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The problem is that people do build sites that look like the first website: https://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/multiboot/multiboot.html https://www.gnu.o

The problem is that people do build sites that look like the first website: https://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/multiboot/multiboot.html https://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/multiboot/multiboot...

danShumway 6y ago
Fair, but using GNU's work as an example almost feels like cheating in a weird way ;). GNU is not building a hard-core minimalist website, they do include CSS on their page -- in fact they include more of it than this website does. So the problem isn't that GNU is too minimal or that they've sworn off of CSS, the problem is that modern GNU increasingly doesn't seem to know how to design anything at all when it comes to UX, and that there's probably somebody somewhere on their chain of authority for this page seriously arguing that line-wrapping is bad design or some other nonsense. But I don't know. To the extent that GNU's design aesthetics actually represent a web design trend, then I do concede that it's a bad trend, and everybody who's following it should add `body { max-width: 40em; margin: auto; }` to the top of their CSS files.
- GoblinSlayer 6y ago
  GNU docs have good design in accordance with W3C best practices: rendering is user agent's job, and if it doesn't do the job per your preference, you change the user agent to the one that does or submit an RFE to your user agent vendor to support your preference.
  - danShumway 6y ago
    > GNU docs have good design Who's side are you on here, stop proving fctorial's point :) > rendering is user agent's job GNU uses more CSS than the joke website in question for an uglier result; they're putting in more effort to make something that's less readable. I don't see how anyone can call that good design. It would take literally 2 CSS declarations to improve their website's design for >90% of the people looking at their page, at no cost or inconvenience to any other user. Good user-interface design incorporates sensible defaults. It is a very GNU-like thing to look at the current web ecosystem, notice that basically every browser acts a certain way and has a certain standard default styling for HTML, and then to still argue that it's the user's fault that their website looks the way it does. I don't see any W3C best practices anywhere that argue column widths should be avoided, and GNU is clearly comfortable overriding default agent behavior for other parts of this page when it comes to indenting lists and styling code blocks. Edit: actually, I stand corrected. GNU is including a bunch of styling code and then commenting it out so it doesn't work. What the heck, who is maintaining this page? Why is that stuff being shipped to the user if it's unusable? In any case, W3C best practice is very much NOT to avoid all CSS, that's a massive mischaracterization of their positions.
    - minitech 6y ago
      > Edit: actually, I stand corrected. GNU is including a bunch of styling code and then commenting it out so it doesn't work. Where do you see that? If you’re referring to the  in the <style>, that’s an old standard compatibility hack and doesn’t stop the styles from being applied.
      - danShumway 6y ago
        Yep that was what I was referring too. Good to know, today I learned.
    - GoblinSlayer 6y ago
      >Who's side are you on here, stop proving fctorial's point :) I'm on my side and against people who push their preferences on me. >It would take literally 2 CSS declarations to improve their website's design for >90% of the people looking at their page, at no cost or inconvenience to any other user. Good user-interface design incorporates sensible defaults. The sensible default is to follow user preferences. Those 90% people do it this way and GNU docs rightfully don't question it. User preferences can't be reasonably implemented on the server side, because different people have different preferences, so it's undecidable whose preferences to implement. >I don't see any W3C best practices anywhere that argue column widths should be avoided W3C best practice is to let user agent render text as appropriate. http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ touches on this too: >You dumbass. You thought you needed media queries to be responsive, but no. Responsive means that it responds to whatever motherfucking screensize it's viewed on. This site doesn't care if you're on an iMac or a motherfucking Tamagotchi. W3C often refers to unusual user agents to illustrate their point of client side rendering.
      - danShumway 6y ago
        > and against people who push their preferences on me. > The sensible default is to follow user preferences. > W3C best practice is to let user agent render text as appropriate. But nothing about including CSS goes against this. CSS is clientside rendering, it has nothing to do with forcing preferences on anyone. Your browser has the ability to override provided styles and either modify or ignore CSS. If it doesn't then I suggest, in your words, "changing the user agent to the one that does, or submiting an RFE to your user agent vendor." This is why we use CSS. So that we can separate style from content and lay out a page with nice defaults that can still be overridden by the user. And not only is CSS customizable and overridable, because it's completely separate from content it is also optional. Any of your users can choose not to download your CSS file and they'll get served the exact same HTML content that they're getting now. So when I say that there's no cost or inconvenience for users who don't like your styles, I literally mean that. There is no cost to them because they don't have to download the file. They can disable all 3rd-party CSS in their user agent if they don't want it, and then they don't even need to waste time making an extra network request. Imagine taking this attitude with other applications as well. Should we be upset that Emacs ships with default keybindings? Is that as an undecidable problem? When I install a MELPA package, should I get mad that the author is pushing their default config on me? There's no downside to having optional defaults that users can partially override or fully ignore at their own convenience. > W3C best practice is to let user agent render text as appropriate. If this is genuinely GNU's attitude, then why does this page include style resets? You're heavily misreading the W3C's position here. Letting the user agent render text as appropriate does not contradict providing CSS, and I've never heard of the W3C advising authors to avoid CSS.

danShumway 6y ago

Fair, but using GNU's work as an example almost feels like cheating in a weird way ;). GNU is not building a hard-core minimalist website, they do include CSS on their page -- in fact they include more of it than this website does. So the problem isn't that GNU is too minimal or that they've sworn off of CSS, the problem is that modern GNU increasingly doesn't seem to know how to design anything at all when it comes to UX, and that there's probably somebody somewhere on their chain of authority for this page seriously arguing that line-wrapping is bad design or some other nonsense. But I don't know. To the extent that GNU's design aesthetics actually represent a web design trend, then I do concede that it's a bad trend, and everybody who's following it should add `body { max-width: 40em; margin: auto; }` to the top of their CSS files.

GoblinSlayer 6y ago
GNU docs have good design in accordance with W3C best practices: rendering is user agent's job, and if it doesn't do the job per your preference, you change the user agent to the one that does or submit an RFE to your user agent vendor to support your preference.
- danShumway 6y ago
  > GNU docs have good design Who's side are you on here, stop proving fctorial's point :) > rendering is user agent's job GNU uses more CSS than the joke website in question for an uglier result; they're putting in more effort to make something that's less readable. I don't see how anyone can call that good design. It would take literally 2 CSS declarations to improve their website's design for >90% of the people looking at their page, at no cost or inconvenience to any other user. Good user-interface design incorporates sensible defaults. It is a very GNU-like thing to look at the current web ecosystem, notice that basically every browser acts a certain way and has a certain standard default styling for HTML, and then to still argue that it's the user's fault that their website looks the way it does. I don't see any W3C best practices anywhere that argue column widths should be avoided, and GNU is clearly comfortable overriding default agent behavior for other parts of this page when it comes to indenting lists and styling code blocks. Edit: actually, I stand corrected. GNU is including a bunch of styling code and then commenting it out so it doesn't work. What the heck, who is maintaining this page? Why is that stuff being shipped to the user if it's unusable? In any case, W3C best practice is very much NOT to avoid all CSS, that's a massive mischaracterization of their positions.
  - minitech 6y ago
    > Edit: actually, I stand corrected. GNU is including a bunch of styling code and then commenting it out so it doesn't work. Where do you see that? If you’re referring to the  in the <style>, that’s an old standard compatibility hack and doesn’t stop the styles from being applied.
    - danShumway 6y ago
      Yep that was what I was referring too. Good to know, today I learned.
  - GoblinSlayer 6y ago
    >Who's side are you on here, stop proving fctorial's point :) I'm on my side and against people who push their preferences on me. >It would take literally 2 CSS declarations to improve their website's design for >90% of the people looking at their page, at no cost or inconvenience to any other user. Good user-interface design incorporates sensible defaults. The sensible default is to follow user preferences. Those 90% people do it this way and GNU docs rightfully don't question it. User preferences can't be reasonably implemented on the server side, because different people have different preferences, so it's undecidable whose preferences to implement. >I don't see any W3C best practices anywhere that argue column widths should be avoided W3C best practice is to let user agent render text as appropriate. http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ touches on this too: >You dumbass. You thought you needed media queries to be responsive, but no. Responsive means that it responds to whatever motherfucking screensize it's viewed on. This site doesn't care if you're on an iMac or a motherfucking Tamagotchi. W3C often refers to unusual user agents to illustrate their point of client side rendering.
    - danShumway 6y ago
      > and against people who push their preferences on me. > The sensible default is to follow user preferences. > W3C best practice is to let user agent render text as appropriate. But nothing about including CSS goes against this. CSS is clientside rendering, it has nothing to do with forcing preferences on anyone. Your browser has the ability to override provided styles and either modify or ignore CSS. If it doesn't then I suggest, in your words, "changing the user agent to the one that does, or submiting an RFE to your user agent vendor." This is why we use CSS. So that we can separate style from content and lay out a page with nice defaults that can still be overridden by the user. And not only is CSS customizable and overridable, because it's completely separate from content it is also optional. Any of your users can choose not to download your CSS file and they'll get served the exact same HTML content that they're getting now. So when I say that there's no cost or inconvenience for users who don't like your styles, I literally mean that. There is no cost to them because they don't have to download the file. They can disable all 3rd-party CSS in their user agent if they don't want it, and then they don't even need to waste time making an extra network request. Imagine taking this attitude with other applications as well. Should we be upset that Emacs ships with default keybindings? Is that as an undecidable problem? When I install a MELPA package, should I get mad that the author is pushing their default config on me? There's no downside to having optional defaults that users can partially override or fully ignore at their own convenience. > W3C best practice is to let user agent render text as appropriate. If this is genuinely GNU's attitude, then why does this page include style resets? You're heavily misreading the W3C's position here. Letting the user agent render text as appropriate does not contradict providing CSS, and I've never heard of the W3C advising authors to avoid CSS.