4 ms·

There are about 100 ways to do any given thing when building web apps, and it's a constantly shifting landscape where "the way" you do a bunch of things is diff

There are about 100 ways to do any given thing when building web apps, and it's a constantly shifting landscape where "the way" you do a bunch of things is different every time you start a new app (at least it feels that way to me). Being really good at front-end (to the point you know when to use a native control or not, which "standard" features you can rely on, how to think about accessibility+responsive+dark mode+ad blockers+low bandwidth+seo etc) is an entire discipline that takes a lot of effort to stay current in. If you use pure, standard html with default styling you still end up with a page using bad colors and Times New Roman that looks straight out of the 90s. If that's not the look you're going for, you need to do some customization (via CSS) and the difference between "some" and "to the nines" is not exactly a clear line -- even to people that have specialized their careers in front-end dev.

thwarted 6y ago
If the decision comes down to "I can't get the exact shade of cornflower blue I want on this button unless I make it a div, but that will hurt accessibility" and you chose the exact shade of cornflower blue, your priorities are wrong. And not just because you hurt accessibility, but because you probably made more work for yourself. We went through this 15 years ago with custom scroll bars that didn't look like scroll bars, didn't operate like scroll bars and didn't interact like scroll bars, all because it could happen. An Ian Malcom quote comes to mind.
- gregmac 6y ago
  I don't think that's a conscious decision though. What happens is: - I can't get this exact shade of cornflower blue - Oh, here's a solution that works! Oh, it doesn't work in all browsers - Hmm, here's a stack overflow answer that says use a div. It's 5 years old, is that current? Dunno but it has 457 up votes and works Some people are concerned about accessibility but the JavaScript doesn't work in iOS. Others have iOS support but they screwed up cache headers and it's super slow on any low bandwidth connection. Balancing all those things (and that's a very incomplete list) is hard and it's not fair to expect side/hobby/oss projects to do it 100%.
  - josephg 6y ago
    Huh? You can get whatever shade you want. Just use a reset stylesheet for buttons and then you can style them like you would any other div. They work in every browser, too. I understand the argument that a decade ago this was trickier, but that time has long since passed. Style your button with css.

thwarted 6y ago

If the decision comes down to "I can't get the exact shade of cornflower blue I want on this button unless I make it a div, but that will hurt accessibility" and you chose the exact shade of cornflower blue, your priorities are wrong. And not just because you hurt accessibility, but because you probably made more work for yourself. We went through this 15 years ago with custom scroll bars that didn't look like scroll bars, didn't operate like scroll bars and didn't interact like scroll bars, all because it could happen. An Ian Malcom quote comes to mind.

gregmac 6y ago
I don't think that's a conscious decision though. What happens is: - I can't get this exact shade of cornflower blue - Oh, here's a solution that works! Oh, it doesn't work in all browsers - Hmm, here's a stack overflow answer that says use a div. It's 5 years old, is that current? Dunno but it has 457 up votes and works Some people are concerned about accessibility but the JavaScript doesn't work in iOS. Others have iOS support but they screwed up cache headers and it's super slow on any low bandwidth connection. Balancing all those things (and that's a very incomplete list) is hard and it's not fair to expect side/hobby/oss projects to do it 100%.
- josephg 6y ago
  Huh? You can get whatever shade you want. Just use a reset stylesheet for buttons and then you can style them like you would any other div. They work in every browser, too. I understand the argument that a decade ago this was trickier, but that time has long since passed. Style your button with css.