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I'm betting on HTML

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Re: I'm betting on HTML

#401

Post by TheFlyingFish »

geysersam wrote: post #134
mattmanser wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of them don't work properly and/or look terrible by default in all browsers. So no-one uses them, so lots of people don't know about them.

What do you mean with "they don't work properly"? Could you give an example?

When I use the datalist element with a text input, Chrome shows an arrow on the right and the list drops down when you focus the input. Firefox, however, shows neither until you start typing, at which point it suggests just those items that match your input. So there's no way to see the full list of options.

I think Chrome's behavior is correct here, but the larger point is that precisely because these are native elements, when they don't work there's nothing you can do. So your only option is to reimplement them from scratch.

Re: I'm betting on HTML

#402

Post by cratermoon »

lmm wrote: post #35
cratermoon wrote: post #10

The vs. thing, how did I never realize that before? I guess I'd never thought about them having a semantic meaning.

They don't. Like, that linked document is a cool idea but it's utterly inaccurate as a description of how the tags are used by actually existing website or handled by actually existing user agents (yes, including screenreaders).

Perhaps the tags have not been de facto treated semantically by existing practices. There’s a great deal wrong with the tag soup pervading the web. Current convention doesn’t mean they can’t have semantics.

Re: I'm betting on HTML

#403

Post by makapuf »

jerf wrote: post #358
zagrebian wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you suggesting that AI will solve web accessibility, which is based on semantic HTML and ARIA? Because if not, humans will still be required to ensure that web content is accessible, and in that case semantic HTML remains important.

Actually, that sounds like one of the better startup ideas I've heard around AI. Automated accessibility compliance (or something close to it) would be very useful and definitely something people would pay money for. I fear LLMs are only about 80% up to the task, though, which is actually a very unpleasant place to be in that curve; sort of the moral equivalent of the uncanny valley. Whatever comes after LLMs though,…

An LLM-based accessible browser could render 80% of the Web accessible at once it the tech works.

Re: I'm betting on HTML

#404

Post by moritzwarhier »

jerf wrote: post #332

Article's first sentence: "With the advent of large language model-based artificial intelligence, semantic HTML is more important now than ever." I think the sentence "With the advent of large language model-based artificial intelligence, semantic HTML is less important now than ever." is far more defensible. The semantic web has failed and what replaced it was Google spending a crap ton of money writing a variety of…

> The semantic web has failed and what replaced it was Google spending a crap ton of money

Aren't schema.org and Wikidata/Wikipedia still powering most of Google's rich search results?

I heard them announce the new result page with bard but I probably didn't see it because of ad-blindness or it's not yet releases in my location, have to look this up...

Re: I'm betting on HTML

#405

Post by treis »

Freedom2 wrote: post #382
treis wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You can style a lot of these native elements. And where you cannot, I'd argue that's actually good. I've worked with designers who insisted that everything looked and feeled the way they had designed it. But I've also worked with designers who, when showed how the date-picker looked on IOS, OSX and even Gnome, were incredibly happy that finally there was design that just followed what the users were used to. The nat…

> The native browser date picker is very limited. You can't do basic things like disable weekends or select a range making it unsuitable for a wide swath of usecases. I think that you'd have to reevaluate your users and your use case then. As someone, like berkes, who builds sites almost entirely with HTML / CSS, it's often the case that the developer is RIGHT over what the user needs. After speaking to many clients…

Why should I write my own HTML and CSS over using what Bootstrap gives me? I can't think of a single reason to believe that my HTML/CSS will look or perform better than Bootstrap's.

Especially since you can selectively import only the components you use. You're essentially betting that you can like for like implement what Bootstrap gives you better than what they can. Which just seems like a terrible bet regardless of how good that particular developer may be.

Re: I'm betting on HTML

#406

Post by jpochtar »

zagrebian wrote: post #355
jerf wrote: post #332

Article's first sentence: "With the advent of large language model-based artificial intelligence, semantic HTML is more important now than ever." I think the sentence "With the advent of large language model-based artificial intelligence, semantic HTML is less important now than ever." is far more defensible. The semantic web has failed and what replaced it was Google spending a crap ton of money writing a variety of…

Are you suggesting that AI will solve web accessibility, which is based on semantic HTML and ARIA? Because if not, humans will still be required to ensure that web content is accessible, and in that case semantic HTML remains important.

AI will solve web accessibility by screen readers that summarize visual content, ignoring ARIA and making it irrelevant. Multimodal GPT-4 can take a screenshot jpeg and answer questions about what’s in it (buttons, links, ads, headers, etc). The future of accessibility is rendering DOM to jpeg and asking GPT to be your eyes; we’ll look back on semantic markup as a failed idea that was never going to work

Re: I'm betting on HTML

#407

Post by coldtea »

>In fact, recently I’ve become acutely aware of reader mode. All time spent on styling will be obliterated by reader mode, and that’s a great thing!

Reader mode is mostly for longer text. Doesn't help with WPAs as much.

>Moreover, proper tagging is extremely descriptive in a machine-readable format. This is likely a more compelling reason for adopting modern HTML than saving design time. The shift from primary data interfaces to secondary interfaces is already underway. RSS refuses to die. ChatGPT-like interfaces are likely the future of human data access. We’re going back to the beginning. Advertisers may be scared, but I’m not! Let’s start the revolution and set the world on fire with modern HTML.

Not sure what this (the most important part) attempts to say.

What does the advent of ChatGPT-like interfaces have to do with "adopting modern HTML" and "proper tagging"? If anything ChatGPT-like interfaces would require less tagging, and can do the "figuring out what the text is" part of semantic web without sementic metadata (and they can do it directly on the actual text, whereas the metadata would more likely be abused and misleading for SEO).

Re: I'm betting on HTML

#408

Post by coldtea »

moritzwarhier wrote: post #404
jerf wrote: post #332

Article's first sentence: "With the advent of large language model-based artificial intelligence, semantic HTML is more important now than ever." I think the sentence "With the advent of large language model-based artificial intelligence, semantic HTML is less important now than ever." is far more defensible. The semantic web has failed and what replaced it was Google spending a crap ton of money writing a variety of…

> The semantic web has failed and what replaced it was Google spending a crap ton of money Aren't schema.org and Wikidata/Wikipedia still powering most of Google's rich search results? I heard them announce the new result page with bard but I probably didn't see it because of ad-blindness or it's not yet releases in my location, have to look this up...

>Aren't schema.org and Wikidata/Wikipedia still powering most of Google's rich search results?

Were they ever?

Re: I'm betting on HTML

#409

Post by dahwolf »

Not quite getting this article.

When you semantically describe your HTML, indeed the intent and meaning of your data becomes easily machine-readable.

That's not a solution, it's the entire problem. In today's ecosystem it means somebody takes your shit and runs with it. That's why the walled gardens are getting ever higher walls. "Open data" is an existential threat if you're the one paying for the creation/hosting of that data.

Re: I'm betting on HTML

#410

Post by coldtea »

zagrebian wrote: post #365
jerf wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, that sounds like one of the better startup ideas I've heard around AI. Automated accessibility compliance (or something close to it) would be very useful and definitely something people would pay money for. I fear LLMs are only about 80% up to the task, though, which is actually a very unpleasant place to be in that curve; sort of the moral equivalent of the uncanny valley. Whatever comes after LLMs though,…

80% sounds way to optimistic to me. The problem is that screen readers (and other assistive technology) have bugs and different behaviors, and some people use older versions of those tools with even more bugs and quirks. The only way to make sure that a website has a high level of accessibility is to perform manual testing in different environments. I don’t see how AI can solve this problem. And the people who perfor…

>80% sounds way to optimistic to me. The problem is that screen readers (and other assistive technology) have bugs and different behaviors, and some people use older versions of those tools with even more bugs and quirks. The only way to make sure that a website has a high level of accessibility is to perform manual testing in different environments.

That's if you want actual accessibility support on a wide range of old and new devices.

But the business idea the parent proposes is automated accessibility for compliance, which is the real thing that could be sold, and has a much lower bar.

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