HTML hacks that shaped the Internet
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HTML hacks that shaped the Internet
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Re: HTML hacks that shaped the Internet
#2I'm not sure "shaped the Internet" is the right description. These are 10 HTML/CSS hacks that enabled you to work around browser quirks and poor support for certain features.
Re: HTML hacks that shaped the Internet
#3> Why it was useful: Because Internet Explorer was trash
Great insight
Re: HTML hacks that shaped the Internet
#4Some of my favorites:
- Faux columns, to get a visual stretch and make it appear that the sidebar was as long as the content https://alistapart.com/article/fauxcolumns/
- Or take that even further, with a nine-patch and 9 div's or a 3x3 table you could hack your own borders by repeating backgrounds in some axis. With CSS3 we got border-image that could help this a bit. These border styles aren't that much in favor anymore, though.
- To make rounded borders, one could use the nine-patch. But many would also use a generator to make some HTML that basically simulated a rounded border, by making lots of elements. Found this article describing it: http://benogle.com/2009/04/29/css-round-corners.html Conventional wisdom was that the added markup would be more bytes than an image would be, but less roundtrips and quite easy to do.
Re: HTML hacks that shaped the Internet
#5I like how HN employs one of these today:
- Use HTML tables for layout
Hahaha :)
On a more serious note, this list highlights how development without standards leads to control information being encoded in various tolerable side-channels.
The potential mess and collision of this brings into relief the disdain that's sometimes levelled at the current W3C process. This process marries a standards-driven evolution of web technologies with browser-driven innovation, with the two alternately either leading the other, or proceeding in lock-step.
While it's often derided, this process could be interpreted as more sustainable and stable than the one which came before.
I wonder how many of those who decry the new W3C-vendor norm would choose to return to the heady days recalled by these 10 weird hacks? :)
Re: HTML hacks that shaped the Internet
#6Regarding the closing statement: I think, a major, now mostly forgotten influence were CD-ROMs and an ambition to match those.
Re: HTML hacks that shaped the Internet
#7I'm not sure "shaped the Internet" is the right description. These are 10 HTML/CSS hacks that enabled you to work around browser quirks and poor support for certain features.
Some of them are definitely more "historic" than others.
For instance, #2 (-based layouts) definitely shaped much of early-to-mid-2000s web design, and can be viewed as a precursor to flexbox/other modern layout engines.
Same with sIFR -- custom webfonts are totally taken for granted today largely because of "hacks" like this.
Re: HTML hacks that shaped the Internet
#8Wow. Remember those days. I went through all of these hacks except No. 7 & 8 (pre-header text hack, Google Chrome Frame). I'm not sure about the "Shaped the Internet" title, but these indeed go as defaults when starting a CSS project. In fact, one way to highlight front-end candidates was to include these hacks in interview questions.
Re: HTML hacks that shaped the Internet
#9> Why it was useful: Because Internet Explorer was trash Great insight
Specifically: IE6 was trash.
Microsoft had won the browser war, but at the same time the dotcom crash and antitrust action over the tight integration between IE and Windows caused Microsoft to stop investing in it.
Re: HTML hacks that shaped the Internet
#10Some of my favorites: - Faux columns, to get a visual stretch and make it appear that the sidebar was as long as the content https://alistapart.com/article/fauxcolumns/ - Or take that even further, with a nine-patch and 9 div's or a 3x3 table you could hack your own borders by repeating backgrounds in some axis. With CSS3 we got border-image that could help this a bit. These border styles aren't that much in favor an…
That 3x3 was used so much with our team that we built a component just to do that. I even wrote an article about it, more of an ActionScript thing but same idea for styling -- https://brajeshwar.com/2005/splice9-bitmap-window-resizer-co...
The other nice thing was the use of the cicada principle for a background styling pattern that 'do not repeat.'