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HTML First

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Re: HTML First

#51

Post by usrbinbash »

varun_ch wrote: post #34

While I agree with most of the arguments here, this article feels a little contradictory - it recommends Tailwind but also tells us to 'stay clear of build steps'. Shipping massive CSS/JS resources goes against the whole inclusivity principle - many people don't have super fast internet connections or powerful enough computers..

The only thing a build step changes about CSS/JS resources of this kind, is a minimization of the libs...which is entirely achievable without building, by simply including the already-minimized version.

I think what the article is about when it says to steer clear of builds, is complex builds, where transpilations and similar changes in format have to happen, in order for the page to work.

Re: HTML First

#52

Post by LudwigNagasena »

It is so much easier and faster to build web apps using TypeScript, Vite and React (or any other similar stack) rather than vanilla JS. I find this “leveraging the extreme simplicity” effort wholly misguided.

It’s neither “enjoyable” nor “seamless” to manually synchronise the backend, the frontend logic and the DOM of your app without frameworks.

And maybe the trite talking point of helping young developers by sending unoptimized unminimized comment-rich source code directly to end-users held at least some weight in the 00s; nowadays we have an abundance of tutorials, courses, conference talks and open source projects that can help autodidacts to learn anything related to web development.

Re: HTML First

#53

Post by ajayvk »

ralmidani wrote: post #43

Maybe I’ve already drunk the koolaid, but if I end up building a new app from scratch, I would really like to experiment with something similar to what the author describes: Django for most (if not all) of the server-side code, Django templates generating HTML, htmx handling most interactivity with html attributes and, when necessary, hyperscript (for use cases that can’t be covered easily by htmx). I would probably…

I have used this approach for internal tools and it has been great. It makes it much easier for one person to build the whole app, frontend and backend, and makes ongoing maintenance much easier.

I am working on https://github.com/claceio/clace which takes this no build approach and makes it easy to build portable applications, using Starlark running in go to configure the backend.

Re: HTML First

#54

Post by xhrpost »

> Where possible, default to defining style and behaviour with inline HTML attributes

Wow, have we just come full circle after 25 years?

Re: HTML First

#55

Post by dartos »

LudwigNagasena wrote: post #52

It is so much easier and faster to build web apps using TypeScript, Vite and React (or any other similar stack) rather than vanilla JS. I find this “leveraging the extreme simplicity” effort wholly misguided. It’s neither “enjoyable” nor “seamless” to manually synchronise the backend, the frontend logic and the DOM of your app without frameworks. And maybe the trite talking point of helping young developers by sendin…

It depends, I think.

For “apps” vanilla js isn’t enough.

But for a blog with some animations or simple validation, things like next or gatsby is WAY too much

Re: HTML First

#56

Post by treyd »

dartos wrote: post #55
LudwigNagasena wrote: post #52

It is so much easier and faster to build web apps using TypeScript, Vite and React (or any other similar stack) rather than vanilla JS. I find this “leveraging the extreme simplicity” effort wholly misguided. It’s neither “enjoyable” nor “seamless” to manually synchronise the backend, the frontend logic and the DOM of your app without frameworks. And maybe the trite talking point of helping young developers by sendin…

It depends, I think. For “apps” vanilla js isn’t enough. But for a blog with some animations or simple validation, things like next or gatsby is WAY too much

My rule of thumb is that if you're building something sophisticated enough that you want to reach for more "advanced" js frameworks then you shouldn't be building it as a webapp.

Re: HTML First

#57

Post by FFP999 »

xhrpost wrote: post #54

> Where possible, default to defining style and behaviour with inline HTML attributes Wow, have we just come full circle after 25 years?

I literally--literally, not figuratively--facepalmed when I read this.

Re: HTML First

#58

Post by moritzwarhier »

graypegg wrote: post #42
moritzwarhier wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't use Tailwind anymore at the moment, but in my experience, it does not lead to shipping massive CSS/JS resources. In fact I don't know about any client-side JS at all that is emitted by Tailwind (my last experience was 2.x, not sure if anything has changed). Regarding the CSS size, my experience was the opposite, Tailwind output was usually a lot smaller than hand-written CSS. I have nothing against plain CSS…

I think GP is talking about how, without the tailwind build step, you ship all of tailwind, which is unquestionably a lot of CSS that you aren't using. Maybe if you use a CDN, so hopefully the user might have a local cache of it from somewhere else, that can be avoided? Still though, tailwind is pitched WITH it's build step normally, making the author's point about avoiding a build step a bit odd.

This was only the case in Tailwind 1 and heavily discouraged by the documentation, except for development.

Tailwind requires a build step and shipping the 1.x development build was explicitly not meant for production.

Trying to use tw 1 like this without a build step, you can't even define a custom color scheme.

If this is what you want, I'd use a library that actually supports this. Maybe tachyons? But tbh, without the build step I'd consider using Tailwind at all a massive mistake. Then I'd prefer handwritten CSS.

Custom properties should make sth like this a lot more viable though. I'm sure there are libraries that better fit this use case, if you want to use a CSS library.

Re: HTML First

#59

Post by kyleyeats »

varun_ch wrote: post #34

While I agree with most of the arguments here, this article feels a little contradictory - it recommends Tailwind but also tells us to 'stay clear of build steps'. Shipping massive CSS/JS resources goes against the whole inclusivity principle - many people don't have super fast internet connections or powerful enough computers..

I made an atomic CSS library that doesn't need a build step, if anyone wants one (spoiler, nobody does): https://casscss.github.io/cass/

Re: HTML First

#60

Post by usrbinbash »

gemstones wrote: post #29

Can the people that want this HTML-first world style it to look the ways they want themselves? My experience has been that proponents of HTMX and the like skew heavily backend and never feel comfortable with CSS. Why listen to UX thoughts from a population who are scared of UX?

I am very happily listening to UX thoughts from people who specialize in UX.

What I am decidedly NOT happy with, is the frontend using as much, or even more, internal logic, magic, and build steps as the actual business logic.

To put this another way: I will happily listen to an interior designer on his thoughts about the color of the drapes. But if he tells me that this color means he has to bring his own crew of stonemasons, carpenters, and electricians, because somehow that color requires massive changes to the architecture and power lines of the house, I am going to grab a piece of cloth that vaguely has the color I want, and make the drapes myself.

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