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I like the general design philosophy, but I think this website as an example is weakly executed and shows the author's poor commitment to his own philosophical
by wgjordan 8y ago
I like the general design philosophy, but I think this website as an example is weakly executed and shows the author's poor commitment to his own philosophical ideals. Specifically, the author claims to maintain a 'Truth to materials', which is summarized on the Wikipedia page he links to as "any material should be used where it is most appropriate and its nature should not be hidden". However, he then goes on to include hidden JavaScript tracker code in the footer of his page:
$ xidel https://brutalist-web.design -s --css='script'
var _gauges = _gauges || [];
(function() {
var t = document.createElement('script');
t.type = 'text/javascript';
t.async = true;
t.id = 'gauges-tracker';
t.setAttribute('data-site-id', '5aff5aa154a1b97a229142e1');
t.setAttribute('data-track-path', 'https://track.gaug.es/track.gif');
t.src = 'https://d2fuc4clr7gvcn.cloudfront.net/track.js';
var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0];
s.parentNode.insertBefore(t, s);
})();
Note that this injects a _further_ JavaScript blob into the DOM (https://d2fuc4clr7gvcn.cloudfront.net/track.js https://d2fuc4clr7gvcn.cloudfront.net/track.js). Anything but 'truth to materials' here.
Beyond this, the author also minifies his 'built by hand' HTML and includes a few other blobs of webpack-bundled JavaScript code. Sure, this is all not-unexpected for run-of-the-mill websites these days, I was just expecting a better example from a web-design manifesto advocating the exact opposite.
- albertgoeswoof 8y agoThose examples are not design related...
- wgjordan 8y ago> Those examples are not design related... I disagree. I'll grant that if you narrowly idealize 'the visitor' to be a content-consumer who never chooses to 'view source' (let alone use a command-line user-agent to interact with a website), minifying/bundling HTML/JS doesn't affect the 'visitor experience' design. However, hidden tracker JavaScript definitely impacts every visitor's experience, and directly betrays the 'honest and transparent interaction with a visitor' the author desires: > a button agrees to submit the visitors information to the server. Hiding this interaction behind a hyperlink or unadorned text betrays the core nature of a website. The JavaScript tracker hides its interaction behind the browser's JavaScript engine, which is a much greater betrayal than any poorly-styled hyperlink or button.