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That sentiment brings me back to the old days of unix geeks writing structural html with no concern for appearance. The separation of structure and formatting
by theoh 11y ago
That sentiment brings me back to the old days of unix geeks writing structural html with no concern for appearance.
The separation of structure and formatting is not practical for serious media of any kind. You can't separate form and content. Nor would most people want to, because (visual and other) complexity is an inevitable and rewarding part of human experience...
- mintplant 11y agoInstapaper? Reader View? RSS readers? Ebooks? Separation of form from content is both practical and commonplace. Your blog post may be beautifully styled, but that makes no difference if I can't even load it, or the fonts are so thin I have to squint to try to read, or the glaring white background makes me see floaters. A blind person doesn't care about the whizz-bang of $framework if your JS-only site breaks their screen reader.
- iamphilrae 11y agoLikewise I read all Hacker News links and comments over an iPhone HN app. Absolutely don't miss the form at all except in the cases where the source HTML is not semantic and so the reader mucks it up. But that's an issue with structure relying on form.
- tater_sent_me 11y agoThat's why I force all fonts to be comic sans.
- crispyambulance 11y agoThe problem for authors is accommodating all the different modes which readers may consume their media. Well-styled hypertext presented in the way the author intends/imagines is never going away, there will always be a place for that and it is very important. For other use-cases... that's why we have HTML and stylesheets. The problem has been solved, mostly sort-of.
- tuxracer 11y agoMost screen readers look at the output of the DOM. They aren't trying to parse RAW HTML from the server. Really wish this myth would go away :/
- albedoa 11y ago> The separation of structure and formatting is not practical for serious media of any kind. As already mentioned, this is demonstrably false. I'm choosing to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you don't understand how a great amount serious media is served nowadays, since the alternative means you are attempting to score internet points with a second-level contrarian post. But I have to wonder where you've been.
- theoh 11y agoThis has nothing to do with technology. A movie can't be accurately summarized textually. A book of poetry is profoundly coloured by the typeface chosen. A corporate logo is a visual artifact that cannot be communicated any other way.
- albedoa 11y agoYou're applying an absurdly narrow definition to the term "serious media" to support your false and equally absurd narrative. Congrats, you got your points.
- blt 11y ago"Serious media"? What does that even mean? I guess all those articles I read with mostly text and a few inline images/videos aren't serious.
- jmspring 11y ago"You can't separate form and content." -- as the author, but you should think about the reader. They may not be on the device you chose to support.
- roywiggins 11y agoThe AP's articles are printed in dozens of newspapers and websites. The content is completely separated from the form. Wire services have been doing this forever.
- specialist 11y ago"The separation of structure and formatting is not practical for serious media of any kind." The separation of structure and formatting is not practical for serious advertising platform of any kind.