Foolproof HTML

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The author might find MPS interesting. It it another attempt at providing an AST editor for coding.

https://www.jetbrains.com/mps/

The problems I mostly have run into regarding html are because we have started shoving random javascript and javascript-esque things into it and over complicating things, often needlessly. The author says it himself "That's fine for plain HTML", referring to validation.

This is why back in 2014 I decided that I was going to focus on making as many of the webpages I make pure html5/css3, and keep javascript completely out of the picture if possible and now if I do break that rule I make it LibreJS compatible.

For an editor, I am an avid emacs fan, but for templates, I have of late become enamoured with asciidoc and asciidoctor, originally using them for sysadmin documentation things, I am beginning to realize my method of writing web pages (sshed into a box using emacs and updating with cron jobs calling asciidoc and bash scripts) might actually be good for just normal web stuff too.

Of course, there are some downsides, but I never really was a wysiwg sort of person anyway, because every time I've gotten my hopes up about some wyswig, it failed me in countless and unfathomable ways.

I feel like people have veered too far away from the core purposes of html and css, html for content and structure, css for design and display control.

We've gotten to the point now where I can visit any random top 500 alexa sites and anywhere from 10-50 javascripts are trying to load. It's ridiculous, and I think a return to simplicity will be key for most websites, because lets face it, you probably really don't need crud for $project.

I've never encountered this problem to the effect I needed a build step for HTML. I wonder if frontenders who work only with HTML/CSS find it helpful? Whereas they don't have the concept of breaking up code into templates or partials with a server-side language.

No disprespect to the author, what you've done is cool and your presentation is awesome. My biggest concerns are:

1. Onboarding & rampup time that's now added to my team just to write HTML.

2. Turning away potential hires who don't want to work with an over-engineered tech stack. Much opinion can be formed just by adding to your job requirements "we use a transpiled HTML processor"

3. Technical debt & tech lock-in. Will this technology be a detriment in 5 years? Do we get enough from it right now that it's worth future legacy costs?

"Could there be something unexplored in the middle?"

I believe so.

At the moment I am working on next version of my blocknote.net editor - the editor for "Web writers" - people who create textual content of the Web.

Check http://sciter.com/new-blocknote-net-application-is-getting-i...

In particular first screenshot. It has so called block outline bar that shows structure of the HTML underneath WYSIWYG text.

IMO: For most of people WYSIWYG is still a preferable way of editing text. Markdown and especially HTML source code editing is far from being humanistic.