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HTML First

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Re: HTML First

#371

Post by meowtimemania »

zlg_codes wrote: post #249
alib wrote: post #83

I love this. Could you please consider changing the example from a clickable div – which is an accessibility nightmare – to a button?

Why is a clickable div an accessibility nightmare when the button element has a lot of browser-preset styles that are harder to override? Assuming you put all the relevant state styles into place like :hover and :active and whatnot, what's the problem? Button elements are best used in a form. If you aren't submitting a form, what's the button there for?

button { all: unset; }

This removes all the preset browser css styles. An accessible,styled is much easier to achieve than an accessible, styled

Re: HTML First

#372

Post by josephg »

zlg_codes wrote: post #321
josephg wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can view HTML as a weird, quirky version of XHTML if you want. But XHTML lost the war. Browsers are HTML5 engines, not XHTML engines. And if you're writing HTML, the browser considers to just be a weird way to write . The slash is non-significant. So confusingly is not equivalent to . The problem I have with self-closing tags is that I've met so many web developers throughout my career who think that browsers und…

I can't disagree with making sure you're using them when they matter and avoiding them when they don't. There was no real 'war', XHTML 5 is still a thing. Browsers are HTML engines because people who write HTML don't want to be forced into well-formed markup. They want the browser to guess what they meant and run with it. There's also the whole "we need to be compatible with almost every HTML file dating back to the…

> There was no real 'war'

There was definitely a debate over how web browsers should interpret web pages - as XHTML or "quirks mode". HTML5 (with infinite backwards compatibility) was the outcome. Every major web browser implements HTML5 - complete with its super quirky and complex, but fully specified and consistent parsing rules.

> XHTML 5 is still a thing.

Is it though? On the web? I just tried, with this html:

    
    
      
        
        yo
Q: What do you expect the background-color of "yo" to be?

If this was an XHTML page, tags should be able to self-close. And in that case it should be black on white. But try it. Its not. The browser ignores the self-closing part of the tag, so "yo" is inside the inner div and it shows up in hot-pink. The outer div is then not closed correctly. (2 divs open, 1 div closes). If the page were processed as strict XHTML we'd also expect a warning or error, but the browser doesn't care. Neither firefox nor chrome emitted anything in the console about any of this.

As far as I can tell, the XHTML doctype has no effect here. The page is interpreted - as all webpages are - by the browser using HTML5's parsing rules. Not XHTML's.

There are contexts in which XHTML still exists. Like JSX. But the browser is not an XHTML renderer. Rail against HTML5 if you want, but people need to stop pretending that the browser supports self closing tags. They are not part of HTML5. Pretending they are causes bugs.

Re: HTML First

#373

Post by docmars »

al_borland wrote: post #368
codeptualize wrote: post #89

This is fun in to theory and in simple examples, but show me a big project that applies this and how it made a difference. There are some bold objectives at the start that would be wonderful, but I’m a bit disappointed by the advice. I really don’t see how these would work in anything other than very basic scenarios, even less how they would achieve the objectives. I’m all for using the web platform to the max, and I…

Too many people today are being pointed toward React to do very simple things, like a single-page site that is nothing more than a little text, some images, and a few links out to various other places. These sites could easily be HTML/CSS. There is a lot of complexity for the sake of complexity on the web right now.

One of the worst feelings is building a site without a view library like React, getting 80% there, and then realizing you absolutely need dynamic functionality and/or state management because the project's scope changed or started calling for it, only to realize you now need to refactor much (or all) of the site to make it easier to maintain across the board.

This is why I reach for a view library like React, Vue, or Svelte, even if I'm creating something simple. This is because I'm familiar with using these and they provide me with the ability to implement nearly any kind of dynamic functionality or interactions I could want, fine control over component lifecycle, and tight integration with my CSS library of choice to speed up development.

End-users are none the wiser, that is of course unless I do a terrible job using these tools.

Re: HTML First

#374

Post by projectileboy »

al_borland wrote: post #368
codeptualize wrote: post #89

This is fun in to theory and in simple examples, but show me a big project that applies this and how it made a difference. There are some bold objectives at the start that would be wonderful, but I’m a bit disappointed by the advice. I really don’t see how these would work in anything other than very basic scenarios, even less how they would achieve the objectives. I’m all for using the web platform to the max, and I…

Too many people today are being pointed toward React to do very simple things, like a single-page site that is nothing more than a little text, some images, and a few links out to various other places. These sites could easily be HTML/CSS. There is a lot of complexity for the sake of complexity on the web right now.

The worldwide jobs program that is modern-day Javascript would have you believe that elaborate front-ends are necessary to give end users the experiences they expect, which is an utter pile of lies. What users want is something simple that works.

Re: HTML First

#375

Post by gatkinso »

Does anyone find it strange that a syntax highlighting library needs to be loaded on a site singing the praises of HTML? Sometimes I don't think the web platform takes its own original purpose seriously (presenting documents).

Re: HTML First

#376

Post by meowtimemania »

gemstones wrote: post #195

I get real confused by these. Imagine if an iOS developer posted a blog about the specifics of files backing UIViews and how the XML configuration language was underutilized. Wouldn’t that be kind of a weird blog post? The declarative syntax of various UI frameworks is an implementation detail. The hard part is in CSS on the web, or style properties in native frameworks. Business logic as well. Presumably encapsulate…

On web, an HTML first approach in many cases can mean a better user experience.

Whether to use an HTML first approach or something heavier like React depends on the product being built.

Re: HTML First

#377

Post by professorsnep »

docmars wrote: post #373
al_borland wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too many people today are being pointed toward React to do very simple things, like a single-page site that is nothing more than a little text, some images, and a few links out to various other places. These sites could easily be HTML/CSS. There is a lot of complexity for the sake of complexity on the web right now.

One of the worst feelings is building a site without a view library like React, getting 80% there, and then realizing you absolutely need dynamic functionality and/or state management because the project's scope changed or started calling for it, only to realize you now need to refactor much (or all) of the site to make it easier to maintain across the board. This is why I reach for a view library like React, Vue, or…

For personal projects I usually use Astro[1] solely because 90% of the stuff I am making doesn't require anything more than basic HTML/CSS and maybe a couple static components, but I also have the flexibility to add SSR rendering or even more dynamic components like Svelte without making an entirely new project.

[1]: https://docs.astro.build/

Re: HTML First

#378

Post by docmars »

MrJohz wrote: post #306
zilti wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need a frontend framework for that. Fuck people who do. They're the reason most websites are slow as molasses on my three year old phone, despite them being very basic sites. Just stuffed to the brim with unnecessary bullshit.

While I agree that there is probably an overuse of frontend rendering when templating in the backend would be fine, I suspect most of the problems you see have nothing to do with that. In my experience, the number one issue with slow sites is an overuse of trackers and advertising that drags everything down.

Precisely. Using libraries / frameworks like React, Vue, Svelte, etc. adds nearly no overhead to the core functionality of whatever it is you're creating, _especially Svelte,_ since it compiles down to the bare minimum necessary to power any dynamic functionality (it doesn't ship with a complete runtime), and supports static templates and markdown out of the box.

I can say with confidence that unless I royally screw something up in my component lifecycles or render loops, everything is just as snappy as ever. No latency. No lag. Just a zippy fast web app with URL/route changes that fly, fetched data populating quickly, and interactions feeling wonderful -- and that's because said apps I'm developing _aren't_ using any heavy tracking libraries.

People are too quick to blame slow performance on modern view libraries, and even likelier: they've never used them before.

Re: HTML First

#379

Post by recursivedoubts »

arcanemachiner wrote: post #354
recursivedoubts wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah, kinda. source: I'm the creator of hyperscript.

Perfect. This place is overdue for an exhaustive debate about HATEOAS/REST/etc, and you have an incomparable talent for starting such a debate.

not to brag, but that is kinda my superpower...

Re: HTML First

#380

Post by c-cube »

anon23432343 wrote: post #132

I'm not a big fan of JSX... But that trend to put everything back into HTML were possible is also wrong... Yeah this may work for static websites with some forms but I don't see Discord being build like that or any other bigger app. Its like people want back the HTML version of Gmail. Its a nice experience when a big part of your screen flashes /s What about i18n? or a10y? The examples of the form don't support any o…

I have to use gmail for work, and I use the html version. It doesn't eat hundreds of MBs of ram or slow down my browser like, say, Google cloud's UI does. Ymmv.

(of course the html version is not as good as a non webmail would be. Such is life I guess.)

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