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

The unreasonable effectiveness of simple HTML

shkspr.mobi

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 387 posts

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of simple HTML

#131

Post by jaywalk »

dmhmr wrote: post #121
lastofthemojito wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the great things about accessibility is that it often doesn't just benefit people with disabilities. My wife and I have watched a lot of TV in the past year with the volume down and captioning on, while we enjoy some down time while our baby is sleeping. A ramped entrance to a building allows wheelchair-bound folks access, but it also helps able-bodied people using delivery dollies. Making simple, lightweight…

I might be misinterpreting your last sentence regarding M1 MacBook Pros. Are you saying they are underpowered for surfing the internet?

What he's saying is that this stuff has benefits even for people using modern, powerful machines like the M1 MacBook Pro.

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of simple HTML

#132

Post by ziftface »

apitman wrote: post #123
ziftface wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact is, the Javascript ecosystem is unmatched when it comes to very quickly creating frontend applications. Maybe another set of tools would have been better, but that doesn't really matter. This set of tools is what everyone uses, and a lot of effort and creativity goes into making js frontend development as smooth and fast as possible. I often need to very quickly make internal services at my job and while I l…

The cost of developing in JS isn't necessarily lower, just amortized. Or in many cases, externalized to your users.

> externalized to your users

You mean if you have customers with less powerful devices like the OP? I don't really see internal services or B2B products having that problem.

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of simple HTML

#133

Post by ryandrake »

tpxl wrote: post #112
xkr wrote: post #64

Reminded me of https://motherfuckingwebsite.com/

http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/

The irony is that bettermotherfuckingwebsite is worse in almost all ways. I wonder if that was what the author was going for. I don't know what's truly satire anymore!

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of simple HTML

#134

Post by ratww »

ziftface wrote: post #117
apabepa wrote: post #19

I am not a front-end developer but looking at it from a distance I really don't get modern web design. Sure some sites might need fancy javascript single page features, like if your webpage is an interactive map or realtime game, but most sites are just text and some pictures. Whats with all the javascript? Your site looks just like the next one anyway! It feels like an "Emperor's New Clothes" situation or maybe more…

The fact is, the Javascript ecosystem is unmatched when it comes to very quickly creating frontend applications. Maybe another set of tools would have been better, but that doesn't really matter. This set of tools is what everyone uses, and a lot of effort and creativity goes into making js frontend development as smooth and fast as possible. I often need to very quickly make internal services at my job and while I l…

I disagree.

Rails was already faster for CRUD apps back in the mid-2000s. Batteries included, maybe a gem or two for an admin panel or for auth. Not that it matters, but rails new is probably faster than 60 seconds too. Django is pretty good too.

ASP.NET Webforms was made for CRUD, and it even provided a WYSIWG designer back in the early 2000s. And it was just a matter of launching Visual Studio and creating a new project. Again, doesn't matter, but it was/is way less than 60 seconds, and a lot less fiddling. Webforms got an MVC version a few years later if you prefer that. And they haven't stopped: Blazor is new-ish and very productive, and runs both in the backend and in the frontend (using WASM).

Both Rails and Microsoft tech also give you a backend, which you're not putting into your equation. Sure you can have a Backend in JS but the experience it's nowhere near as ergonomic or as fast as using Rails or ASP.NET.

Sure, if you're comparing with building an app in Xcode or Android Studio then JS tooling is faster to use. But if you compare to what people were using to build CRUD for the last 20 years then JS is not really special. For interactive frontend apps? Then it's a different discussion. But for CRUD, modern JS is not that special.

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of simple HTML

#135

Post by leephillips »

fouric wrote: post #90
theandrewbailey wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Embedded javascript to make them responsive. We must have different definitions of 'responsive'. You don't need javascript to make a website look different due to different screen sizes.

What if you do, though? Flexbox is a CSS 3 feature. Support appears to have been implemented in FF and Chrome around 2012-2014 and still doesn't fully work in IE[1]. The fact that a site uses CSS and HTML instead of Javascript does not imply that it's easier for older browsers to display. Javascript 1.0 was released in 1996. [1] https://caniuse.com/flexbox

You don’t need CSS to make a website look different due to different screen sizes.

In other words, plain HTML is responsive by default. You can improve things with CSS. But if your site is unusable on small screens, you’ve broken something with your “design”.

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of simple HTML

#137

Post by bonestamp2 »

lastofthemojito wrote: post #114
ogre_codes wrote: post #10

This is a fantastic article, it does miss one very key point about bog-standard HTML which is worth mentioning though. The standard widgets are all accessible, people with screen readers, limited mobility, poor vision, etc, all rely on pages being written so the devices they use to read the web can function properly. People who choose to eschew these standard components very frequently end up with a site which is unu…

One of the great things about accessibility is that it often doesn't just benefit people with disabilities. My wife and I have watched a lot of TV in the past year with the volume down and captioning on, while we enjoy some down time while our baby is sleeping. A ramped entrance to a building allows wheelchair-bound folks access, but it also helps able-bodied people using delivery dollies. Making simple, lightweight…

> watched a lot of TV in the past year with the volume down and captioning onf

I like how Apple TV now lets you pair two bluetooth headsets. My wife and I can watch shows without waking the baby. Combine that with the visual sound indicator on the baby monitor, and headphones with transparency mode, we can see when the baby is making noise and hear other environmental noises too. It's a nice combination of accessibility features that make a clever setup for hearing the TV. I can't wait until Apple TV supports spatial audio... then we'll have "surround sound" in our headphones too!

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of simple HTML

#138

Post by jedimastert »

ryandrake wrote: post #133
tpxl wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/

The irony is that bettermotherfuckingwebsite is worse in almost all ways. I wonder if that was what the author was going for. I don't know what's truly satire anymore!

> worse in almost all ways

How so? I dislike the text color choice, but other than that it seems perfectly fine to me.

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of simple HTML

#139

Post by ahuth »

pbronez wrote: post #38
ogre_codes wrote: post #10

This is a fantastic article, it does miss one very key point about bog-standard HTML which is worth mentioning though. The standard widgets are all accessible, people with screen readers, limited mobility, poor vision, etc, all rely on pages being written so the devices they use to read the web can function properly. People who choose to eschew these standard components very frequently end up with a site which is unu…

Are there any automated ways to assess a web product against the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)? This should really be part of the CI/CD process.

Shameless plug: at work we created axe-storybook-testing [1], which can be used to run accessibility tests against Storybook stories [2] on CI.

1. https://github.com/chanzuckerberg/axe-storybook-testing 2. https://storybook.js.org/docs/react/get-started/whats-a-stor...

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of simple HTML

#140

Post by [deleted] »

dmhmr wrote: post #121
lastofthemojito wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the great things about accessibility is that it often doesn't just benefit people with disabilities. My wife and I have watched a lot of TV in the past year with the volume down and captioning on, while we enjoy some down time while our baby is sleeping. A ramped entrance to a building allows wheelchair-bound folks access, but it also helps able-bodied people using delivery dollies. Making simple, lightweight…

I might be misinterpreting your last sentence regarding M1 MacBook Pros. Are you saying they are underpowered for surfing the internet?

[deleted]
Post reply on HN