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

241–250 of 387 posts

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of simple HTML

#241

Post by throw_m239339 »

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…

> Whats with all the javascript?

On blogs and news media site? mostly ad tech .

The irony is that it took AMP, a proprietary solution, for all these websites that mainly deal with text and image, to start cracking down on all that stuff.

Remember "mobile first"? Well the majority of web developers clearly do not have a Mobile first strategy, when you look at how heavy their webpages are.

Even the javascript could be lighter, but since everybody is using node.js and NPM behind the scene with a lot of complex modules, well code bundles become crazy big.

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of simple HTML

#242

Post by yen223 »

greggturkington wrote: post #163
vascocosta wrote: post #155

The simple HTML of Hacker News is one of the reasons I love it so much. What a breath of fresh hair compared to modern Reddit.

Yeah. tags for presentation (with no `alt` attr). Form s without s. No skip link, no landmark regions. s with s inside for non-tabular content. tags. FONT TAGS. "A breath of fresh hair" is a typo that accidentally makes a good comparison.

Hacker news has divs for the upvote/downvote buttons too, which apparently is a cardinal sin

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of simple HTML

#243

Post by kaba0 »

Aeolun wrote: post #228
kaba0 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back then, looking native was the most important thing. Today it seems electron apps can get away with looking anything but native - so perhaps it’s time to resurrect some other desktop frameworks (I just recently started working with JavaFX and I really like it so far. Unfortunate that it is so niche)

My problem with the default Swing theme, and any theme in Java at the time, was that they were so ridiculously ugly compared to the system default. It wasn’t exactly easy to make your own theme either. Something that HTML allows without almost without thinking.

Yeah, I agree. But Swing has some cool themes nowadays. (And JavaFX is pretty easy to theme, but I have not yet tried it extensively)

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of simple HTML

#244

Post by ogre_codes »

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #212
scooble wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To add to this, a perspective I've heard working in the disability sphere is 'everybody is disabled eventually' - be that through injury, illness, or even just old age. This really challenges the view that thinking about disabled users is catering to the needs of a small group of the population. Whereas in fact it is bringing benefits to the majority of the population (at some point in their lives).

The culture of distraction distracts everyone from realizing they'll die. Disability is just the fine print. I remember walking around in a city after a parent died, and the world seemed like an illusion.

It's weird, sometimes I do something and I realize that if things had been slightly different it might have killed me.

Then I wonder if in a parallel universe I'm already dead.

Then I realize that if there are parallel universes there are probable countless times where I'm already dead.

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of simple HTML

#245

Post by com2kid »

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…

> and if you're doing crud stuff, most of the work is frankly done for you.

React sucks for large complex forms unless you pair it with another technology or two.

Want to write a crud app fast? C# and Winforms.

Couple years back, I once did a prototype of a web app in C# and Winforms connected to Firebase. Less than a day, done.

Month later, had it working in React. Granted the React website looked nice, but the difference in efficiency is huge.

Data binding 20 fields on C# is a matter of minutes. Data binding 20 fields in React, and with Redux, ugh. I really should have just learned Redux Forms.

And for any given forms library in React, you then get to practice learning how to beat it into shape and style it how you want.

I, no kidding, think writing CRUD apps was easier with VB6 and Microsoft Access.

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of simple HTML

#246

Post by exporectomy »

nabla9 wrote: post #57

I suspect there is a growing web developer conspiracy to fight overconsumption and climate change. I see slow websites with carousels of large images with big texts. They link to value statements, mission statements, experiences, goals, community bullshit. If you want to know products, prices, or even what the site is all about, you must squint your eyes and really concentrate, maybe scroll down to the bottom of the…

Somehow we've regressed to 2000s levels of aggravating websites. When I want to buy a thing from a retail chain, I go to their site ready to search and have to click through multiple pop-ups first. No I don't want to subscribe to whatever bullshit, no I don't want to allow access to location data, no I don't care about stupid cookies, no I'm not wasting time talking to a chatbot that interleaves computer generated and human generated text with unpredictable delays. Just get out of my face and let me buy the thing I'm here for. I could understand all that for, say, a news site where they need to suck you in to subscribe for them to make money, but not a retailer where you're obviously there because you already want to buy something!

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of simple HTML

#247

Post by csomar »

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…

It's a bit more complicated than that. Modern web development done correctly can help: Pages are generated in the server, no JavaScript required. If you start with a PWA mentality, then your application/site is progressive and you should cover everyone; or almost.

However:

1- Progressive is expensive. You'll need more time as you need to sort what features can work; and work your way up to the full experience. The full experience, however, is what you are getting paid for (or showing). Unless the client or the company cares about these categories, you don't want to expend budget on that.

2- Web development is becoming complicated. You can get started quickly with Nextjs/Gatsby thanks to "DX"(Developer Experience). The reality is that you don't understand much of what's going on behind the surface and if you bootcamp-ed your way in 3 months, you probably have no idea what's going on. But it works!

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of simple HTML

#248

Post by ogre_codes »

tyingq wrote: post #236
ogre_codes wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The button html element is old enough to vote. Since it's introduction, jQuery was born and died. Backbone was created and became obsolete. React took over the internet. Webpack, babel, and node were invented. With all that change, I think it's safe to say web technologies are adopted or not based on inertia. I think you are being over-generous.

Perhaps. I happen to be in a space with lots of "old enough to vote" code still running. On the other hand, the Compose "button" in gmail is ... a : Compose

Maybe came across more crossly than I intended... I have a blog I started in the 90s so I hear you.

FWIW, my issue with using divs is not that they should never be used as buttons. It's that few people who use them that way go to the effort of doing it correctly. It's absolutely possible to do it right and have a functioning/ accessible js button.

Either go the full way and do it right—with accessibility—or just style the standard components. In most cases the latter is the easiest way to go if you care about getting it right.

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of simple HTML

#249

Post by exporectomy »

kstrauser wrote: post #87
salutonmundo wrote: post #63

The worst web browser I have access to is the "experimental" one on a Kindle 4. Most web pages that one might want to visit will not load in this web browser—because it does not support modern versions of TLS. For the reasons mentioned in this article—it's probably a good idea to keep plain HTTP access available on your websites.

Eh, 98.24% of all users worldwide can use TLS 1.2: https://caniuse.com/?search=tls%201.2 I'm not willing to make security exceptions to support devices from 2011. "HTTPS by default" lifts all boats: people who would MITM your users can't tell if they're reading your nice blog or a critique of their local government, and that's a good thing.

They can tell what page you're looking at from the host name and request response lengths, though, right? Especially if those are the only two pages on your site.

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of simple HTML

#250

Post by _-david-_ »

SulfurHexaFluri wrote: post #200
kstrauser wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, 98.24% of all users worldwide can use TLS 1.2: https://caniuse.com/?search=tls%201.2 I'm not willing to make security exceptions to support devices from 2011. "HTTPS by default" lifts all boats: people who would MITM your users can't tell if they're reading your nice blog or a critique of their local government, and that's a good thing.

With DNS over HTTPS and encrypted SNI, soon the only information you will get is "They accessed a website on amazon/cloudflair"

This is not a guarantee. If you have your own public IP it is quite possible to do a reverse ip lookup and get the domain.
Post reply on HN