5 ms·

Time ago, I made a minimal HTML boilerplate myself. Mainly because nobody seems to understand what the word minimal means... Mine is truly minimal: https://git

Time ago, I made a minimal HTML boilerplate myself. Mainly because nobody seems to understand what the word minimal means... Mine is truly minimal: https://github.com/TimDaub/mynimal-html5-boilerplate https://github.com/TimDaub/mynimal-html5-boilerplate

enriquto 5y ago
Not truly minimal, it is fairly bloated due to the unnecessary usage of implicitly opened tags. You could get away with this: <!doctype html> <title>Your website: title</title> <h1>Title of your site</h1> <p> Here begins the text of this page. This is a complete, conformant, html5 document. Markdown is unnecessary nowadays.
- dheera 5y ago
  > Markdown is unnecessary nowadays. Exactly! I personally hate Markdown. I can never remember how many asterisks is bold, italic, or whether images are [!img(src)] or !(img)(src) or ![img](src) or [link](src!) or some other nonsense. HTML is much more consistent, limiting yourself to a subset of HTML keeps things very readable, and it's super easy to slap a stylesheet on the top and make it come to life, and change that stylesheet at any time.
  - ZephyrBlu 5y ago
    * for italic, ** for bold. This is pretty standard on the internet in my experience. Links are [](), but I do mess that up sometimes as well. Markdown is not inconsistent though, and I find it very readable.
    - zimpenfish 5y ago
      > * for italic, * for bold. I think something ate one of your *s. One star or underscore for italic; two stars or underscores for bold. > Links are [](), but I do mess that up sometimes as well. If you use the "remote ref" style[1], links are `[text][ref]` which is much easier (I remember the order as "this [text] points to that [ref]"). [1] https://www.markdownguide.org/basic-syntax/#reference-style-links https://www.markdownguide.org/basic-syntax/#reference-style-...
      - input_sh 5y ago
        > I think something ate one of your *s. That's because HN supports stripped version of Markdown and supports italic with one *, but not bold with **. You have to escape it with \.
      - ZephyrBlu 5y ago
        Ah thanks. I didn't notice I was missing a *.
    - dheera 5y ago
      I find it readable, but not that much more readable than plain old HTML with all styling relegated to a separate stylesheet, and using only the basic set of elements e.g. <h1>-<h6>, <a>, <img>, <p>, <pre>, etc. I find HTML far more writeable than Markdown, however, as all things have a consistent syntax.
- BiteCode_dev 5y ago
  Markdown would make it: # You website: title ## Title of your site Here begins the text of this page I do think it's easier to type.
  - enriquto 5y ago
    > I do think it's easier to type. I agree, but it's only marginally easier to type. But the markdown is not the final product, it still needs to be converted to html using a "static site generator" or some other thing that breaks every couple of years. I had my static site break due to jekyll shenanigans four times in the last few years, and then I decided to move the whole thing to plain html, and replace jekyll and its myriad of unused and fragile dependencies with a three-line shell script that calls "cat". Moreover, markdown is confusing to use for basic stuff like links, images (see the sibling comment), and even enumerated lists [0]. [0] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/12145232/create-an-automatically-numbered-list https://stackoverflow.com/questions/12145232/create-an-autom... every dialect of markdown has an infuriatingly different way of doing basic things that totally breaks your soul if you use a handful of them at the same time. EDIT:the example you wrote is not exactly the same thing as mine, is it? It seems like it would convert to H1 and H2 headings and both would be displayed in the body.
    - BiteCode_dev 5y ago
      I agree, and went the html road as well for a time, but I hit roadblocks: - When I'm in the flow, I really don't want to think about the structure of my text. The ms required for the tag insertion breaks that. - Unless you very disciplined with your HTML use, it's hard to get back structure from you HTML doc. You have to limit yourself to the subset you would get from markdown. I'm experimenting with asciidoc now, let's see if it's working.
      - mro_name 5y ago
        when in flow - does markup really matter then or is it mainly about letters and whitespace in sequence like text/plain? Not sure but guess for me the latter, what about you?
- smt88 5y ago
  Markdown is more human-readable, easier to type, and more concise. Its lack of flexibility is an important feature, too (no JS, no styles, and only one way to make text bold).
  - nindalf 5y ago
    No JS? That’s news to me. I added <script> tags and custom HTML tags in the markdown and it worked. Check the source of this page (https://blog.nindalf.com/posts/how-to-learn-unix-tools/ https://blog.nindalf.com/posts/how-to-learn-unix-tools/). It contains a CSS and JS declaration not present on other posts because they were included in the markdown. Also if you want to fully commit to JS frameworks, you can. Some frameworks support MDX, which has full support for JSX tags. You can include react components right next to your text.
    - Hedepig 5y ago
      The lack of any formal specification means Markdown can be pretty much anything you want it to be (provided there a supported implementation)
      - nindalf 5y ago
        All markdown parsers I've encountered add tags into the final HTML without modification. It might not be a part of the standard, but it's the standard practice.
  - squiggleblaz 5y ago
    > Its lack of flexibility is an important feature, too (no JS, no styles, and only one way to make text bold) HTML has two ways to make things bold: b and strong. But only one way to make a toplevel heading, h1. Markdown has one way to make things bold: ** **, but two ways to make a toplevel heading: # or ====== Other users have commented that Markdown in the wild is now little more than an alternative syntax for HTML, with scripts and other tags freely embeddable. Moreover, HTML is basically HTML: we used to have problems with browser compatibility, but most of those are in the land of CSS and Javascript now. Whereas Markdown can be found in different flavors. Aside from the burden on the author to know what flavor they are writing, it limits the reusability of documents. Consider a git repo that has a Github-flavored README.md file written for github, but it is also shown as part of the package documentation in a language specific library repository that shows the same README.md file using a simpler flavor of Markdown. The basic tags probably all work fine, but the broken CI badges will perhaps make it frustrating to read. HTML and Markdown both began with the best of intents as declarative document markup schemes. But because it is much harder to design a declarative programmer interface than an imperative one, both have accreted junk.
- timdaub 5y ago
  > <title>Your website: title</title> Well...
- timdaub 5y ago
  Clearly you're not a front end developer.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
account42 5y ago
> License MIT You expect people to paste the MIT license into their website source in order to use your "minimal" headers?

enriquto 5y ago

Not truly minimal, it is fairly bloated due to the unnecessary usage of implicitly opened tags. You could get away with this: <!doctype html> <title>Your website: title</title> <h1>Title of your site</h1> <p> Here begins the text of this page. This is a complete, conformant, html5 document. Markdown is unnecessary nowadays.

dheera 5y ago
> Markdown is unnecessary nowadays. Exactly! I personally hate Markdown. I can never remember how many asterisks is bold, italic, or whether images are [!img(src)] or !(img)(src) or ![img](src) or [link](src!) or some other nonsense. HTML is much more consistent, limiting yourself to a subset of HTML keeps things very readable, and it's super easy to slap a stylesheet on the top and make it come to life, and change that stylesheet at any time.
- ZephyrBlu 5y ago
  * for italic, ** for bold. This is pretty standard on the internet in my experience. Links are [](), but I do mess that up sometimes as well. Markdown is not inconsistent though, and I find it very readable.
  - zimpenfish 5y ago
    > * for italic, * for bold. I think something ate one of your *s. One star or underscore for italic; two stars or underscores for bold. > Links are [](), but I do mess that up sometimes as well. If you use the "remote ref" style[1], links are `[text][ref]` which is much easier (I remember the order as "this [text] points to that [ref]"). [1] https://www.markdownguide.org/basic-syntax/#reference-style-links https://www.markdownguide.org/basic-syntax/#reference-style-...
    - input_sh 5y ago
      > I think something ate one of your *s. That's because HN supports stripped version of Markdown and supports italic with one *, but not bold with **. You have to escape it with \.
    - ZephyrBlu 5y ago
      Ah thanks. I didn't notice I was missing a *.
  - dheera 5y ago
    I find it readable, but not that much more readable than plain old HTML with all styling relegated to a separate stylesheet, and using only the basic set of elements e.g. <h1>-<h6>, <a>, <img>, <p>, <pre>, etc. I find HTML far more writeable than Markdown, however, as all things have a consistent syntax.
BiteCode_dev 5y ago
Markdown would make it: # You website: title ## Title of your site Here begins the text of this page I do think it's easier to type.
- enriquto 5y ago
  > I do think it's easier to type. I agree, but it's only marginally easier to type. But the markdown is not the final product, it still needs to be converted to html using a "static site generator" or some other thing that breaks every couple of years. I had my static site break due to jekyll shenanigans four times in the last few years, and then I decided to move the whole thing to plain html, and replace jekyll and its myriad of unused and fragile dependencies with a three-line shell script that calls "cat". Moreover, markdown is confusing to use for basic stuff like links, images (see the sibling comment), and even enumerated lists [0]. [0] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/12145232/create-an-automatically-numbered-list https://stackoverflow.com/questions/12145232/create-an-autom... every dialect of markdown has an infuriatingly different way of doing basic things that totally breaks your soul if you use a handful of them at the same time. EDIT:the example you wrote is not exactly the same thing as mine, is it? It seems like it would convert to H1 and H2 headings and both would be displayed in the body.
  - BiteCode_dev 5y ago
    I agree, and went the html road as well for a time, but I hit roadblocks: - When I'm in the flow, I really don't want to think about the structure of my text. The ms required for the tag insertion breaks that. - Unless you very disciplined with your HTML use, it's hard to get back structure from you HTML doc. You have to limit yourself to the subset you would get from markdown. I'm experimenting with asciidoc now, let's see if it's working.
    - mro_name 5y ago
      when in flow - does markup really matter then or is it mainly about letters and whitespace in sequence like text/plain? Not sure but guess for me the latter, what about you?
smt88 5y ago
Markdown is more human-readable, easier to type, and more concise. Its lack of flexibility is an important feature, too (no JS, no styles, and only one way to make text bold).
- nindalf 5y ago
  No JS? That’s news to me. I added <script> tags and custom HTML tags in the markdown and it worked. Check the source of this page (https://blog.nindalf.com/posts/how-to-learn-unix-tools/ https://blog.nindalf.com/posts/how-to-learn-unix-tools/). It contains a CSS and JS declaration not present on other posts because they were included in the markdown. Also if you want to fully commit to JS frameworks, you can. Some frameworks support MDX, which has full support for JSX tags. You can include react components right next to your text.
  - Hedepig 5y ago
    The lack of any formal specification means Markdown can be pretty much anything you want it to be (provided there a supported implementation)
    - nindalf 5y ago
      All markdown parsers I've encountered add tags into the final HTML without modification. It might not be a part of the standard, but it's the standard practice.
- squiggleblaz 5y ago
  > Its lack of flexibility is an important feature, too (no JS, no styles, and only one way to make text bold) HTML has two ways to make things bold: b and strong. But only one way to make a toplevel heading, h1. Markdown has one way to make things bold: ** **, but two ways to make a toplevel heading: # or ====== Other users have commented that Markdown in the wild is now little more than an alternative syntax for HTML, with scripts and other tags freely embeddable. Moreover, HTML is basically HTML: we used to have problems with browser compatibility, but most of those are in the land of CSS and Javascript now. Whereas Markdown can be found in different flavors. Aside from the burden on the author to know what flavor they are writing, it limits the reusability of documents. Consider a git repo that has a Github-flavored README.md file written for github, but it is also shown as part of the package documentation in a language specific library repository that shows the same README.md file using a simpler flavor of Markdown. The basic tags probably all work fine, but the broken CI badges will perhaps make it frustrating to read. HTML and Markdown both began with the best of intents as declarative document markup schemes. But because it is much harder to design a declarative programmer interface than an imperative one, both have accreted junk.
timdaub 5y ago
> <title>Your website: title</title> Well...
timdaub 5y ago
Clearly you're not a front end developer.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

account42 5y ago

> License MIT You expect people to paste the MIT license into their website source in order to use your "minimal" headers?