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Building an HTML-first site doubled our users overnight

mohkohn.co.uk

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

#561

Post by aatd86 »

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.

I have been coding for several decades and still haven't delved into assembly.

This is how things goes when the employers ask for a list of technologies...

Not their fault.

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

#562

Post by mrweasel »

jimbokun wrote: post #245
faangguyindia wrote: post #50

Most of my apps are now simply HTMX + Go + SQLite. I've found it's enough for most projects. One of my sites is image heavy and serves 10 TB of traffic per month. For this, I use the following setup: 1. S3 (I wanted reliable data storage) 2. In front of it, I have Cloudflare (with Tiered Cache enabled, which makes POPs prefer pulling from Cloudflare rather than the origin). I've set rules to cache everything on both…

Where do you store the SQLite database files? What is your strategy for partitioning your data into SQLite files? One per user or…?

> Where do you store the SQLite database files?

What? On the server, where else would you put it?

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

#563

Post by mrweasel »

McGlockenshire wrote: post #285
Telaneo wrote: post #263

I'm curious how many web issues can be solved by having the people responsible for the relevant sites only be allowed to use them on a Windows 11 machine with only 4 GB of RAM using Firefox with the network throttled to 3G speeds. Assuming the processor isn't horrible, I can still browse plenty of sites with those specs without much issue, and on the sites that do require more, it's very rarely because the sites actu…

> Windows 11 machine with only 4 GB of RAM using Firefox with the network throttled to 3G speeds And their mobile device should be the cheapest Android phone from a monthly cell provider you've never heard of. This is what the real world is for a lot of people, and a huge number of developers simply don't know or care.

And with a small screen.

The number of websites that are almost useless on the iPhone SE is getting pretty insane. Many site have a massive header, maybe a footer and a sticky ad. That frequently leaves less than half (~4.5cm) the screen usable.

I don't even think Apple cares about smaller screens anymore, because iOS UI elements also overlaps in some places.

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

#564

Post by Telaneo »

antasvara wrote: post #320
dotBen wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 s…

I'm curious how this lines up with US literacy rates. Is the group of people who can't navigate a two page online form the same as the one have reading comprehension skills on a 5th grade level or lower? Or do they at least largely overlap? In my experience they do, but it'd be nice to have confirmation.

I got taught in school to check whether or not the piece of paper we got with the test on it had something on both sides, so you didn't hand in a test that was only half done. I thought that went without saying back in the day, but given that filling out a two page form is a non-trivial task for what should be literate people, I guess it doesn't.

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

#565

Post by Telaneo »

xdennis wrote: post #485
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…

> 60 year people can't user your fancy site because then don't have an internal model of how a computer works. Many developers are unaware how many people are not comfortable with computers. Here's an example with my dad, 64. During Covid, he had to get his medicine by emailing his GP instead of going to him. He received the email address as a photograph of a piece of paper over WhatsApp. (Clearly the doctor wasn't c…

Wait til he learns that email addresses can contain spaces and line breaks. They just have to be quoted.

"why

ohgodwhy"@example.com is a valid email address (although I suspect most providers will reject it).

Try having that make sense without all the prerequisite knowledge the average computer toucher has. "Well you see, [...]"

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

#566

Post by psp99 »

Literally signed up here after 20+ years of lurking, because reading that the PSP had Candy Crush made me stop everything I was doing. This game is a mobile game and did not exist on PSP.

"Clutched in her hands is a games console - a PlayStation Portable. She stares at it intensely; blocking out the world with Candy Crush."

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

#567

Post by jmye »

EvanAnderson wrote: post #257
jmye wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it was... SHTML? that allowed for server includes. My recollection from... 25ish years ago was that it was generally quite well supported and worked quite well (and was dead simple to implement). Not sure why, if that was the issue, the fix didn't quite catch on (but it's totally possible I'm mis-remembering the state of browser support).

Server-side includes worked fine but weren't enabled by default in any of the mainstream web servers. I think the lack of default-enabled status hampered their adoption. Joe User couldn't just FTP a bunch of ".shtml" files up to their shared web space and expect it to work right. I certainly used the heck out of them in the late 90s, though. It would have been very cool if HTML had been created with the ability to do…

Ahh, yeah! That rings a vague bell of having to futz with IIS at some point to figure out why a page wasn't working. I can't quite recall if it worked in Geocities, but I think some of the gaming websites I was building (maybe xoom? That sounds familiar for some reason) had it on.

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

#568

Post by sylware »

Open your eyes: the "web" was stolen by the 'whatng cartel'. Their web engines are abominations, the c++ language is making things even worse because now it requires a compiler of an obscene complexity to handle "~right" the absurd and grotesque complexity of the c++ syntax.

We have to eat the bullet, there is only one way out: restore noscript/basic HTML interop in "security" infrastructures (can still have a non-mandatory web app on top). And it will probably require super strong _technical_ regulations and expect the 'whatng cartel' to fight hard, because they won't like critical web sites not being web apps then forced to run on their massively complex web engines...

Don't forget, a few years back, most, if not all, online services were able to run on 1D or 2D (simple table) HTML documents.

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

#569

Post by deltarholamda »

psp99 wrote: post #566

Literally signed up here after 20+ years of lurking, because reading that the PSP had Candy Crush made me stop everything I was doing. This game is a mobile game and did not exist on PSP. "Clutched in her hands is a games console - a PlayStation Portable. She stares at it intensely; blocking out the world with Candy Crush."

You missed the point. The guy thought she was playing a game, but she was actually using the built-in web browser on the PSP. Whether it was Candy Crush or Tony Hawk Pro Skater or Super Mario Bros. (also not on PSP) doesn't matter.

She was using what is broadly comparable to a WebTV browser to access a government site, and it worked because the guidelines for gov.uk are so very, very good.

(The UK gov sometimes gets a bit of stick for being needlessly useless, but their web guidelines are extremely good. Absolutely a fantastic starting point for anybody interested in web development.)

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

#570

Post by psp99 »

deltarholamda wrote: post #569
psp99 wrote: post #566

Literally signed up here after 20+ years of lurking, because reading that the PSP had Candy Crush made me stop everything I was doing. This game is a mobile game and did not exist on PSP. "Clutched in her hands is a games console - a PlayStation Portable. She stares at it intensely; blocking out the world with Candy Crush."

You missed the point. The guy thought she was playing a game, but she was actually using the built-in web browser on the PSP. Whether it was Candy Crush or Tony Hawk Pro Skater or Super Mario Bros. (also not on PSP) doesn't matter. She was using what is broadly comparable to a WebTV browser to access a government site, and it worked because the guidelines for gov.uk are so very, very good. (The UK gov sometimes gets…

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