Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: HTML for People

htmlforpeople.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 223 posts

Re: Show HN: HTML for People

#131

Post by prmoustache »

emseetech wrote: post #92
dartharva wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's weird seeing this getting emphasized over and again in this thread. > There are a shockingly large number of people out there that use computers EVERY day that won't know how to do this. That's very hard to believe. Even my mom, who doesn't use computers at all, would know what folders and files mean. The people who don't know what files and folders are - can't immediately be beneficiaries of this guide, right?…

As far as I've noticed, it's not older people who have the issue but younger. The average 22 year old today has been using mobile devices as their primary device for 10+ years. This is especially noticeable amongst poorer families, where a $20 a month low end financed android phone is much more of an option than a $300 computer.

But they manage files and folder on their smartphone too.

Re: Show HN: HTML for People

#132

Post by prmoustache »

Retr0id wrote: post #18
forbiddenvoid wrote: post #13

I love the idea and I'm thrilled to see more sites like this out there. But I do think this assumes a level of computer literacy that isn't consistent with typical, non-technical users. Step 1 starts with: > Pick a location on your computer and create a folder. Call it my-site or something similar. You've already lost the vast majority of people right here. There are a shockingly large number of people out there that…

I suspect even a majority of HN users visited the page on a mobile device, and were not in a position to immediately follow the instructions.

So what? It is mentionned in the introduction that it is meant for computer users:

"What do I need?

You need a computer with internet access. I wrote this book in a generic way so that it would be applicable for people using macOS, Windows, or Linux. If I point you toward software to install, it will be free (or have a usable free tier) and will be cross-platform (or I will offer platform alternatives)." https://htmlforpeople.com/intro/#what-do-i-need%3F

Re: Show HN: HTML for People

#133

Post by prmoustache »

RheingoldRiver wrote: post #123

> Step 1. Create a folder on your computer I don't need to read farther than this, I'm never going to recommend this over freecodecamp. Let alone that a lot of people are usually on mobile during learning time, it just makes it too scary, too easy to mess up, too hard to share what you are doing to get help. I 100% believe online sandboxes are the way to teach coding to people who aren't already comfortable with tech…

So basically you want to train a generation of copy/paster who don't understand what they are actually doing and who will never actually deploy anything because it is scary.

Re: Show HN: HTML for People

#134

Post by xnorswap »

vivzkestrel wrote: post #95
blakewatson wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OP here. Oooh that’s a good suggestion. Yeah it’s hard to shed the webdev persona and see it through fresh eyes—even though I specifically tried to do just that!

"Start typing already"

"Start creating already"

People don't want to be typists either, they want to be creators.

Re: Show HN: HTML for People

#135

Post by doix »

cryptoz wrote: post #46
jwagenet wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Photos taken on the camera, shared to you, or “saved to photos” will live in the Photos app. The files app primarily contains things you download from your web browser, including images downloaded and not “saved to photos” and images extracted from zip, etc. I guess some apps can save data there too. It would be nice if there was a back road to images stored in Photos app via Files app, but the distinction is otherwi…

Aha! So some photos are actually 'files', but some are not! The confusion continues! I get why Apple has it this way - current iPhones are very very popular and selling them with the current UX makes Apple a lot of money. But it's pretty clear that the Files app is not meant - in any way - to help users understand computers, what files are, etc. It is obtuse and confusing as soon as the user wants to leave the iOS ec…

My girlfriend had the craziest workflow. No laptop, only iPhone and iPad Pro. She had an external USB-C hard drive, she couldn't connect it to her iPhone but could to the iPad.

What she would do is airdrop photos from her iPhone to her iPad. Copy them from the gallery to the Files app. Move them in the files app to the hard drive. Then delete them from the gallery app, delete them from the Files app and the trash.

For some reason, deleting files in the Files app didn't free up space on the iPad. So she had to uninstall and reinstall the Files app to get the space back.

As a Linux user that grew up DOS, the whole thing just broke my mind. She was frustrated and I was frustrated I couldn't help her.

Re: Show HN: HTML for People

#136

Post by pieterbeulque »

prmoustache wrote: post #131
emseetech wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I've noticed, it's not older people who have the issue but younger. The average 22 year old today has been using mobile devices as their primary device for 10+ years. This is especially noticeable amongst poorer families, where a $20 a month low end financed android phone is much more of an option than a $300 computer.

But they manage files and folder on their smartphone too.

Anecdotally, I don't know anyone that uses files on their iPhone, and I don't really understand it myself either.

Re: Show HN: HTML for People

#137

Post by dspillett »

mch82 wrote: post #91
MathMonkeyMan wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My dad was asking me a question about backing something up onto Google Drive, or saving space on some cloud storage account, or something. He was using the mental model of files and folders -- that files exist and refer to stored bytes, and that there can be one or several copies of a file. There can be links to a file that take very little space relative to the file. I had to tell him that I have no idea what sort o…

It’s ridiculous how complicated it’s gotten to answer my parents’ questions about stuff like this. The old desktop metaphors are gone. Screens are difficult for older eyes to read. Every app has a cloud service. Really seems like huge step back in usability.

> Screens are difficult for older eyes to read.

For my Dad, we got him a “simple phone” – it basically does calls and texts, has big buttons in pretty much the style of old Nokia phones but chunkier. The screen is larger and higher resolution than those, so the text is nice and clear. It works really well for him in terms of being able to cope with it with his eyes and getting the job done.

> Every app has a cloud service

And that phone doesn't run apps at all… For things beyond calls and texts¹ he uses a laptop, largely keeping with the files/folders metaphor and no extra apps.

----

[1] managing his banking, certain shopping though he often instead asks one of us to do that as he is wary or falling into scam sites, facebook for more passively getting news on what family a-far is getting up to, his collection of digital photos (he used to take a lot), and such

Re: Show HN: HTML for People

#138

Post by Toorkit »

worble wrote: post #126

>Alternatively, you can launch your browser first, click File > Open File…, then navigate to your index.html file. Uh, I don't think browsers have had the File toolbar for a long time, I just checked to make sure I'm not crazy and Firefox and Chrome on my system certainly don't.

Sometimes they don't show up until you press Alt, but they're there.

Re: Show HN: HTML for People

#139

Post by dspillett »

lmm wrote: post #94
dockd wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To keep that line of reasoning going, what is the purpose of the university, if you're supposed to learn everything on your own?

That's exactly why I switched out of CS and did a degree in something that was harder to teach myself (mathematics). I'm a programmer now, but I don't think finishing the CS course would've helped much with that.

A good CS course isn't really about programming in that sense. A CS degree is to programming what a maths degree is to, say, statistics methods, or at least it should be. You are expected to learn the “hum-drum details”¹ yourself (perhaps with guidance of course) or already know some of them, with the course exploring wider or deeper concepts (the why, wherefore, and therefore, of those details).

Your maths degree probably did as much as a CS degree would have done (expanding your ability to learn, analyse & problem solve, etc.) allowing you to learn the technical details of programming on your own. CS was essentially birthed from a branch or two of mathematics, after all!

People who want/need a programming course (which is perfectly valid, I don't mean to denigrate the position in the slightest) are probably not best served by a traditional CS degree.

--

[1] “hum-drum” sounds a bit too negative for what I was intending, but my brain isn't firing on all cylinders this morning and I can't think of a better term for what I was thinking there!

Re: Show HN: HTML for People

#140

Post by california-og »

MrVandemar wrote: post #71
simonw wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a historic artifact. If a browser shipped new default CSS today it would break 30+ years of existing web pages.

Hyperbole. It wouldn't "break" all the web pages, they would simply render differently.

There's a lot of sites between pure html and modern css. "Simply" rendering things differently would definitely break a lot of sites. Just imagine if browsers started defaulting to *{box-sizing: border-box;}.
Post reply on HN