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No CSS Club
- arrowsmith 3y agohttps://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ https://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ is the same as this except more entertaining to read.
- hk__2 3y agoAnd, ironically, with Google Analytics.
- sirpilade 3y agoRichard Stallman[1] should be appointed honorary president [1] https://stallman.org/ https://stallman.org/
- VitoVan 3y agoBut he do have CSS on the site: https://stallman.org/common/stallman.css https://stallman.org/common/stallman.css
- Fred34 3y agoHis site is on my blogroll. I still check it for his political takes -- not that I tend to agree with him on a lot.
- CaptainFever 3y agoI’m surprised by how often he posts, and that his posts aren’t usually related to free software.
- lexicality 3y agoHe'd be disqualified because there's loads of CSS on his site. Just because it's ugly doesn't mean he didn't use CSS!
- Wowfunhappy 3y agoDue to the long line length, I had to shrink my browser window in order to read this submission comfortably. I dunno guys, I kind of like CSS.
- ptx 3y agoOn the other hand, if all sites were like this, we would just keep our browser windows at a smaller size and it would work fine.
- enumjorge 3y agoWe could also all go back to 800x600 monitors. That way, no one would have to be subjected to writing the 10 lines of css to make text heavy sites more readable ;)
- Gordonjcp 3y agoNo, because then you'd have a short line of text that takes up a huge amount of space. Your lines of text on the screen should never be much wider than your hand at arm's length, ever, for any reason. Not even if it's an example of a one-liner in bash - wrap that line to make it easier to read. Don't believe me? Angrily click <reply> on this post to tell me what an idiot I am, start to type your reply, and then hold your hand up palm out at arm's length to the screen so it covers up the text box you're typing in. How big is it? Told you so, didn't I? And it looks *perfect*.
- Wowfunhappy 3y ago> Not even if it's an example of a one-liner in bash - wrap that line to make it easier to read. This is the one case (that I can think of right now) where I don't agree. As part of a larger script, sure, wrap the line so it's not way longer than all the other lines. But a single shell command in isolation is always easier to read as a single line, if sufficient horizontal space is available.
- 3y ago
- psnehanshu 3y agoThese websites have no individual identity, they all look the same.
- master-lincoln 3y agoThis probably says more about yourself than these websites. Identity should go beyond visuals...
- lexicality 3y agoUnfortunately the web is a visual medium and humans evolved to identify things with their eyes. Unless your audience is entirely the blind and partially sighted, visual identity is pretty important
- krapp 3y agoTrue hackers only read the web directly as source files fetched by CUrl and opened in Nano anyway. Only normies need anything more than their minds to "parse" or "compile" source.
- bcrosby95 3y agoMost books get by with a cover and hundreds of pages of only text.
- lexicality 3y agoI have a bookshelf of books next to me and the only ones with even slightly similar spines are books in the same series, not to speak of the covers. I opened a couple of text heavy ones and they all had different font choices and minor variations on page layout. Most of them had elaborate and unique chapter headings. Book typesetting is a fascinating subject, I would recommend anyone who works with websites to look into the way typography influences the reader's subconscious. (Maybe we'd have less Helvetica spaffed all over the internet!)
- 3stripe 3y agoThere’s definitely something to be said for “hardly any CSS” websites that are brutally functional. For example was looking at http://www.steephill.tv/ http://www.steephill.tv/ yesterday for cycling news (recently shut down sadly)
- Fred34 3y agoAnother one is https://www.friesian.com/history https://www.friesian.com/history One of my favorite references for philosophy.
- hk__2 3y ago> There’s definitely something to be said for “hardly any CSS” websites that are brutally functional Yes, but only if we exclude those like the one you linked that require horizontal scrolling because of their <table>-based layout.
- ftl64 3y ago"No HTML Club" stands as the only logical step forward in this evolution. Browsers are perfectly capable of rendering plaintext, what could we ever need those pesky "tags" for?
- hk__2 3y ago> what could we ever need those pesky "tags" for? Links.
- adr1an 3y agoNot really if you know how to copy and paste :) (Keeping with the sarcastic tone of the ftl64 comment)
- nicoco 3y agoHyper ones.
- 6510 3y agoClicking on links is a bad idea, links are a bad idea. Besides from the horrendous potential for wasting your time you expose your reader to all kinds of dangers. Links could be changed in ways you don't control. They could point at offensive content, thinks you are not suppose to know, illegal things, phishing websites, hackers and much more you are better of not knowing about. https://securityforeveryone.com/blog/unknown-danger-clicking-unknown-links https://securityforeveryone.com/blog/unknown-danger-clicking... Just like writing a program put all relevant information inline in the txt.
- edent 3y agoI agree. That's why I made http://no-ht.ml/ http://no-ht.ml/ I submitted it to the site a few minutes ago.
- ftl64 3y agoThis is art. Perfection, even.
- 3y ago
- sublinear 3y agoCounterargument: sane users expect consistent presentation across all browsers and viewport dimensions. A CSS reset overrides the user-agent stylesheet and the rest of the CSS determines the final style. This is the best practice. If you don't like web pages, then don't use them. The final form of this club would be to settle on their favorite serialization format bit banged into their nervous system so they can be one with the matrix. /s
- adr1an 3y agoI'd rather look at this club as some sort of 'code golf' than take it seriously as a manifesto. Actually, even as a manifesto their point is valid, as a form of minimalist art. I consider the web as to be a canvas for many artists too. You don't need to agree to admire their work (e.g. dadaism is not frowned upon today)
- sublinear 3y agoOk if this is the serious intent (minimalism) then they probably want SGML, not HTML. They would also not want this delivered using the seven layer burrito that is the OSI model.
- flagrant_taco 3y agoThis is still subjective. Some users would prefer to see consistency across all sites they visit rather that consistency on the same site across all browsers. When every site uses it's own reset there's no consistency while in the same browser, which is way more common for most users that don't have a separate browser for every site they visit.
- lolinder 3y agoThis is one of the main use cases for reader mode for me—I already have an ad blocker to remove noise, reader mode means I don't have to deal with whatever each random site's designer thought would be the most readable thing, I can standardize all my reading in a format that works for me.
- 3y ago
- PrimeMcFly 3y agoI'm a big fan of minimizing JavaScript as much as possible, and will actively try to use CSS in place of it wherever I can. No CSS as well? No thanks, I want my sites to look somewhat modern and aesthetically pleasing by modern standards.
- jokethrowaway 3y agoThe defaults take between 5-50 years to catch up. But they'll still ship plenty of crap you don't care about in the meanwhile. I have now webgpu running in my browser out of the box but the same shitty fonts. By the time web components started being used, React went out of fashion. Don't let me ramble about how much time I spent on rounded corners back in the days.
- MrVandemar 3y ago> I'm a big fan of minimizing JavaScript as much as possible Me too! I like to minimise it to 0 bytes.
- underdeserver 3y agoDennis Ritchie's site is given as an example, but it's filled with ancient bgcolor and width HTML attributes, which are, how to put it, not better than CSS.
- robin_reala 3y agoThey’re literally mapped to styles internally in modern browsers.
- XorNot 3y agoI wonder if what we're really lacking is just a decent set of default web fonts. The main modification I do when I kick out a basic HTML presentation of some data is throw in bootstrap so I can get a more comfortable font experience. Shouldn't this be the default though? Why is the default bad?
- Fahata 3y ago[dead]
- lexicality 3y agoAs ever, the staggering difference in readability between https://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ https://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ and http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/ http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/ (on desktop at least) demonstrates that rawdogging the internet is generally a bad idea.
- Tomte 3y agohttps://bestmotherfucking.website/ https://bestmotherfucking.website/ is my favorite (https://thebestmotherfucking.website/ https://thebestmotherfucking.website/ is an abomination).
- bjourne 3y agotext-align: justify ruins the readability of the text. Won't ever work until browsers become much better at hyphenation.
- GoblinSlayer 3y agoUh, hyphenation ruins readability much worse than justified text.
- LoganDark 3y ago> Bump that body copy to render close to 16px or more also known as the default font size in browsers, don't you dare override the user's preferred font size for body copy, scale everything else in units of rem instead.
- Tomte 3y agoChicmath (https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~abhishek/chicmath.htm https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~abhishek/chicmath.htm) is a classic showcase.
- qayxc 3y agoThat's horrible to read.
- mlok 3y agoTo all No-CSS webmasters : you can still respect your readers light/dark mode preference with this simple line : <meta name="color-scheme" content="light dark">
- lapcat 3y agoOne problem though is that the default link colors can be unreadable in dark mode. That's why I use @media (prefers-color-scheme: dark) to set a:link, a:visited, a:active colors.
- 50 3y agoi like the default (unstyled) link colors chrome uses, they seemingly do accessibility the best. on the other hand, safari's default link colors for dark mode are quite poor, e.g., a:link is dark blue, a:visited is purple worth noting, browsers also treat the default dark mode background colors differently: chrome uses black, safari uses dark gray, and firefox uses dark navy
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Tomte 3y agoI consider that the browser's obligation. If I'm not specifying any font or background color, I cannot be responsible to add special media queries because someone chose a dark theme.
- Linux-Fan 3y agoThank you for bringing this up. I had been looking for an “easy” way to enable a Dark Mode on my website without overriding user-configured default colors and this seems to do it pretty well. My page uses a minimalistic CSS and only changes the colors for syntax highlighting -- which is now slightly broken in the dark mode but probably still an improvement over the white background for those people who want the dark mode :)
- 50 3y ago
- excusemyfrench 3y agoCan we at least add this meta tag in the head of the document ? I don’t know if it is considered styling but it is not css. My eyes will thank you: <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0" /> Source: https://stackoverflow.com/a/39239194 https://stackoverflow.com/a/39239194
- ezequiel-garzon 3y agoIt is considered CSS [1], which makes sense to me as this relates to styling. What has never made sense in my mind is to have completely unstyled pages rendered with microscopic fonts on smartphones. Doing so for old sites that, at the beginning of the mobile revolution, assumed on their CSS sheets 1024px wide screens is reasonable (though still debatable). Not so for CSS-free pages, whether they were authored in 1991 or in 2023. I'm sorry if I got carried away, I wasn't replying to you in this last part :) For the record, I would also make this exception, though it would be neat to be able to select those without even the meta viewport tag. [1] https://drafts.csswg.org/css-viewport/ https://drafts.csswg.org/css-viewport/
- excusemyfrench 3y agoNo problem, really. Thanks for the correction. This is indeed css. I must have automatically associated meta tags to non css data only. And I totally agree with you concerning the microscopic font and the meta tag.
- lapcat 3y agoAll you need is initial-scale=1.0, and width is redundant. I discuss this in more detail here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36112889 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36112889
- xigoi 3y agoThat applies only to Safari. How about other browsers?
- kkoncevicius 3y ago
- 6510 3y agoIs the lack of <body> prevents readability mode from enabling?
- qingcharles 3y agoThe HTML in the page is LITERALLY SATAN. It doesn't have a body tag and it is not prettified.
- lapcat 3y agoI used to be no CSS, but a little CSS can improve readability. There's nothing magical about the browser default fonts, margins, etc. And no max-width can be problematic. You might want this to prevent the text size from changing when you rotate to landscape on mobile: html { -webkit-text-size-adjust: none; text-size-adjust: none; -moz-text-size-adjust: none; }
- ignoramous 3y agoCSS-based trackers can be a thing, if they aren't already: - https://blog.pastly.net/posts/2016-09-04-how-css-alone-can-help-track-you/ https://blog.pastly.net/posts/2016-09-04-how-css-alone-can-h... (related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10833629 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10833629) - https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2019/05/09/css-tracking-trick-can-monitor-your-mouse-without-javascript/ https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2019/05/09/css-tracking-tri...
- mkl95 3y agoCSS will improve your readers / users quality of life if you use it properly. To me that's enough to keep using it.
- vogon_laureate 3y agoAfter the No HTML club trumps the rest, we’ll need to have No Web Server to finish the job. I see only upsides to this.
- shpx 3y agoIt's really the "html.css-only Club" since you're still using the browser's default stylesheet https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/third_party/+/master/blink/renderer/core/html/resources/html.css https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/third_party/+... https://github.com/WebKit/WebKit/blob/main/Source/WebCore/css/html.css https://github.com/WebKit/WebKit/blob/main/Source/WebCore/cs... https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/source/layout/style/res/html.css https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/source/layout/style/re...
- lolinder 3y agoThat's an implementation detail of the user agent, not anything to do with the website. The point is "your user agent should make this readable by default, somehow". If it chooses to do so by way of a CSS style sheet, that's the user agent's prerogative, but the standard doesn't care how it goes about rendering a style-free page.
- shpx 3y agoYou can say "should make this readable" and talk about "the standard", but in real life you've chosen this specific stylesheet (or its 2 or 3 variations), which effectively hasn't changed since the beginning of the Web, for 99.9% of the times someone looks at your webpage as your stylesheet because it's already preloaded as opposed to choosing a different stylesheet because it looks better or some other criteria.
- butz 3y agoMaybe it's time to add some decent looking CSS defaults to browser, but only for websites without CSS includes. Page width, better fonts, maybe even mobile specific improvements could be added. Of course, I understand that would introduce incompatibility with old websites.
- tentacleuno 3y agoThat sounds good, but it'd most likely end up as YACL (Yet Another CSS Library).
- lolinder 3y agoIf the browsers implemented it officially it wouldn't be a library, it would just be a sane default style.
- qayxc 3y agoA "sane" default style would require "default" content coupled with a "default" viewing device. None of which exist. There can't be a one-size-fits-all solution. In addition, content is more than just text - style, design, and layout are information, too.
- lolinder 3y agoI don't think anyone is suggesting that the new defaults be standardized. Each browser should pick defaults that make sense in the context they're used.
- Popeyes 3y agoDoesn't the reader view already do this?
- ezequiel-garzon 3y agoFor completely unstyled sites, reader view should be the only view. What guidelines or rules should the other/s view/s be following? I say definitely not "nostalgic" view!
- ilaksh 3y agoHe didn't say that you can't use an SVG element..
- elif 3y agoIf everyone had a non-css version and browsers had configurable style/themes, the web would be a beautiful thing. Maybe there should be an optional MIME Content-Type: text/plainhtml header target.
- metadaemon 3y agoMaybe I’m in the minority, but I enjoy the modern web for the most part. I’d be pretty upset if HTML was the only formatting we were allowed.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- davidgerard 3y agoI mean, all the best websites are no-CSS. I felt guilty at adding "<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">" so my no-CSS site wouldn't look on mobile like a website for ants.
- ttepasse 3y agoIn the mid 2000s there was (and still is) CSS Naked Day, at 9. April, when you disable the CSS on your website to show of your semantic HTML markup: https://css-naked-day.github.io https://css-naked-day.github.io
- nullbyte808 3y agoIs this like "No Nut November" but for Web Developers?
- Semiapies 3y agoFewer neo-Nazis, though.
- chris_wot 3y agoI’m sure Mozilla used to allow you to apply your own style sheets. I’m a huge fan of producing semantic markup and adding in a style sheet to do all the… styling.
- simonw 3y agoWorth noting that this doesn't have to restrict you to Times New Roman: just put this opening tag at the start of your HTML, like it's the 90s: <font face="helvetica">
- arcbyte 3y agoLet the user change their own default font. For me it shows up as sans serif by default.
- simonw 3y agoIs that even a feature of mobile browsers these days?
- GoblinSlayer 3y agowho knows https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36747274 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36747274
- pjot 3y ago58 bytes is all you need. main { max-width: 38rem; padding: 2rem; margin: auto; }
- karaterobot 3y agoYou actually don't even need the dang internet.
- Julesman 3y agoWow. How drastically edgy. What an independent thinker. Really sticking it to The Man. Epic.
- efortis 3y agoThe browser's default CSS can be removed with: document.head.insertAdjacentHTML( 'beforeend', '<style>* { all: unset }</style>') Or compile a browser without them.
- toinewx 3y agothis is the real no-CSS.
- toinewx 3y agotechnically there is CSS, that is the useragent CSS. so you mean no custom CSS.
- spread_love 3y agoYou didn't remove all the default styling added by all browsers? This site is styled differently depending on browser. I suppose that means "you're trying to cover up your lack of interesting information"?
- yieldcrv 3y agoall these minimal “layout rejection” website trends look horrible and offer nothing to the collective conscious they are readable and … load. so, congratulations?
- hot_gril 3y agoI'm already in the no CSS club (I just use React styles).
- synergy20 3y agohttps://watercss.kognise.dev/ https://watercss.kognise.dev/ I would argue classless css is the way to go, you just include a single css file, then write your html without touching any css anymore, all related tags in html are inherently css-ed for you. a nice trade off for me sometimes.
- jrm4 3y agoWhy in the holy hell can we not just PICK THIS FOR OURSELVES? This is the thing, right? Perhaps we could shoe-horn this in behind the ADA or something. Require every website to provide a "pocket" or whatever mode.
- pcthrowaway 3y agoWhy does the No CSS club add in no javascript? Is there a club for people who eschew CSS but are comfy with JS?
- ggorlen 3y agoThe List is a fantastic CSS-less site I've been using for years to discover Bay Area live music shows: http://www.foopee.com/punk/the-list/ http://www.foopee.com/punk/the-list/. I don't know the full history and I discovered it in the early 2010s, but it's been around since at least 1996 if the page content is to be trusted. I use a script to scrape the site and filter by artists I care about.
- ggorlen 3y agoUpdate/disclosure: The List sadly uses Google Analytics, disqualifying it from the club (except in spirit).
- wseqyrku 3y agoIf you got content, you only need markdown.
- tangjurine 3y agoThe purpose of clothes is to cover up your body and keep warm. If your clothes have any extra color on it that means you are frivolous and should be ashamed.
- zimpenfish 3y ago> If you need "style" that just means you're trying to cover up your lack of interesting information. They must really hate books, comics, magazines, ...
- GoblinSlayer 3y agoBooks have mostly plain text style. No javascript, no cookie consent, no hover bars, no broken scrolling, no light gray text on white background, no crooked google fonts.
- zimpenfish 3y ago> No javascript, no cookie consent, no hover bars, no broken scrolling, no light gray text on white background, no crooked google fonts Sure but what I quoted just said "style" - nothing about "bad style", "user-hostile style", etc. (Javascript would be out of scope since it's not CSS) And that's before we consider that "style" can include "the style of writing" - should everything be written in the plainest, driest prose?
- GoblinSlayer 3y agoThe whole reason for nocss is absence of good styles in the wild.
- eternityforest 3y agoI like CSS a lot, but this is almost like a web ring, and web rings are even more awesome than CSS
- andrewstuart 3y agoThe bold headings made my eyes hurt.