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Replacing JavaScript with Just HTML

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Re: Replacing JavaScript with Just HTML

#61

Post by jakelazaroff »

maxloh wrote: post #45
eleventen wrote: post #8

The details / summary thing absolutely kills me. There’s basically nothing you can’t do with them. Hiding and replacing markers is easy. But every component library just pretends they don’t exist. It even saves you the effort of all the aria control and expanded tags: these tags don’t need them.

> The details / summary thing absolutely kills me. There’s basically nothing you can’t do with them. Animating the details element is tricky. By the spec, browsers don’t natively support transitions between display: none and display: block.

That is no longer true! You can do it in CSS with a combination of `@starting-style` and `transition-behavior: allow-discrete`. [1]

Another gotcha you'll run into is animating the height. A couple other new features (`interpolate-size: allow-keywords` and `::details-content`) will let you get around that. [2]

Modern CSS is awesome.

[1] https://developer.chrome.com/blog/entry-exit-animations

[2] https://nerdy.dev/open-and-close-transitions-for-the-details...

Re: Replacing JavaScript with Just HTML

#62

Post by troad »

faitswulff wrote: post #58
troad wrote: post #55

Plain HTML is very cozy to me - I came of age in that era. Marquee tags 4eva . But as much as I hate to admit it, it is very difficult to build something functional today with plain HTML and no/minimal JS. If you want, say, a model form that manages its children as well, you're basically going to end up with a 2003-era ASP-feeling application with way too many views and forms (as seen on your employer's current HR sy…

I haven't used it in anger myself, but if you know Elixir and Phoenix you might like Gleam, which compiles to Javascript.

I appreciate the helpful reply, but I think this is precisely the kind of indirection I need to avoid. I'm a sucker for elegance. If left entirely to my own devices I'd probably design a language / write a transpiler of my own, and wind up with exceedingly elegant tooling for websites, and no websites. :)

Re: Replacing JavaScript with Just HTML

#63

Post by computerfriend »

maxloh wrote: post #45
eleventen wrote: post #8

The details / summary thing absolutely kills me. There’s basically nothing you can’t do with them. Hiding and replacing markers is easy. But every component library just pretends they don’t exist. It even saves you the effort of all the aria control and expanded tags: these tags don’t need them.

> The details / summary thing absolutely kills me. There’s basically nothing you can’t do with them. Animating the details element is tricky. By the spec, browsers don’t natively support transitions between display: none and display: block.

You can put a transition on details > summary.

Re: Replacing JavaScript with Just HTML

#64

Post by iammrpayments »

scrame wrote: post #49
iammrpayments wrote: post #48

I was trying to rewrite some UI library with html sometime ago following the W3C accessibility specs and found out a lot of patterns can’t be done with pure html and require javascript unfortunately.

like what?

Tabs, accordion, combobox. There is a whole lot more, these are just the ones I can remember now.

Re: Replacing JavaScript with Just HTML

#65

Post by wild_egg »

troad wrote: post #55

Plain HTML is very cozy to me - I came of age in that era. Marquee tags 4eva . But as much as I hate to admit it, it is very difficult to build something functional today with plain HTML and no/minimal JS. If you want, say, a model form that manages its children as well, you're basically going to end up with a 2003-era ASP-feeling application with way too many views and forms (as seen on your employer's current HR sy…

> Or you use HTMX... and you still end up with just as many (partial) views, but now with so much implicit state that you're veering into write-only code.

You're overthinking htmx then. I do some fairly complex stuff with no extra partials. Trick is just always rerender and use hx-select and hx-target to slice out the bits you want to update on the current page.

Server always has authoritative state and code is dead simple to reason about.

Re: Replacing JavaScript with Just HTML

#67

Post by ksec »

overflowy wrote: post #22

HTML and JavaScript serve distinct purposes, making better or worse comparisons logically flawed. Complex/interactive web apps requires JavaScript, period. Attempting to build sophisticated apps solely through HTML (looking at you HTMLX) eventually hits a functional ceiling.

I dont think anyone is arguing Google Earth should be pure HTML. But it is equally false you cant do Gmail with HTML only.

There are things that HTML could do, and should be doing, that is not done or not yet possible simply due to hype and trend from browser vendors. We could continue to polish HTML + sprinkle of Javascript to its absolute maximum before hitting JS Apps. Right now this is far from the case.

Re: Replacing JavaScript with Just HTML

#69

Post by xp84 »

qudat wrote: post #46
maxloh wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The details / summary thing absolutely kills me. There’s basically nothing you can’t do with them. Animating the details element is tricky. By the spec, browsers don’t natively support transitions between display: none and display: block.

Animating accordions is almost always a bad idea because the content length can make it unbearable. In general I find animations on the web overused and unnecessary

Seriously. As a user I can count on zero hands the number of times I’ve said “Oh great, I’m sure glad this UI is animated!” - and likewise zero times have I missed it when animation isn’t used. Animation is a way to light small units of your users’ precious time on fire, for zero benefit.

Re: Replacing JavaScript with Just HTML

#70

Post by paulhebert »

iammrpayments wrote: post #64
scrame wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

like what?

Tabs, accordion, combobox. There is a whole lot more, these are just the ones I can remember now.

Yeah this is true at this point. A lot of more complex patterns require JS to be accessible to screen readers.

We still should do more with HTML and CSS! And reach for leaner solutions than React everywhere.

But be careful going for a pure CSS solution for things like tabs if you don’t understand the accessibility requirements.

(I wish the HTML spec would move faster on these common patterns!)

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