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The unreasonable effectiveness of simple HTML (2021)

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Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of simple HTML (2021)

#21

Post by kulahan »

dwb wrote: post #20
kulahan wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article and commenters are both complaining about JS in favor of HTML - I'm really just talking about it in this context. Anyways, I disagree with the idea that we should make something simple enough for PSPs and car browsers. Just go to a library.

What a depressingly elitist and exclusionary view. The modern web browser contains all the technology right there to make fast, maximally-accessible websites and even some “app”-like things, but nah you can’t be bothered, screw the less-fortunate. Would you want to “just go to a library” instead of use the device you already have? I strongly doubt it.

“Go to a public library” is elitist? I am on my hands and knees begging you to reconsider this position. I cannot imagine a worse take.

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of simple HTML (2021)

#22

Post by dwb »

kulahan wrote: post #21
dwb wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a depressingly elitist and exclusionary view. The modern web browser contains all the technology right there to make fast, maximally-accessible websites and even some “app”-like things, but nah you can’t be bothered, screw the less-fortunate. Would you want to “just go to a library” instead of use the device you already have? I strongly doubt it.

“Go to a public library” is elitist? I am on my hands and knees begging you to reconsider this position. I cannot imagine a worse take.

Public libraries are great and there should be a lot more of them and everyone should enjoy them, but they should absolutely not be a substitute for respectful, accessible web design and engineering. The elitism is that only people with the shiniest new devices should get to use your website on their terms.

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of simple HTML (2021)

#23

Post by mrpf1ster »

tnelsond4 wrote: post #12

You can also get really small file sizes by ignoring frameworks and porting unsupported codecs to wasm. I ported jbig2 (17kb uncompressed) and codec2 (60kb uncompressed) to wasm which enables me to use really small image and audio files in my web app. I also made a custom read only database and search engine with built-in zstd decompressor (39kb uncompressed). It probably wouldn't run on a psp though. I like optimizi…

I hope the image and audio bandwidth savings are more than the cost of having to send down the codec JS payload - might be worth it for a web app with a lot of image/audio loading

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of simple HTML (2021)

#24

Post by tnelsond4 »

mrpf1ster wrote: post #23
tnelsond4 wrote: post #12

You can also get really small file sizes by ignoring frameworks and porting unsupported codecs to wasm. I ported jbig2 (17kb uncompressed) and codec2 (60kb uncompressed) to wasm which enables me to use really small image and audio files in my web app. I also made a custom read only database and search engine with built-in zstd decompressor (39kb uncompressed). It probably wouldn't run on a psp though. I like optimizi…

I hope the image and audio bandwidth savings are more than the cost of having to send down the codec JS payload - might be worth it for a web app with a lot of image/audio loading

With a 17kb jbig2 decoder all you need is a few one-bit images (a page of a book scan) for it to save bandwidth.

With a 60kb codec2 decoder you need about 2 minutes of audio to start saving.

But the target is dictionary apps with thousands of seconds of audio and thousands of images.

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of simple HTML (2021)

#25

Post by BobbyTables2 »

grebc wrote: post #18
JLO64 wrote: post #7

Thinking back to my community college days in 2020 (right before the pandemic!), I used to rock a crappy old dual core laptop with 4GB of RAM running Fedora. Browsing the web was less than ideal and YouTube barely worked. For certain classes (the big hassle was a DB class after I transferred) running the course software was very taxing and I had a harder time with that compared to other students as a result. I rememb…

It really is a sad reflection of our craft as a profession that 16GB is the bare minimum to do basic office tasks like email/browse a news website.

It was already sad when 1GB became the minimum. Having 256MB was an amazing luxury for a long time .

I used to do email/browsing/games on 8MB of RAM. Upgraded to 24MB and was able to print a poster sized photo that I scanned with a handheld scanner.

I have 2000x as much RAM now, about 3000x more CPU, but hard to say what really changed for so much increase.

Yeah, full motion video is now more trivial. Gaming graphics certainly improved but not 1000x more fun.

I probably have more computing power today in my room than medium sized universities had back in the day.

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of simple HTML (2021)

#26

Post by grebc »

BobbyTables2 wrote: post #25
grebc wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really is a sad reflection of our craft as a profession that 16GB is the bare minimum to do basic office tasks like email/browse a news website.

It was already sad when 1GB became the minimum. Having 256MB was an amazing luxury for a long time . I used to do email/browsing/games on 8MB of RAM. Upgraded to 24MB and was able to print a poster sized photo that I scanned with a handheld scanner. I have 2000x as much RAM now, about 3000x more CPU, but hard to say what really changed for so much increase. Yeah, full motion video is now more trivial. Gaming graphics…

I can only remember having 256MB as the minimum in my formative years, with a 1GHz Celeron. It ran XP fine and some very basic games(Ultima Online, strategy games like C&C).

Not much has really changed, I’d argue what young ones do these days is even less basic with more bloat.

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of simple HTML (2021)

#27

Post by kulahan »

dwb wrote: post #22
kulahan wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Go to a public library” is elitist? I am on my hands and knees begging you to reconsider this position. I cannot imagine a worse take.

Public libraries are great and there should be a lot more of them and everyone should enjoy them, but they should absolutely not be a substitute for respectful, accessible web design and engineering. The elitism is that only people with the shiniest new devices should get to use your website on their terms.

I guarantee libraries do not have the shiniest new devices. So trying so hard to be offended.

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of simple HTML (2021)

#28

Post by dwb »

kulahan wrote: post #27
dwb wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Public libraries are great and there should be a lot more of them and everyone should enjoy them, but they should absolutely not be a substitute for respectful, accessible web design and engineering. The elitism is that only people with the shiniest new devices should get to use your website on their terms.

I guarantee libraries do not have the shiniest new devices. So trying so hard to be offended.

You are either refusing to address the central point or your reading comprehension needs a lot of work. A premise of your original post was that libraries have newer devices than some users. I maintain that libraries should not have to be a fallback for your crappy website.

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of simple HTML (2021)

#29

Post by BobbyTables2 »

grebc wrote: post #26
BobbyTables2 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was already sad when 1GB became the minimum. Having 256MB was an amazing luxury for a long time . I used to do email/browsing/games on 8MB of RAM. Upgraded to 24MB and was able to print a poster sized photo that I scanned with a handheld scanner. I have 2000x as much RAM now, about 3000x more CPU, but hard to say what really changed for so much increase. Yeah, full motion video is now more trivial. Gaming graphics…

I can only remember having 256MB as the minimum in my formative years, with a 1GHz Celeron. It ran XP fine and some very basic games(Ultima Online, strategy games like C&C). Not much has really changed, I’d argue what young ones do these days is even less basic with more bloat.

That’s just it! It used to take a cluster of 10-20 high end PCs to approach what’s in a cheap PC today.

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of simple HTML (2021)

#30

Post by kulahan »

dwb wrote: post #28
kulahan wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guarantee libraries do not have the shiniest new devices. So trying so hard to be offended.

You are either refusing to address the central point or your reading comprehension needs a lot of work. A premise of your original post was that libraries have newer devices than some users. I maintain that libraries should not have to be a fallback for your crappy website.

Right, and I’m positing that you don’t need to support 20 year old devices that receive zero updates because everyone has access to libraries in an absolute last resort.

There are limited resources when developing software. This is a pretty bad resource sink.

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