4 ms·

This...does not match history. There was never a golden era like you describe (it was a time of conflicting philosophies, people saying "eh, let's add this, th

This...does not match history. There was never a golden era like you describe (it was a time of conflicting philosophies, people saying "eh, let's add this, that would be sweet", and browser vendors competing to add as much as possible to out "innovate" each other and the limited specs), semantic HTML helps in some cases but is never going to give you automatic accessibility, and a one size fits all browser style is still not going to give you what you need even as you add increasingly unsemantic tags to try to improve it (which is exactly what was happening pre-CSS).

kerkeslager 4y ago
> This...does not match history. I've been writing web code since 1997ish, so... > There was never a golden era like you describe (it was a time of conflicting philosophies, people saying "eh, let's add this, that would be sweet", and browser vendors competing to add as much as possible to out "innovate" each other and the limited specs) I did not describe a golden era of HTML, because a golden era of HTML never happened. Instead, it was precluded by the introduction of JS/CSS. Had JS and CSS never been invented, we might have achieved a golden era of HTML, but we would have needed web standards to mature before that could happen. What happened was, web standards did mature, but they matured to serve websites rather than users. As a result, mature web standards center around JS and CSS, leaving HTML anemic and weak. What we have now is a time of conflicting philosophies, with websites competing to add as much as possible to out "innovate" each other. Users still suffer the same inconsistent interfaces they did in 1997, it's just that instead of browsers being inconsistent, it's websites that are inconsistent.
- NoGravitas 4y ago
  Well, there was a previous garbage area, when HTML was, rather than being semantic, laid out using tables and \<color\> and \<font\>. I remember telling people to not do that, especially when the first version of CSS came out, and you could make websites look nice with semantic HTML that also worked in Lynx.
  - Dalewyn 4y ago
    Table layouts are still superior to CSS in that they achieve the Holy Grail layout. As far as I'm aware, CSS still fails to achieve the Holy Grail within any reasonable realm of effort. Hell, the entire reason the internet moved from Holy Grail layouts to singular sidebar and vertically integrated layouts was because CSS can't into Holy Grail. With how wide most users' monitors are ever since 16:9 became commonplace, Holy Grail should be the ideal content presentation layout because it uses all that free space on the sides for non-content (eg: navigation) so precious vertical real estate can be dedicated to content.
    - ozaark 4y ago
      This doesn't add up. CSS grid, flex box, etc all do the "holy grail" layout with a couple lines. The tables mess that was early www was and remains an absolute mess of markdown to maintain for layout. Semantics and accessibility are practically out the window with table. HCI dictates how humans use interfaces and with that comes many defacto reasons why a plain text page does not solve the problems users want to solve. Do you not think websites test into the optimal performing layouts and content distribution? If it worked better, we'd all be using it (it doesn't).
      - Dalewyn 4y ago
        >Do you not think websites test into the optimal performing layouts and content distribution? No, I think most website devs left to their devices optimize for least effort to create and maintain.
        kerkeslager 4y ago
        > No, I think most website devs left to their devices optimize for least effort to create and maintain. ...which is definitely not tables. Flexbox is much easier.
  - kerkeslager 4y ago
    Sure, but there were a lot of ways that could have been solved with HTML standards.

kerkeslager 4y ago

> This...does not match history. I've been writing web code since 1997ish, so... > There was never a golden era like you describe (it was a time of conflicting philosophies, people saying "eh, let's add this, that would be sweet", and browser vendors competing to add as much as possible to out "innovate" each other and the limited specs) I did not describe a golden era of HTML, because a golden era of HTML never happened. Instead, it was precluded by the introduction of JS/CSS. Had JS and CSS never been invented, we might have achieved a golden era of HTML, but we would have needed web standards to mature before that could happen. What happened was, web standards did mature, but they matured to serve websites rather than users. As a result, mature web standards center around JS and CSS, leaving HTML anemic and weak. What we have now is a time of conflicting philosophies, with websites competing to add as much as possible to out "innovate" each other. Users still suffer the same inconsistent interfaces they did in 1997, it's just that instead of browsers being inconsistent, it's websites that are inconsistent.

NoGravitas 4y ago
Well, there was a previous garbage area, when HTML was, rather than being semantic, laid out using tables and \<color\> and \<font\>. I remember telling people to not do that, especially when the first version of CSS came out, and you could make websites look nice with semantic HTML that also worked in Lynx.
- Dalewyn 4y ago
  Table layouts are still superior to CSS in that they achieve the Holy Grail layout. As far as I'm aware, CSS still fails to achieve the Holy Grail within any reasonable realm of effort. Hell, the entire reason the internet moved from Holy Grail layouts to singular sidebar and vertically integrated layouts was because CSS can't into Holy Grail. With how wide most users' monitors are ever since 16:9 became commonplace, Holy Grail should be the ideal content presentation layout because it uses all that free space on the sides for non-content (eg: navigation) so precious vertical real estate can be dedicated to content.
  - ozaark 4y ago
    This doesn't add up. CSS grid, flex box, etc all do the "holy grail" layout with a couple lines. The tables mess that was early www was and remains an absolute mess of markdown to maintain for layout. Semantics and accessibility are practically out the window with table. HCI dictates how humans use interfaces and with that comes many defacto reasons why a plain text page does not solve the problems users want to solve. Do you not think websites test into the optimal performing layouts and content distribution? If it worked better, we'd all be using it (it doesn't).
    - Dalewyn 4y ago
      >Do you not think websites test into the optimal performing layouts and content distribution? No, I think most website devs left to their devices optimize for least effort to create and maintain.
      - kerkeslager 4y ago
        > No, I think most website devs left to their devices optimize for least effort to create and maintain. ...which is definitely not tables. Flexbox is much easier.
- kerkeslager 4y ago
  Sure, but there were a lot of ways that could have been solved with HTML standards.