does and why they might want to check/uncheck it is far beyond the technical understanding of most users.

Re: All you may need is HTML

#316

Post by kerkeslager »

Dalewyn wrote: post #291
ozaark wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't add up. CSS grid, flex box, etc all do the "holy grail" layout with a couple lines. The tables mess that was early www was and remains an absolute mess of markdown to maintain for layout. Semantics and accessibility are practically out the window with table. HCI dictates how humans use interfaces and with that comes many defacto reasons why a plain text page does not solve the problems users want to solv…

>Do you not think websites test into the optimal performing layouts and content distribution? No, I think most website devs left to their devices optimize for least effort to create and maintain.

> No, I think most website devs left to their devices optimize for least effort to create and maintain.

...which is definitely not tables. Flexbox is much easier.

Re: All you may need is HTML

#317

Post by mtrower »

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…

It sounds like someone forgot that HTML and CSS are separate technologies, with one being born years before the other. In the beginning, the web was HTML.

Sure, CSS is useful. But a lot of it is over-designed. The web in general, is over-designed.

Sure, that's like, my opinion. But no, they're not "one thing".

> As long as the information's high quality, people will want to read it, right?

I do. Probably, there's a fundamental difference in what we consider readable. I don't think pure HTML as rendered by modern browsers is necessarily ideal, but it's generally readable. Most of the extra elements, styling, javascript, pictures etc. on modern pages distract from the actual content and make it harder for me to read it.

Re: All you may need is HTML

#318

Post by mtrower »

mmsimanga wrote: post #84

I am a budding woodworker. Not very good at it. Spent too much money on tools I have never used. My most used creation is a tablet stand which is basically two pieces of wood with a hinge joining them. I wish someone had given me similar sort of advice as the OP about tools when starting out. You don't need as many as you think especially as an amateur with limited space. Feels like web development is the same. I get…

Yes, unfortunately it's easy to get caught up in your tools even for simple work. Go on YouTube and watch woodworking videos, you'll see shops full of 5 figures worth of tools, and probably get the idea that you need the same. And every damn tutorial and beginner blog post on web programming shows you how to set things up with this stack, or that stack, so many different stacks but always some stack. And so people feel that they must need a stack...

Re: All you may need is HTML

#319

Post by mtrower »

nine_k wrote: post #248

I understand the drive behind this. Having written my fair share of HTML by hand, I'd say that the purpose may be better served by Markdown, or Org, or even plaintext. HTML has too much unnecessary detail if you're into low-effort content-centric stuff and cleanliness. Learning HTML is fine, but learning HTML while avoiding CSS is not very useful, except as an esoteric hobby (like 6502 assembly, but much more complex…

> Learning HTML is fine, but learning HTML while avoiding CSS is not very useful, except as an esoteric hobby (like 6502 assembly, but much more complex). Using handwritten HTML if you're after content creation is unnecessary legwork.

Idk man. Doesn't seem at all complicated to me until you start involving CSS. Assuming you're just after basic content. Slap a in , a few s in body,

your content. Maybe an for some spice! , and might be useful if you want some hyper/multimedia.

The complications arrive when you want it to look like some designed page, regardless of user preferences, window/screen size, which browser, etc.

Agree though that Markdown and Org are good and useful tools.

Re: All you may need is HTML

#320

Post by mtrower »

neoberg wrote: post #57
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.

> Yeah it seems like date formats are inconsistent. Maybe they need some other stuff than HTML.

If you need any sort of "stack" to fix the problem of "my dates are inconsistent", you're in serious trouble, my friend.

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