HTML is like violence. If it doesn't work, use more.
HTML6 proposal for single-page apps without JavaScript
101–110 of 177 posts
Re: HTML6 proposal for single-page apps without JavaScript
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yep. I used to love XSLT -- working in it finally forced me to understand recursion at, like, a deep cellular level -- but the whole time I was using it I knew it was a doomed language (because most people don't want to have to understand recursion at a deep cellular level just to be able to lay out a damn web page.)
XSLT is still good to learn -- I think it's conceptually sound, but its implementations are often terrible. I think the big pain points for most people are how finicky XML is in general, but also that any libs you use to generate your XML and translate it require an absurd amount of configuration. Years ago, I saw all the weaknesses in mixed PHP/html for building pages, but all the server-side templating languages lo…
XSLT is conceptually sound indeed, a transformation of tree structures. But the requirements and real-world usage cases thrown at it are often terribly suited for it.
Real applications just don't fall neatly into tree transformations. I inherited a financial reporting web app using XSLT as the rendering mechanism. Requirements included things like running totals (state!), suppressing leading values when repeated between rows (also state), alternating row colors, external dependencies such as numeric formatting based on user's locale settings. A stateless tree transformation doesn't express that elegantly, so you end up with fantastically complicated and ugly XPath hacks. A running total would come from something like "sum all my parent's children with an index less than mine". Then that breaks when something comes up to introduce a need for another layer beneath that parent.
XSLT is purely functional. template isn't even control logic, it is functional evaluation, the same as Lisp's (if x template nil). also isn't an imperative loop (it's map) even though it looks imperative and most enterprise programmers trained on imperative languages think it is and use it as such. So it's no surprise that XSLT in the wild ends up as a messy ball of mud.
Most templating languages have this problem, including PHP/HTML. The messy nature of real requirements isn't unique to XSLT. But XSLT manifests it most dramatically since it lacks a stateful and imperative framework to fall back on.
Re: HTML6 proposal for single-page apps without JavaScript
#103This proposal is trying to take a common web design pattern, MVC, and make it part of the official spec. HTML is a _markup language_, it's ridiculous to use it as anything but a semantic language. Here's my HTML6 proposal: There’s a standard design pattern emerging via cascading style sheets, where content is styled directly via CSS. Everyone’s into it because the layout looks so much nicer. Since this is so common n…
> HTML is a _markup language_, it's ridiculous to use it as anything but a semantic language. So which is it? A semantic language or a markup (syntax) language? Why does it have to stay that way? (Even if the proposal is a bad one.)
HTML was adopted BECAUSE it was that way. bastardizing it BECAUSE it is so wildly adopted is retarded.
you really don't detect any sarcasm at all? are you a moron or an idiot? which is it?
Re: HTML6 proposal for single-page apps without JavaScript
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's an "upvote" button, just to the left of the comment above.
You shouldn't use the upvote button for agreement. On the other hand "+1" and "I agree" and "Well said!" clutter the forum. How do we solve this?
Add a separate +1/thumbs-up button next to the arrow. It doesn't really need to do anything more than show that people are in agreement (better even if it can do it without showing numbers).
Re: HTML6 proposal for single-page apps without JavaScript
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's an "upvote" button, just to the left of the comment above.
You shouldn't use the upvote button for agreement. On the other hand "+1" and "I agree" and "Well said!" clutter the forum. How do we solve this?
The line between "upvote for good point" and "upvote for agreement" can be blurry, same for downvoting.
In either case, both are accepted uses. PG has said as much:
Re: HTML6 proposal for single-page apps without JavaScript
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
Uh, the original purpose of XMLHttpRequest was to fetch XML , as its name implies. AJAX stands for Asynchronous JavaScript And XML
I'm not able to substantiate this with links, but I believe the idea was that the "XML" in question was going to be XHTML most likely, rather than generic "XML", though it did support the generic XML use case. I could be wrong, if the original Outlook web interface this was supported for really did return XML that was not XHTML at some point. It was a crazy time. XHTML was still "inevitable", and people were pretty s…
Wrong.
It was called "XMLHTTP", created by Microsoft for Outlook Web Access 2000. Mozilla implemented it as XMLHttpRequest JavaScript object in Gecko.
The main reason of XHR/AJAX was XML, but Text and HTML are supported too.
See Wikipedia for the correct history:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMLHttpRequest
Microsoft never implemented the XHTML standards in Internet Explorer. IE cannot open files with .xhtml file extension and with .htm(l) extension the page is rendered with HTML quirksmode.
Re: HTML6 proposal for single-page apps without JavaScript
#107The use of XMLHttpRequest to fetch JSON has come to dominate to the point that people seem to forget that it had any other use, but it is worth occasionally reminding people that the original purpose was to fetch HTML, which the browser turned into DOM nodes via its fast parsing path, which could then be added to the page via DOM manipulation. I fully realize this is not what the linked page is proposing, but it is n…
Uh, the original purpose of XMLHttpRequest was to fetch XML , as its name implies. AJAX stands for Asynchronous JavaScript And XML
XHTML is XML
Re: HTML6 proposal for single-page apps without JavaScript
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
Honest question: If not for showing agreement, what is the reason for the upvote button?
I thought it meant "nice contribution to the conversation". It's easy to come to this conclusion when you think down-vote means "you're not contributing". I up-voted many comments I totally disagree and down-voted many I agree (because they were unrelated to the discussion). Am I a minority?
Well, the HN guidelines[1] do not mention any rule as what constitutes 'right' voting criteria. As a regular HN user of over 6 years it feels even surreal to be in a discussion about the basic features of this wonderful platform. It's never wrong to question the basic premises of life, though(;
I do believe we have the a similar kind of understanding for when to up-vote. What is a 'nice contribution to the conversation' other than arguments or facts that 'I do agree with' in them being a nice contribution to the conversation.
I fear we would have to have a meta-discussion on the concepts of good and bad and how they are flawed in that there are no montains without valleys^^
Re: HTML6 proposal for single-page apps without JavaScript
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wish strict XHTML was taken more seriously. HTML is the structure, CSS is the look, and JavaScript is the logic. With a strict XHTML style you can further enforce this by removing former standards which don't follow that design (e.g. OnClick="" etc). HTML5 is alright, but I'd like to see a strict HTML5 which bans a ton of classic HTML4.1 elements completely and also follows XHTML's much more logical style (and bans…
Strictness accomplishes nothing whatsoever. If you remove presentational elements, people just abuse semantic elements.
I would make parsers and generators much easier to write.