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There's never been a better time to build websites

simeongriggs.dev

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Re: There's never been a better time to build websites

#151

Post by hungryforcodes »

randmeerkat wrote: post #69
rambambram wrote: post #15

I'm also developing for 25 years, I also really really like websites and coding, but not for the reasons the OP sums up. For me, it's not about all kinds of solved or unsolved technical questions. Today is a very good time to build websites, because a good website is the only way to push back to Big Tech and it's practices. Your website can be build on techniques invented in a time where the dream of the internet was…

> Of course you can choose to put your website on AWS and svck on the bolls of Jeff a little. But you don't have to! And that's what all kinds of young devs just miss. Where are you hosting your websites?

Contobo, Digital Ocean just to name two.

Re: There's never been a better time to build websites

#153

Post by notjustanymike »

hooby wrote: post #92

It's definitely a great time to build websites, but saying they _NEVER_ have been easier to make... I'm not 100% sure about that. Yes, tailwind might make css a lot easier, and github copilot might make coding a lot faster... but is this really easier than in the early 90ies, when you could just type into notepad and make a website that didn't require any CSS or images or JS or even more than just the most basic html…

> Isn't Hacker News itself a really great example of a website that successfully uses only very basic html with very, very little styling and fancy extra features?

Hacker News is an aesthetic that would be unacceptable to the majority of businesses in the world. The login page alone would cripple sales on any e-commerce site.

Re: There's never been a better time to build websites

#154

Post by platz »

hooby wrote: post #92

It's definitely a great time to build websites, but saying they _NEVER_ have been easier to make... I'm not 100% sure about that. Yes, tailwind might make css a lot easier, and github copilot might make coding a lot faster... but is this really easier than in the early 90ies, when you could just type into notepad and make a website that didn't require any CSS or images or JS or even more than just the most basic html…

Is tailwind much better than tachyons?

Re: There's never been a better time to build websites

#155

Post by SquareWheel »

rimliu wrote: post #133
omgitsabird wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and I would argue that many people using frameworks like these never learn those fundamental concepts.

I'd argue that never learning is the primary reason those frameworks exist.

Plenty of web devs understand how specificity and the cascade work. That doesn't meant that they work well. CSS is full of examples of good-sounding ideas that didn't pan out.

Frankly the whole thing works better when you avoid touching the cascade as much as possible. Which is why these atomic frameworks are modeled this way.

Re: There's never been a better time to build websites

#156

Post by grayrest »

quotemstr wrote: post #105

Tailwind doesn't "solve CSS". It destroys it. Tailwind is nothing more than a layer of obfuscation on inline styles spelled directly. There's no semantic component.

Tailwind is a design system. It's not the same as inline styles because the options are constrained and are picked to fit on a coherent scale. I consider the inability to do this natively to be a longstanding gap in CSS itself and have been doing my own variations of the tailwind utilities with sass mixins since 2009.

I'll point out that CSS has no semantic component in itself. It's just a way to apply styles. If you want to keep semantic class names then you can apply the tailwind design language using the postCSS `@apply` in the body. There's a tradeoff between the value of semantics against the value of greater code locality and elimination of specificity as a concern. In practice most people seem to prefer the latter.

Re: There's never been a better time to build websites

#157

Post by samhw »

handrous wrote: post #148
samhw wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Oh, and RSS is not dead. Not at all (thanks WordPress, for putting a feed on every instance). RSS is the only workable way to make the web social again. What we need, IMO, is more experimental protocols to enrich the web, which maverick developers can use to good effect, the same way we did originally with RSS. More browsers forking Chromium or Servo to add support for these new features. Hell, maybe even something…

> is more experimental protocols to enrich the web, New protocols are DOA until we significantly nerf the incentives to "own" the user. IOW it's not gonna happen until we outlaw anything that resembles spying on users. And maybe also ads generally.

> And maybe also ads generally.

This is all well and good, but then we need a serious alternative funding model for websites.

Right now, a lot of people with adblockers are benefiting from a situation fausse where they free-ride on the ad-click revenue generated by others. I think in some people's minds this leads to an impossible expectation that they can continue to enjoy freely provided services, provided at considerable expense to the service provider, without paying anything or even having the inconvenience of having to see some ads.

I'm all for abolishing ads, but it needs a serious proposal, not just "what we have right now, but no ads". I'd also be all for an online payment mechanism embedded into browsers through a new protocol - something like https://www.w3.org/TR/payment-request/ but designed with more of a view towards paywalls - but I'm under no illusion: most people's revealed preference is consistently for ads over paying anything, as many startups in that space have discovered.

Re: There's never been a better time to build websites

#158

Post by handrous »

samhw wrote: post #157
handrous wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> is more experimental protocols to enrich the web, New protocols are DOA until we significantly nerf the incentives to "own" the user. IOW it's not gonna happen until we outlaw anything that resembles spying on users. And maybe also ads generally.

> And maybe also ads generally. This is all well and good, but then we need a serious alternative funding model for websites. Right now, a lot of people with adblockers are benefiting from a situation fausse where they free-ride on the ad-click revenue generated by others. I think in some people's minds this leads to an impossible expectation that they can continue to enjoy freely provided services, provided at consi…

> This is all well and good, but then we need a serious alternative funding model for websites.

Why?

Without competition from free-but-funded-with-$billions ad-supported services, most of the valuable stuff would probably be replaced by volunteer and non-profit efforts.

Others would survive by charging (more) money.

Some would be replaced by protocols (several social networks would be among those replaced). Clients & hosting may be paid, or not. It'd work out fine.

Most of the rest isn't valuable.

Re: There's never been a better time to build websites

#159

Post by rhtgrg »

hooby wrote: post #92

It's definitely a great time to build websites, but saying they _NEVER_ have been easier to make... I'm not 100% sure about that. Yes, tailwind might make css a lot easier, and github copilot might make coding a lot faster... but is this really easier than in the early 90ies, when you could just type into notepad and make a website that didn't require any CSS or images or JS or even more than just the most basic html…

I'd like to reframe your argument around expectations. Regardless of the difficulty of building websites, the bar is dramatically higher than it used to be. Look at what Amazon was able to get away with at one point [0]. The need for good security practices is also the highest its ever been (and will continue to matter more in the future).

So, in some ways, its never been more difficult to build a website. Thankfully FOSS lets us outsource a lot of the work.

[0] https://i.imgur.com/OAyZWnZ.png

Re: There's never been a better time to build websites

#160

Post by kitsunesoba »

hooby wrote: post #92

It's definitely a great time to build websites, but saying they _NEVER_ have been easier to make... I'm not 100% sure about that. Yes, tailwind might make css a lot easier, and github copilot might make coding a lot faster... but is this really easier than in the early 90ies, when you could just type into notepad and make a website that didn't require any CSS or images or JS or even more than just the most basic html…

In terms of accessibility I’m not sure we’ve done better than GeoCities and AngelFire. WYSIWYG page design tools have gotten better, but those are only “necessary” because page designs have become more complicated and simple, less “professional” styling has fallen out of popularity outside of technical circles.

Those old page hosting services also served to get non-technical users to dip their toes into writing HTML, setting them on a path of learning, whereas newer page hosting services are either skewed no-code (e.g SquareSpace) or technical (e.g. GitHub Pages and Netlify) with little in-between, which keeps non-technical users locked into the WYSIWYG tools to a greater extent.

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