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Ask HN: Why are images used to indent comments?

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Re: Ask HN: Why are images used to indent comments?

#11

Post by warfangle »

nickfox wrote: post #6

I assume they are using single pixel gifs and playing with the width to indent. That is old school, the way it was done before css. Maybe they just never quit. I still prefer to use tables to structure some types of content, it won't win me any awards from the css crowd but it's just easier. Why make life difficult?

Because rendering a table is almost always slower. Granted, this is an old benchmark (don't have time to pull up any that are more recent), but: http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/browserSpeed.html

Re: Ask HN: Why are images used to indent comments?

#13

Post by TweedHeads »

TweedHeads wrote: post #12

Lack of CSS understanding. No excuse. Once you know your tools you can do wonders you'll be amazed at how easy it was. I bet a hundred CSS experts here can give you some interesting ways on redesigning comments. Show us your best.

Oh gawd, I've never taken a peek under the hood of HN but all these font tags almost made me slash my wrists in despair.

Time to run a "Redesign HN in HTML5" contest,

Reward: a standing ovation, and an iPhone.

Re: Ask HN: Why are images used to indent comments?

#14

Post by blakeperdue »

warfangle wrote: post #11
nickfox wrote: post #6

I assume they are using single pixel gifs and playing with the width to indent. That is old school, the way it was done before css. Maybe they just never quit. I still prefer to use tables to structure some types of content, it won't win me any awards from the css crowd but it's just easier. Why make life difficult?

Because rendering a table is almost always slower. Granted, this is an old benchmark (don't have time to pull up any that are more recent), but: http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/browserSpeed.html

Sometimes a small rendering performance hit is worth avoiding the development headache of getting multi-column divs to display properly across browsers.

Tables can still be useful when holding short content that has lots of columns.

Re: Ask HN: Why are images used to indent comments?

#15

Post by TweedHeads »

TweedHeads wrote: post #12

Lack of CSS understanding. No excuse. Once you know your tools you can do wonders you'll be amazed at how easy it was. I bet a hundred CSS experts here can give you some interesting ways on redesigning comments. Show us your best.

Here is what I'd do, start from here:

  
     
    
    title
    comment here
Then apply styles at will, increase padding per level and dimming per negative karma.

I bet code size decreases while readability increases.

Re: Ask HN: Why are images used to indent comments?

#16

Post by jkkramer »

bouncingsoul wrote: post #9

I'd guess it's simply that PG codes html the way he learned years ago. Not snark – you have to justify throwing out your table + spacer.gif knowledge to learn how to do things with div + css. Maybe he doesn't see a huge benefit. Also ( http://www.paulgraham.com/arc0.html ): Arc embodies a similarly unPC attitude to HTML. The predefined libraries just do everything with tables. Why? Because Arc is tuned for explorator…

If your exploratory programming involves JavaScript/Ajax, tables can be a pain in the butt to deal with. Semantic HTML makes manipulating the DOM much simpler -- no need to dodge around meaningless markup junk.

Re: Ask HN: Why are images used to indent comments?

#17

Post by zepolen »

TweedHeads wrote: post #15
TweedHeads wrote: post #12

Lack of CSS understanding. No excuse. Once you know your tools you can do wonders you'll be amazed at how easy it was. I bet a hundred CSS experts here can give you some interesting ways on redesigning comments. Show us your best.

Here is what I'd do, start from here: title comment here Then apply styles at will, increase padding per level and dimming per negative karma. I bet code size decreases while readability increases.

No need to use class 'levels', as nested 's shows in regards to padding.

Re: Ask HN: Why are images used to indent comments?

#18

Post by deno »

TallGuyShort wrote: post #8

I think one of the main reasons some web design techniques are "bad" are because they don't sufficiently separate layout and design from content. The problem is - on a site like HN, you're primarily catering to a crowd that just wants a really simple, straightforward design that's easy to use to fast. We get that with a 1-pixel image. Adding css could potentially throw more complexity into the mix.

Proper semantic with CSS styling is faster. You don't have to repeat tags etc.

CSS is more "complex" only if you lack understanding how it works. Main reason that Ruby on Rails was (is?) such a success is that proper MVC (MTV) design pattern implementation made things simpler.

Yet, for average PHP programmer that'd be more "complex". Same with (X)HTML + CSS. It looks more complex only if you don't understand CSS or using WYSIWYG tools.

Re: Ask HN: Why are images used to indent comments?

#19

Post by deno »

omail wrote: post #4
noodle wrote: post #2

if i had to guess, i'd say that its just less resource intensive or easeier. much easier to just print it out with an indention instead of parsing results into a tree and then printing.

It seems to calculate the image's width to construct indentation. I think it would be easier to just enclose the comments with and the child trees with .

Why in the world would you use definition lists?

Re: Ask HN: Why are images used to indent comments?

#20

Post by deno »

blakeperdue wrote: post #14
warfangle wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because rendering a table is almost always slower. Granted, this is an old benchmark (don't have time to pull up any that are more recent), but: http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/browserSpeed.html

Sometimes a small rendering performance hit is worth avoiding the development headache of getting multi-column divs to display properly across browsers. Tables can still be useful when holding short content that has lots of columns.

In the world without Internet Explorer all you need is CSS3 column-count: N; property.

Still, using tables for any kind of formatting looks just plain bad. If you're lazy there are CSS frameworks.

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