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As always when styling comes up there's always a few people on HN who claim to prefer "no CSS" because they "always" use Lynx, or deeply customize all content o

As always when styling comes up there's always a few people on HN who claim to prefer "no CSS" because they "always" use Lynx, or deeply customize all content on their own from scratch, or are using a 1G flip phone, or care about milliseconds of loading time or they're RMS (oh, wait, stallman.css exists!). Sure, some idiosyncratic blogs can get away with that css-free "look" (eg https://danluu.com/ https://danluu.com/). The W3? NO? but now I guess so!

jefftk 4y ago
Dan does have a bit of CSS, though: .pd{width:4em;flex-shrink:0;padding-bottom:.9em}.par div{display:flex}
iLoveOncall 4y ago
> some idiosyncratic blogs can get away with that css-free "look" (eg https://danluu.com/ https://danluu.com/) Not even. The articles there are incredibly compact blocks of text that are way too wide to be comfortable for reading. Minimal CSS is an absolute requirement if you want a website that is pleasant to read.
- leephillips 4y ago
  But with a couple of keystrokes that are in my muscle memory I can narrow my browser window to any reading width I want. So there’s no problem, and the site is easier to read than almost all modern websites.
  - threatofrain 4y ago
    Modern web browsers also come with a readability mode built-in.
    - dredmorbius 4y ago
      Though in fairness, that won't work for the w3.org homepage (at least not on Firefox).
  - iLoveOncall 4y ago
    The width is only one of the many problems harming readability. You can't increase line spacing with a shortcut for example.
KyeRussell 4y ago
As someone with a visual impairment, when I open that website I see someone that wants to put weird internet idealism above not giving me eye strain. This attitude is a bit of oldschool internet culture that I’m glad to see die off.
- WorldMaker 4y ago
  Originally it was the job of browsers to provide good readable non-eye straining, user controllable default styles. In the browser wars it was decided few websites "wanted" good defaults, they'd rather "no defaults" so that every website could be styled as its own special snowflake (to meet brand goals or design team whims) and so default styles became a lowest common denominator trapped in the 90s. Eventually browsers rediscovered that need to provide good defaults and now call it "Reading Mode" and force users to opt in to that behavior on a page by page basis. Something lately I've been wondering is if there should be a way to signal to a browser "this is an intentionally minimal HTML page, please style it by default as if the user chose Reading Mode".

jefftk 4y ago

Dan does have a bit of CSS, though: .pd{width:4em;flex-shrink:0;padding-bottom:.9em}.par div{display:flex}

iLoveOncall 4y ago

> some idiosyncratic blogs can get away with that css-free "look" (eg https://danluu.com/ https://danluu.com/) Not even. The articles there are incredibly compact blocks of text that are way too wide to be comfortable for reading. Minimal CSS is an absolute requirement if you want a website that is pleasant to read.

leephillips 4y ago
But with a couple of keystrokes that are in my muscle memory I can narrow my browser window to any reading width I want. So there’s no problem, and the site is easier to read than almost all modern websites.
- threatofrain 4y ago
  Modern web browsers also come with a readability mode built-in.
  - dredmorbius 4y ago
    Though in fairness, that won't work for the w3.org homepage (at least not on Firefox).
- iLoveOncall 4y ago
  The width is only one of the many problems harming readability. You can't increase line spacing with a shortcut for example.

KyeRussell 4y ago

As someone with a visual impairment, when I open that website I see someone that wants to put weird internet idealism above not giving me eye strain. This attitude is a bit of oldschool internet culture that I’m glad to see die off.

WorldMaker 4y ago
Originally it was the job of browsers to provide good readable non-eye straining, user controllable default styles. In the browser wars it was decided few websites "wanted" good defaults, they'd rather "no defaults" so that every website could be styled as its own special snowflake (to meet brand goals or design team whims) and so default styles became a lowest common denominator trapped in the 90s. Eventually browsers rediscovered that need to provide good defaults and now call it "Reading Mode" and force users to opt in to that behavior on a page by page basis. Something lately I've been wondering is if there should be a way to signal to a browser "this is an intentionally minimal HTML page, please style it by default as if the user chose Reading Mode".