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Show HN: HTML for People

htmlforpeople.com

201–210 of 223 posts

Re: Show HN: HTML for People

#201
post #78

I still remember creating my first html page back in the 90s. It felt really magical creating it with just Notepad - changing the bgcolor of a page to red or blue or whatever, was amazing.

Same here; I stumbled on HTML for the first time in the '90s. I started with HotDog from the CDs that came in the magazines. https://brajeshwar.com/2024/hotdog-sausage-software/

Similar - I learned HTML by tweaking ReadMe.htm that was included with Dweep videogame from (now defunct) Dexterity Software.

Re: Show HN: HTML for People

#202

I love the idea and I'm thrilled to see more sites like this out there. But I do think this assumes a level of computer literacy that isn't consistent with typical, non-technical users. Step 1 starts with: > Pick a location on your computer and create a folder. Call it my-site or something similar. You've already lost the vast majority of people right here. There are a shockingly large number of people out there that…

If this is true then it's very sad. Is this what people have been reduced to? I would have been able to follow these instructions as a child (in fact I did build my own website when I was 10). Are you sure it's this bad, though, or are you not giving people the benefit of the doubt? How can it be this way? Is it due to people using cloud apps for everything?

It seems to be the case. See the other thread of people not knowing what a file system is.

In the past tech education felt useless because teachers were so far behind, maybe it’s time to revisit now because now the younger generation is far behind.

Re: Show HN: HTML for People

#203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they manage files and folder on their smartphone too.

Anecdotally, I don't know anyone that uses files on their iPhone, and I don't really understand it myself either.

When you take a picture, and watch it in a gallery, you are accessing a file.

Re: Show HN: HTML for People

#205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think CSS and JS should be things the user graduates to when they decide they need them, if they ever do. Show someone basic HTML and most people will eventually look at their page and think, “this is neat, but how to I make this title red and change the background?” This is when to introduce the very basics of CSS. If someone has a goal the learning process is easier and more exciting, because it’s relevant and al…

I think teaching all 3 at once is better. You can take a really simple vertical slice to demonstrate how they interact to compose the DOM. Then, spend the next 2 weeks inside dev tools explaining how to navigate the DOM and browser state. Establishing mapping between dev tools and the examples is where self sufficiency becomes feasible. I agree you can pretty much get there with plain HTML academically and in concept…

I'm not sure we want to onboard non-technical people into such things right off the bat. Keeping things simple - notepad and HTML - gives everyone the ability to carve out a rudimentary niche for themselves, which is the goal. If they're still interested in this field - either just as a hobby, or as a career - then they'll at least have a solid understanding of the foundational topic and know where they want to go from there.

Remember, the goal isn't to make everyone a competent developer, just enabling everyone to participate without going through a corporation for basic web services.

Re: Show HN: HTML for People

#206

Is HTML ever actually defined in the beginning of this book? There’s a reference to what the acronym expands to when tags start getting introduced but the chapters before this never come out and say “HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language, and here are three sentences that very briefly explain what that means; we’ll be exploring that in much more detain in the coming chapters.”

I’m getting downvoted for this question but I think that is a pretty important thing to be getting out of the way in a book for someone who might not know what the heck HTML is, and why they might want to learn it!

Re: Show HN: HTML for People

#207
I think this is great, my biggest stumbling block is deploying what I've created. I have a domain and need a host. The paragraph about deploying only covers hosting by a service you can't use you own domain on (as far as I can tell). It mentions netlify, which I assume would be an option if you have your own domain, however their website talks about shit but tells you nothing.

Re: Show HN: HTML for People

#208
post #107

Well done! I really like how you make people write bare text, publish it and bam, that works, just like this, and how you ease into html. The text is very well written, straightforward, welcoming, well structured. It seems easy and enjoyable to read. I believe that putting html in non professional hands is a good goal. Some feedback: - About , it seems to be introduced quite late. People comfortable with English but…

Don't you actually need to set something in the text editor to save it as UTF-8 in the first place if you are going to put that tag? Wouldn't Notepad for example use UTF-16 by default like the rest of Windows?

You totally need to make sure the encoding is right indeed.

Re: Show HN: HTML for People

#209

I think the fundamental approach being taken by this project is immensely valuable to the world. This kind of education about open standards might actually be the most powerful tool that can help us take steps in the direction away from giant opaque corporations and back towards the systems based on open standards that the internet originated from. I really hope this project continues to be updated and get more and m…

Mozilla has amazing documentation that's been around for years. Here's their basic html tutorial section: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn/HTML No one is or has been stopping people from learning HTML.

This is how I've been learning html + css. It's been fantastic and I treat it as THE docs for the web.

I'm very proud of my single file html document for reporting results.

Of course no JS!

Re: Show HN: HTML for People

#210
post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only elements that are absolutely required are doctype and a non-empty title. Most minimal valid HTML doc: Foo

Correct. Fun fact: you do not need to close most tags in a valid HTML5 document. This is valid: Foo paragraph second item hi!

Indeed. People writing HTML5 as if it's XHTML is an old pet peeve of mine
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