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HTML hacks that shaped the Internet

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Re: HTML hacks that shaped the Internet

#111

Post by CharlesW »

renegade-otter wrote: post #47
wiredfool wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love how tables "went away", and were widely replaced with bootstrap. Which gives you ... tables. in divs. But only 12 columns wide.

I think the value of Bootstrap was consistency across browsers. The grid system was the most important part. With standard Grid, Bootstrap is effectively legacy - you shouldn't really be using it at this point.

> With standard Grid, Bootstrap is effectively legacy - you shouldn't really be using it at this point.

Bootstrap first adopted Flexbox for its grid system Bootstrap 4 (2018), and Bootstrap 5 (2021) added support for Grid. It's conservative about supporting new web standards, but I wouldn't personally think of it as a "legacy" framework.

Re: HTML hacks that shaped the Internet

#112

Post by woodrowbarlow »

rchaud wrote: post #100
reddalo wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

W3Schools is a horrible resource. I'd like Google to hide all of their results.

A lot of people on HN seem to have this opinion. A lot of the content on that site has been re-written, and it's now a pretty fantastic resource for beginners. If you tell 2 beginners to build something with PHP/jQuery/JS, and send one person to W3Schools and the other to PHP.net/jquery.org/MDN, I have no doubt that the W3schools person will get something done in workable state faster.

i'm mostly upset that they use "w3" in their name to masquerade as an "official" source of documentation. i know their about page clears this up, but it's pretty buried.

Re: HTML hacks that shaped the Internet

#113

Post by epiccoleman »

_fat_santa wrote: post #97
fifilura wrote: post #41

Using tables for layout is pretty understandable. But when tables went out of fashion it was all about using floats for layout for a few years. That was wild, I am surprised it was left out from that list. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn/CSS/CSS_layou... "Originally for floating images inside blocks of text, the float property became one of the most commonly used tools for creating multiple column layo…

I had to develop some email templates a while back for the first time and was almost shocked that they still use the "tables method" for layouts. Overall I'd say developing email templates now is much like developing websites in the early 2000's, email clients have such a wider range of CSS support that there are hacks all around. We now have frameworks like MJML and Foundation that do their best to abstract all that…

I JUST had this same issue. Even worse, the Sendgrid "sample renderer" supports flex, but Gmail doesn't, so I didn't notice there was a problem until I started sending myself test emails, and then had to rewrite the whole template with tables.

Madness!

Re: HTML hacks that shaped the Internet

#114

Post by j45 »

Seeing the title of the article, it was surprising surprised to not use the use of xmlhttprequest to invent the category of JavaScript driven apps, by Microsoft no less.

Let’s be sure to call the programming style of using this function Ajax, and then create Microsoft Outlook for web as the first browser side Javascript app and modern JavaScript framework.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajax_(programming)

Re: HTML hacks that shaped the Internet

#115

Post by davidy123 »

bonzini wrote: post #92
davidy123 wrote: post #38

This doesn't include my "favourite," putting a heading for accessibility at a -10000 position, so screen readers would read it, but it didn't render on the screen.

Does it still work? Or do you have to use ARIA?

I don't see why it wouldn't work, but the right thing to do is use accessibility features.

Re: HTML hacks that shaped the Internet

#116

Post by sbarre »

codingdave wrote: post #66
sbarre wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hah I was hoping someone would bring this up.. We were using that XMLHTTP object as far back as 1999 (I just went to look at old source code) to load page fragments do quasi-SPA stuff before it was a thing.

Same - I recall using it heavily in 99. But that was just on one internal app. I admit that I didn't really predict the SPA thing until Google maps came out and really showed how far it could be taken.

I worked for an ISP in the late 90s and we built a call center app using IE6, SSI, XMLHttp and also IE's built in CSS classes that matched the Windows colours to essentially have a UI that looked and felt like a Windows 95 app..

It was completely unnecessary (at least the look and feel part) but the ability to load in new information into the UI without a full refresh was great.

At the time this was running on Apache 1.1 via Perl CGIs and backed by an mSQL database (that was single-threaded!) so we wanted to minimize complex SQL queries as much as possible..

We eventually moved to a system that would batch pre-render customer details and call history to static HTML overnight when our call center was closed, to reduce the startup time of bringing up a customer's info when the agent had them on the phone. Then for that day we'd use XMLHttp to dynamically append new information from the DB (using a limit statement) and then re-build the static files the next night etc..

In hindsight, we did some creative problem solving for a bunch of self-taught 20-year-olds in the 90s.

Re: HTML hacks that shaped the Internet

#117

Post by xyzzy_plugh »

dylan604 wrote: post #102
cantSpellSober wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it was all about using floats for layout for a few years Called these "faux columns" and a basic 3-column layout was so difficult it was referred to as the "holy grail" of layouts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_grail_(web_design)#Faux_c...

don't forget that the holy grail was to have a locked in header and footer with the middle section as scrollable 3 columns

This is firmly cemented in my mind as completely impossible. I won't listen to reason.

Re: HTML hacks that shaped the Internet

#118

Post by xyzzy_plugh »

jart wrote: post #60
fifilura wrote: post #41

Using tables for layout is pretty understandable. But when tables went out of fashion it was all about using floats for layout for a few years. That was wild, I am surprised it was left out from that list. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn/CSS/CSS_layou... "Originally for floating images inside blocks of text, the float property became one of the most commonly used tools for creating multiple column layo…

Floating divs killed the Dreamweaver. CSS came and broke your heart. Oh, a, a, a, oh.

We browse through Wayback and it seems so long ago...

I met your children -- what did you tell them?

Re: HTML hacks that shaped the Internet

#120

Post by creatonez »

rchaud wrote: post #100
reddalo wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

W3Schools is a horrible resource. I'd like Google to hide all of their results.

A lot of people on HN seem to have this opinion. A lot of the content on that site has been re-written, and it's now a pretty fantastic resource for beginners. If you tell 2 beginners to build something with PHP/jQuery/JS, and send one person to W3Schools and the other to PHP.net/jquery.org/MDN, I have no doubt that the W3schools person will get something done in workable state faster.

I haven't noticed a difference since I first heard of the site. They may have corrected factual inaccuracies, but the overall organization and prioritization of information is not for me.
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