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HTML Periodic Table

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Re: HTML Periodic Table

#41

Post by KineticLensman »

tzs wrote: post #18

The periodic table of the elements is useful because it brings similar elements together. A chemist that knows nothing about an element except its position on the periodic table can predict many of its properties based on the surrounding entries of the table. In fact, if I recall correctly, a major reason Mendeleev is generally the name we associate most with invention of the periodic table of the elements, even thou…

> Mendeleev was the first to leave gaps in his table when the next known element fit in better somewhere else, and to predict that unknown elements would fill those gaps, and to successfully predict their properties

Yes. This is a really powerful concept. By way of example, here a periodic table of data structures [0] that I think has been on HN before. The authors show that there are gaps in the arrangement they've developed, and thus predict types of data structure that haven't yet been researched.

[0] https://stratos.seas.harvard.edu/files/stratos/files/periodi...

Re: HTML Periodic Table

#42

Post by kbirkeland »

underwater wrote: post #37
jamescostian wrote: post #9

I have a hunch as to why this table isn't anything like the periodic table of elements. For those that don't know, a long time ago Josh Duck built an HTML Periodic Table that actually resembled the periodic table. It got taken down, because someone else made another HTML Periodic Table (with clearly different organization and a very different look), and then she claimed that Josh Duck's very different periodic table…

It's amazing that people remember this! Alara actually filed a suit against me, and that's when I learned the difference between being right, and being right in the eyes of the law. It involves lots of money being thrown at lawyers. On the plus side, I later got to meet Mike (the other Australian who she thought I was in cahoots with) and later rebuilt the table into https://allthetags.com/ , which is a lot more colo…

> that's when I learned the difference between being right, and being right in the eyes of the law

It sounds like there's an interesting story here. Care to elaborate more?

Re: HTML Periodic Table

#44

Post by test6554 »

tarikjn wrote: post #3

This is a good idea, but I feel like it would benefit by forgoing the "HTML" art layout, and being more similar to the actual periodic table, by organizing elements in groups on the X axis and in introduction year/version on the Y axis. Smaller detail: the the bottom groups buttons would feel more interactive as mouseovers -- and more consistent with the elements cases.

It seems to me that the best thing would be to publish a relational database with each element, the type of content, whether the closing tag can be omitted, a list of allowed attributes, a list of disallowed attributes, when it was introduced, what parent elements are allowed, what child elements are allowed, etc. And let the community go to town.

Re: HTML Periodic Table

#45

Post by underwater »

kbirkeland wrote: post #42
underwater wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's amazing that people remember this! Alara actually filed a suit against me, and that's when I learned the difference between being right, and being right in the eyes of the law. It involves lots of money being thrown at lawyers. On the plus side, I later got to meet Mike (the other Australian who she thought I was in cahoots with) and later rebuilt the table into https://allthetags.com/ , which is a lot more colo…

> that's when I learned the difference between being right, and being right in the eyes of the law It sounds like there's an interesting story here. Care to elaborate more?

Alara was absolutely sure that I'd somehow colluded with her publisher to steal and republish an illustration from her as-yet unpublished book.

I obviously knew that I hadn't. But once she'd started the legal ball rolling I had to engage a lawyer and respond through the appropriate legal channels. My lawyer told me litigation (going to court) will generally cost tens of thousands of dollars. And in California recovering costs is far from guaranteed, you have to file a counter-suit I think, and prove the original case was frivolous.

Filing a case is not free - she'd already spent at least a few hundred dollars in court costs and possibly much more for lawyers to draft cease and resists and the actual case. Either it was all a bluff, or she truly believed I stole from her. The second option was scarier. When you're faced with someone who is absolutely sure that you're a bad person, and has invested a lot of time and money into chasing you, how do you convince them they're wrong?

Imagine being in Twitter fight with someone who you think is completely off the rails. And now imagine you aren't allowed to just ignore them or block them but are forced to assemble a body of proof and pay a lawyer to convince an independent third party of the truth.

Given this was a webpage that was not making any money (I had tried to sell posters, but never ended up seeing a cent) the cost and time were not worth it.

Mike Riethmuller was the other guy she accused of theft. He managed to find a journalist to cover the issue, and that worked out much better for him! Not living in California also made him harder for her to chase down.

Re: HTML Periodic Table

#46

Post by stareatgoats »

underwater wrote: post #37
jamescostian wrote: post #9

I have a hunch as to why this table isn't anything like the periodic table of elements. For those that don't know, a long time ago Josh Duck built an HTML Periodic Table that actually resembled the periodic table. It got taken down, because someone else made another HTML Periodic Table (with clearly different organization and a very different look), and then she claimed that Josh Duck's very different periodic table…

It's amazing that people remember this! Alara actually filed a suit against me, and that's when I learned the difference between being right, and being right in the eyes of the law. It involves lots of money being thrown at lawyers. On the plus side, I later got to meet Mike (the other Australian who she thought I was in cahoots with) and later rebuilt the table into https://allthetags.com/ , which is a lot more colo…

I guess this here is Mike's version. The best of the crop IMO

https://www.madebymike.com.au/demos/html5-periodic-table/

Re: HTML Periodic Table

#47

Post by perilunar »

tzs wrote: post #18

The periodic table of the elements is useful because it brings similar elements together. A chemist that knows nothing about an element except its position on the periodic table can predict many of its properties based on the surrounding entries of the table. In fact, if I recall correctly, a major reason Mendeleev is generally the name we associate most with invention of the periodic table of the elements, even thou…

It's a cute play on 'table', which historically has been badly abused in HTML, and 'elements', which in HTML generally means the tag plus the contents.

Other than that it's pointless. As you say it has no predictive use, and it's not much use as a mnemonic device either.

Re: HTML Periodic Table

#48

Post by perilunar »

octocode wrote: post #10

I thought HTML was just

People think that the tag is a meaningless generic block-level element — that's pretty much how it's described in the HTML 4 and 5 specs.

In fact it was introduced in HTML 3.0 as "The DIV element is used with the CLASS attribute to represent different kinds of containers, e.g. chapter, section, abstract, or appendix." [1]

It was retained in HTML 3.2 as "DIV elements can be used to structure HTML documents as a hierarchy of divisions" [2], making it equivalent to the current , and tags.

1. https://www.w3.org/MarkUp/html3/divisions.html

2. https://www.w3.org/TR/2018/SPSD-html32-20180315/#div

Re: HTML Periodic Table

#49

Post by wintorez »

As a web developer, I'm always surprised by the lack of HTML knowledge by most web developers (including myself). Sometimes we spend a long time developing a component when there is a perfectly good HTML tag with better a11y and i18n support available.

Re: HTML Periodic Table

#50

Post by tarikjn »

test6554 wrote: post #44
tarikjn wrote: post #3

This is a good idea, but I feel like it would benefit by forgoing the "HTML" art layout, and being more similar to the actual periodic table, by organizing elements in groups on the X axis and in introduction year/version on the Y axis. Smaller detail: the the bottom groups buttons would feel more interactive as mouseovers -- and more consistent with the elements cases.

It seems to me that the best thing would be to publish a relational database with each element, the type of content, whether the closing tag can be omitted, a list of allowed attributes, a list of disallowed attributes, when it was introduced, what parent elements are allowed, what child elements are allowed, etc. And let the community go to town.

I can't tell if this is a sarcastic comment, because this is exactly what the specs provide. You can parse it and get all that.
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