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Do you think this may be related to the rise of javascript and heavy front end, client-side frameworks? To be clear, this is something I'm mulling over, not a

by geebee 9y ago

Do you think this may be related to the rise of javascript and heavy front end, client-side frameworks? To be clear, this is something I'm mulling over, not a hard conclusion, but here it goes... Creating a simple, server rendered, text based web site may be exactly what the users need, but from a developer's point of view, it can also be a career risk. A rapidly increasing percentage of development jobs out there now require experience with a front-end framework. As a result, developers need this experience, so they start adding front end frameworks in order to 1) gain that experience, and 2) document that experience in a real world project. Remember, a project isn't just a project, it's an audition for your next project. This is how tech recruiting works[1]. So developers may be adding new bells and whistles that are not only unnecessary[2], but actively harmful to their current project, largely because they are necessary to their resume, and it's actively harmful not to have them there. In short, one of the reasons the web is becoming unreadable is that web developers can't create the resume they'll need for their next gig by using the best tech for their current one. [1] I'm getting long in the tooth enough to have seen this a few times. Companies required "EJB", it wasn't enough to have experience with Tomcat and standard Java. Later, Spring, Struts, Hibernate, iBatis were required. These days, it's ember, react, and other rapidly evolving JS frameworks. [2] I want to be clear that I think many of these frameworks are actually pretty excellent, for projects that need them. The problem is, if your current project doesn't, you still have a strong incentive to bring them in.

johnchristopher 9y ago
The article deals with text readability and typography, not with an over reliance on JavaScript front-end frameworks to render « simple » text.
- NoGravitas 9y ago
  I think geebee's point is that the two trends go together chronologically; is there a causal relationship, or is it a spurious correlation?
- geebee 9y ago
  That's absolutely true. However, my question is whether part of the decline of text readability is due to a resume building need to involve technologies that don't have much to do with basic text. Here's the thing - people don't like to bring in a more complex technology simply to do exactly the same thing as they could do with a simpler one. They need to justify its presence in there somehow. For instance, supposed you decided to re-implement hacker news with a client heavy javascript framework. Would you leave it looking exactly the same as before? Almost certainly not, you'd start using that javascript stuff, and (in my opinion), the end result would no longer be the simple, easy to read, text based website that it currently is. That's the connection I'm getting at here (and once again, it's something I'm mulling over, not a hard conclusion I've reached).
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - munchbunny 9y ago
    I would agree that what you state are factors, but I would disagree that they are the main factors. One thing I notice in my work (in product management) is that people naturally gravitate towards shiny things. So we design things to be shiny in order to attract those people. At various points, a specific aesthetic gains popularity because, for well-founded reasons, it increases usability and readability. Then everyone starts to imitate it, partly because it works, but also partly because people are drawn to it. Then frameworks are created to enable teams to rapidly replicate the style. At a certain point, the frameworks are good enough to just replicate the style in basic settings with little input needed from someone who is actually thinking really hard about the design. In many ways that's a good thing because it lowers the barrier to entry. It's much easier to make things because the framework drastically reduces the amount of wheel reinventing you'd need to do. But you end up with designs where nobody really thought that hard about it - and so you end up proliferating potentially bad defaults encoded in the frameworks. I'm personally much more willing to believe that the decline in overall design quality is due to negligence from convenience.
    - adrianratnapala 9y ago
- walterstucco 9y ago
  Content producers shouldn't need more than a static site generator and a theme backed by a good custom frontend for inserting new content The web as a publishing platform shouldn't need React or 2MB of js libraries Web apps are a different story but have also different requirements I've been mostly a web developer for the past 20 years and I can't understand why there isn't a good solution yet Look at 4chan or Craigslist They're highly successful and they serve pure static (ugly) html
  - nsgi 9y ago
    There are also many sites that are highly successful and use 2MB of javascript. I'm not sure what this proves, except that when an app is useful users won't be put off by the technology or even user experience.
borplk 9y ago
I feel like there's a deep-rooted tension and aggression in the web space that is caused by the evolution of the web to an application platform. I think we are increasingly needing a stronger separation between functionality oriented applications that operate in the browser vs media-based content (documents/videos/images/articles). The web has become an unnecessary-hostile platform for web applications because you are standing on a thin layer of glass the whole time because you have to juggle so many combinations of environments and browsers and capabilities and devices and screen sizes and internet speeds and everything in between. For example there's an insane amount of baggage involved today in deploying a decent production web application in terms of bundling the assets caching vendor prefixing feature detection and so on.. So much of that could go away if we had a more application-focused platform on the web. So someone could say you want a web-based customer service desk application? Here install this 30MB bundle once and let us focus on everything else. It's not a big ask. Instead we have a mindfuck of "minifying" "vendor prefixing" "css autopefix" "css sprite" "code splitting" "tree shaking" "___ javascript library that is only 4 kilo bytes!" "hash based cache busting strategy" "feature detection" and so on. It just adds unnecessary complexity and baggage. As a long-time web dev I'd like to see the web platform for applications evolve into a more friendly and predictable environment for the developers more similar to the mobile app platform.
- nostrademons 9y ago
  "Here install this 30MB bundle once and let us focus on everything else. It's not a big ask." That was basically Java applets, and then later JNLP and Flash. It turns out it is a big ask. Users really don't want to install software, and their attention span is literally about two seconds. Javascript + DOM "won" over Java applets for two main reasons: you could access the whole browser window, and you could display something on the screen immediately without needing to load your whole application's functionality. We didn't like JS back in 2002 either - the Java ecosystem was much more mature and easier to program with. But we put up with it because users expressed a very clear preference for DHTML apps over Java applets, and money follows users, and devs follow the money. All the tree-shaking, code-splitting, minifying, etc. is there to preserve this "loads quickly" property as JS apps have gotten more complex. A lot of sites do it poorly, but think of those sites as prey for an enterprising startup willing to put the extra effort into snappiness.
godot 9y ago
Although this isn't directly related to the article, I can't upvote this enough. To be clear, the article is almost solely about contrast between text and background colors, not JS heavy frontends. But I think what you've stated is very true and is also my opinion about the current state of web frontend. Like another user said here, the contrast is a result of designers working with a page with too much content, and trying to reduce the feeling of content overwhelm. I don't think heavy JS frontend is directly related to that. But what you've said should not be discounted.
deleted 9y ago
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deleted 9y ago
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zzzcpan 9y ago
Ok, many developers, especially at the beginning of their careers, do like to introduce new things into the projects when they believe those things could advance their careers or even simply sound cool to talk to the peers about. But this is not the reason for the unreadable web. I think the reason is simpler, more like fashion: most people who are in a position to play with fonts and colors have absolutely no idea what they are doing and make decisions by copying somebody else who they perceive as cool, and there is always pressure to make it look cool, so it spreads.

by geebee 9y ago

johnchristopher 9y ago

The article deals with text readability and typography, not with an over reliance on JavaScript front-end frameworks to render « simple » text.

NoGravitas 9y ago
I think geebee's point is that the two trends go together chronologically; is there a causal relationship, or is it a spurious correlation?
geebee 9y ago
That's absolutely true. However, my question is whether part of the decline of text readability is due to a resume building need to involve technologies that don't have much to do with basic text. Here's the thing - people don't like to bring in a more complex technology simply to do exactly the same thing as they could do with a simpler one. They need to justify its presence in there somehow. For instance, supposed you decided to re-implement hacker news with a client heavy javascript framework. Would you leave it looking exactly the same as before? Almost certainly not, you'd start using that javascript stuff, and (in my opinion), the end result would no longer be the simple, easy to read, text based website that it currently is. That's the connection I'm getting at here (and once again, it's something I'm mulling over, not a hard conclusion I've reached).
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- munchbunny 9y ago
  I would agree that what you state are factors, but I would disagree that they are the main factors. One thing I notice in my work (in product management) is that people naturally gravitate towards shiny things. So we design things to be shiny in order to attract those people. At various points, a specific aesthetic gains popularity because, for well-founded reasons, it increases usability and readability. Then everyone starts to imitate it, partly because it works, but also partly because people are drawn to it. Then frameworks are created to enable teams to rapidly replicate the style. At a certain point, the frameworks are good enough to just replicate the style in basic settings with little input needed from someone who is actually thinking really hard about the design. In many ways that's a good thing because it lowers the barrier to entry. It's much easier to make things because the framework drastically reduces the amount of wheel reinventing you'd need to do. But you end up with designs where nobody really thought that hard about it - and so you end up proliferating potentially bad defaults encoded in the frameworks. I'm personally much more willing to believe that the decline in overall design quality is due to negligence from convenience.
  - adrianratnapala 9y ago
walterstucco 9y ago
Content producers shouldn't need more than a static site generator and a theme backed by a good custom frontend for inserting new content The web as a publishing platform shouldn't need React or 2MB of js libraries Web apps are a different story but have also different requirements I've been mostly a web developer for the past 20 years and I can't understand why there isn't a good solution yet Look at 4chan or Craigslist They're highly successful and they serve pure static (ugly) html
- nsgi 9y ago
  There are also many sites that are highly successful and use 2MB of javascript. I'm not sure what this proves, except that when an app is useful users won't be put off by the technology or even user experience.

borplk 9y ago

I feel like there's a deep-rooted tension and aggression in the web space that is caused by the evolution of the web to an application platform. I think we are increasingly needing a stronger separation between functionality oriented applications that operate in the browser vs media-based content (documents/videos/images/articles). The web has become an unnecessary-hostile platform for web applications because you are standing on a thin layer of glass the whole time because you have to juggle so many combinations of environments and browsers and capabilities and devices and screen sizes and internet speeds and everything in between. For example there's an insane amount of baggage involved today in deploying a decent production web application in terms of bundling the assets caching vendor prefixing feature detection and so on.. So much of that could go away if we had a more application-focused platform on the web. So someone could say you want a web-based customer service desk application? Here install this 30MB bundle once and let us focus on everything else. It's not a big ask. Instead we have a mindfuck of "minifying" "vendor prefixing" "css autopefix" "css sprite" "code splitting" "tree shaking" "___ javascript library that is only 4 kilo bytes!" "hash based cache busting strategy" "feature detection" and so on. It just adds unnecessary complexity and baggage. As a long-time web dev I'd like to see the web platform for applications evolve into a more friendly and predictable environment for the developers more similar to the mobile app platform.

nostrademons 9y ago
"Here install this 30MB bundle once and let us focus on everything else. It's not a big ask." That was basically Java applets, and then later JNLP and Flash. It turns out it is a big ask. Users really don't want to install software, and their attention span is literally about two seconds. Javascript + DOM "won" over Java applets for two main reasons: you could access the whole browser window, and you could display something on the screen immediately without needing to load your whole application's functionality. We didn't like JS back in 2002 either - the Java ecosystem was much more mature and easier to program with. But we put up with it because users expressed a very clear preference for DHTML apps over Java applets, and money follows users, and devs follow the money. All the tree-shaking, code-splitting, minifying, etc. is there to preserve this "loads quickly" property as JS apps have gotten more complex. A lot of sites do it poorly, but think of those sites as prey for an enterprising startup willing to put the extra effort into snappiness.

godot 9y ago

Although this isn't directly related to the article, I can't upvote this enough. To be clear, the article is almost solely about contrast between text and background colors, not JS heavy frontends. But I think what you've stated is very true and is also my opinion about the current state of web frontend. Like another user said here, the contrast is a result of designers working with a page with too much content, and trying to reduce the feeling of content overwhelm. I don't think heavy JS frontend is directly related to that. But what you've said should not be discounted.

deleted 9y ago

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deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

zzzcpan 9y ago

Ok, many developers, especially at the beginning of their careers, do like to introduce new things into the projects when they believe those things could advance their careers or even simply sound cool to talk to the peers about. But this is not the reason for the unreadable web. I think the reason is simpler, more like fashion: most people who are in a position to play with fonts and colors have absolutely no idea what they are doing and make decisions by copying somebody else who they perceive as cool, and there is always pressure to make it look cool, so it spreads.