Building an HTML-first site doubled our users overnight • Hacker News Board

Re: Building an HTML-first site doubled our users overnight

#311

Post by WorldMaker » Wed, Jun 10, 2026, 5:28 PM UTC

atoav wrote: post #180

OskarS wrote: post #165

As a non-web dev, I have a question about this part: > There was a sad coda; as is the way of contract work, I moved on. I explained what I had built to my replacement, that it always worked even without javascript. He was appalled and said, “but that’s a lot more work for us.” Why is it more work? The approach described in the article seems honestly reasonably simple: just write the standard components for the form,…

By this point people don't appear to have any real clue how to write HTML anymore. Writing semantic HTML isn't significantly harder than say writing Markdown. You copy some HTMl skeleton and you literally just stack your elements into the body. I managed to do that as a 13 year old on MySpace without any deep instruction. Sure you have to close elements as well so the syntax is slightly harder than markdown, but that…

> (and to this day: fails)

The `` tag has gotten very close. Right now you still need JS (optionally wrapped as a Web Component) to load a `` from an outside HTML file (at which case, yeah, it's so easy to just use a JS-based HTML renderer instead of a template today), but discussions are ongoing about closing that loop for simpler "JS-free Web Components".

I don't know when that will be accepted into the web platform, but it still feels more like a matter of time that it may happen eventually.

I've found at least some of my static page generation has moved to just dumbly appending `` tags to the bottom of a page rather than use some other template language, so it feels like we are closer every day to finally having "HTML-native" simple part reuse.

Re: Building an HTML-first site doubled our users overnight

#312

Post by ethanplant » Wed, Jun 10, 2026, 5:29 PM UTC

ryukoposting wrote: post #216

breakwaterlabs wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Old people don't have that because they Aren't insane . When did the industry put the onus on the user to understand how the computer works? What happened to the old days of Xerox PARC's HCI studies putting the user first? The computer is in service of the user, not the other way around! If I need to build a mental turing machine to understand your application, it is a bad application . It is rather the engineer's…

As a firmware engineer, my philosophy is this: if I'm doing my job properly, the user should never even know I exist. Maybe this isn't applicable to all software devs. If you make web apps, users actually see your UI, they click an icon or type in a URL and hit enter with the intent of using the thing you made. With firmware, that's not how it works. When you hit the "mute" button on your laptop keyboard, it should j…

> my philosophy is this: if I'm doing my job properly, the user should never even know I exist.

This is my philosophy too working in infrastructure. It’s my job to care way too much so downstream users don’t have to.

Re: Building an HTML-first site doubled our users overnight

#313

Post by goosejuice » Wed, Jun 10, 2026, 5:30 PM UTC

concinds wrote: post #215

chao- wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Starting a few years ago, I realized some junior and medior engineers never once considered the possibility of building a website (app, experience, etc.) in anything other than a heavy SPA framework. But they're not stupid people! If you directly asked "Can you build a website without React?" they know the answer is obviously "Yes." However, if you asked them to build a new website, they would unthinkingly start a ne…

You are far too empathetic to them. They should not hold the jobs they have. These are the people writing React monstrosities for government benefit websites, and testing them on fast iPhones and fast 4G, without realizing that every page load for actual users will take 30 seconds on their old $200 Android on 3G, and users won’t complete the form. It’s a culture of not giving a shit, that’s the deeper issue.

Junior and midlevel devs aren't decision makers for government benefit websites. The culture of not giving a shit is real, but the responsibility goes far beyond these roles.

Re: Building an HTML-first site doubled our users overnight

#314

Post by hungryhobbit » Wed, Jun 10, 2026, 5:31 PM UTC

skellera wrote: post #291

CSSer wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before LLMs, learning on the job looked like reading documentation. Now it’s a guided tour with verification. When I produce things in this way, I’m not just blindly accepting it. The goal is that by the end of it I have learned more about the codebase and architecture, not less. I feel that’s important.

Many people don't understand this, even big tech engineers. They see LLMs as a bottleneck. It's more that they don't understand how to use it to multiply their skills, just basics and code gen.

I use multiple Claudes at a time, daily. It's precisely because of that experience that I wrote:

  LLM + framework you don't understand goes in ... unmaintainable garbage comes out.

Claude follows code patterns and structure. If you setup that structure and those patterns properly, it will produce great code. If not, it will follow ... whatever it feels like, with each commit.

If you just have it built something with a framework you don't understand, it will do so just fine! But over time every "vibe coded" change you make will drift it further and further, until you are left with a mess of vibe-coded spaghetti.

Re: Building an HTML-first site doubled our users overnight

#315

Post by alok-g » Wed, Jun 10, 2026, 5:31 PM UTC

Telaneo wrote: post #303

Dwedit wrote: post #125

There is one hard wall that stops very old clients from connecting: Not supporting a new enough version of TLS. TLS 1.2 is from 2008, and TLS 1.3 is from 2018. Web browsers older than 2008 can't connect to modern websites since TLS 1.0 and 1.1 were deprecated from web servers in 2021.

I still think it's worth it to provide connections over plain HTTP for this reason. It probably doesn't apply to many people, and you shouldn't allow anything really important to happen over plain HTTP (logins, payment), but normal viewing should still be possible. Sadly, the internet as a whole seems to disagree. Even the most useful resource on the web one could use over plain HTTP, Wikipedia, only allows connectio…

Having HTTPS as mandatory it more mistake-proof.

Re: Building an HTML-first site doubled our users overnight

#316

Post by brightball » Wed, Jun 10, 2026, 5:33 PM UTC

wccrawford wrote: post #309

brightball wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was the jQuery way. It was called Graceful Degradation. The entire approach went out of style with the advent of single page apps, React, Angular, VueJS, etc.

That's generous. I always heard people espouse that ideal, but I rarely saw them actually do it. And I never saw it at work. There were always certain UX requirements that required JS, and that meant the company wasn't interested in testing to make sure it worked without JS. None of their customers were going to use it that way. Angular, React, etc helped force it further, but they didn't cause it.

I know I always did. CakePHP and Rails made it really easy to determine if a request came from AJAX or direct and you could slightly tweak the response to match the medium.

Agree that most people didn't, but I was always an advocate.

Re: Building an HTML-first site doubled our users overnight

#317

Post by reacharavindh » Wed, Jun 10, 2026, 5:33 PM UTC

HTML first, minimal JS, not using any frameworks unless absolutely justified is already part of my prompts to LLMs when I build stuff for myself. I’m not a frontend developer, and have not kept up to date with the ton of frameworks. That HTMl first approach already makes the LLM outputs faster/fresher for me. I wish more people went this route for public facing services.

Re: Building an HTML-first site doubled our users overnight

#318

Post by alok-g » Wed, Jun 10, 2026, 5:35 PM UTC

oulipo2 wrote: post #59

Totally agree, gov pages should be widely accessible. Also gov services should NEVER mandate internet access. There should always be a way for tech-illiterate people to ask someone, and fill their forms

>> There should always be a way for tech-illiterate people to ask someone, and fill their forms

Isn't that more open to fraud and abuse though by the "someone" whether that is a gov employee or otherwise.

Re: Building an HTML-first site doubled our users overnight

#319

Post by whstl » Wed, Jun 10, 2026, 5:36 PM UTC

opem wrote: post #227

chao- wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Starting a few years ago, I realized some junior and medior engineers never once considered the possibility of building a website (app, experience, etc.) in anything other than a heavy SPA framework. But they're not stupid people! If you directly asked "Can you build a website without React?" they know the answer is obviously "Yes." However, if you asked them to build a new website, they would unthinkingly start a ne…

Don't you think they have a legit skill issue here and should they be better off upskilling themselves? This is a direct effect of being a low barrier industry to enter. Most of the ppl among us are mostly here because of a good paycheck. And it SUCKS!

Yep. It’s also an attitude problem. A lot of devs are able to up-skill just fine, but some are downright demeaning towards anything they don’t understand, or towards anything that doesn’t come from a FAANG.

“HTML only? Nobody is doing it!”

Re: Building an HTML-first site doubled our users overnight

#320

Post by antasvara » Wed, Jun 10, 2026, 5:38 PM UTC

dotBen wrote: post #201

motoboi wrote: post #132

Old people. They exist. Not even that old. 60 year people can't user your fancy site because then don't have an internal model of how a computer works. You know that when pressing a button a hidden engine runs in the backend (or something runs in the backend). You expect an answer and if the expectation do not match the result, the model in your mind creates an hypothesis about what maybe happened and iterate from th…

"Old people don't have that because they didn't grow up with computers." You know, it's time to stop this trope. People who are 60 today were born in 1966, they probably entered the workforce in the mid 80's. They probably are not even retired yet. They know how to use computers, they own a smartphone (or if they don't, it's probably for economic reasons unrelated to their age). As a founder and product manager, this…

I think the relationship people are seeing is "80 year old can't fill out my form, must be because they can't use a computer." But international surveys like PIAAC [0] indicate that adaptive problem solving is the real problem. 30 percent of adults are at or below Level 1; I've copied and pasted what that level represents below:

> Adults at this level are able to understand simple problems and develop and implement solutions to solve them. Problems contain a limited number of elements and little to no irrelevant information. Solutions at this level are simple and consist of a limited number of steps. Problems are embedded in a context that includes one or two sources of information and presents a single, explicitly defined goal.

This test is administered on a tablet, so I think scores can be interpreted as a sort of combo of computer use and problem solving.

A full 40% of adults from 55-64 are at that level or lower. Wikipedia thinks that a novel online form would be a Level 2 task, provided it involves navigating across more than 1 page. Based on that framework and assuming your dad can use the sort function in his email, he represents a top 20th percentile adult for the 55-64 age group. It's probably even higher considering his age as the trend is towards older groups having a rougher time with the survey.

I also think it's ageist to assume that older people can't use a computer. But assessments like this indicate that a full quarter of the US regardless of age would have trouble with some of the basic tasks we associate with computer use. So designers should consider their intended audience when deciding what's simple or not simple enough.

[0]: https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/piaac/2023/national_results.asp