4 ms·

> Prettify all generated HTML (because why not?) ..because it makes the files larger? I see why it's useful during dev though. (Great name!)

Retr0id 3y ago
I'm a bit confused by this too. My static site generator also generates mostly-pretty HTML, but not because there's a prettification pass, it's just because the templates themselves are pretty (because I wrote them that way). Surely the prettiness of the source that you actually edit is even more important than the final result?
- hunter2_ 3y ago
  > Surely the prettiness of the source that you actually edit is even more important than the final result? A pretty final result can help with all sorts of future scenarios, like piping curl into grep for quickly checking if something exists. Similarly, I despise CSS preprocessing since figuring out a solution in the browser then has to be backported, hopefully with a source map to assist.
  - Retr0id 3y ago
    Right, that's why I don't use minifiers. My pretty templates render to pretty HTML, with no additional prettification pass needed.
forgotmyinfo 3y ago
Gzip exists, and text compresses pretty well. Unless it's 20 MB of JavaScript just to render some text, that you're best just removing.
brainzap 3y ago
I also format my blog HTML, I cant say why, but I want it to be tidy and readable.
- _mlbt 3y ago
  I think readability of HTML is something that people of a certain age just expect. I remember in the early days of the web just doing a “View Source” for interesting websites and learning a lot of really neat tricks to apply to my own websites.
  - jjgreen 3y ago
    You should definitely do that at https://www.lingscars.com/ https://www.lingscars.com/
    - filcuk 3y ago
      I can't tell if it's real or satire, but I like it (not in a visit ever again way)
      - jjgreen 3y ago
        Real, as well as being a work of art.
    - jkestner 3y ago
      Wow, the presentation belies the nicely written source (excepting obfuscated JS). It's a depixelated love letter to 90s sites.
  - alxeder 3y ago
    the next generation is using devtools, inspect element
    - _mlbt 3y ago
      Browser dev tools are incredible, but they just hit different than view source. The web of the 90s and early 2000s was just so accessible as a kid curious about how it all worked. You could cobble together a personal website on Geocities and learn by copy and pasting code you found on someone else's website that did something cool. It just promoted this really beautiful experimentation and cross pollination of ideas that is mostly lost now.
Ylmaz 3y ago
These pages should be served compressed anyways right? Then there will be no difference in size anymore.
_mlbt 3y ago
You see this concern about file size of websites all the time, but the extra white space is not what makes websites large, it’s all the images, fonts, and JavaScript libraries that get bundled with them. For most sites the HTML is negligible and compresses well if you enable GZip.
- chrisweekly 3y ago
  True. Also, for a typical web page, over 90% of user-perceived latency occurs AFTER the HTML has been fetched, unzipped, and parsed. That doesn't mean minification and compression are worthless, but it may help put things in perspective.
- cantSpellSober 3y ago
  Yep, I know images are big, fonts are evil and what gzip is. Instead of "why not?" the author could sell the "why" there.
  - djbusby 3y ago
    Soon as I saw the title I thought their "why" was: so it looks good when I view source.
    - cantSpellSober 3y ago
      "why" in the repo, not the HN title
  - jkestner 3y ago
    I'd say, it's to optimize for source readability. That's something many of us relied on to learn HTML, and we need to keep that path open.
  - dinkleberg 3y ago
    Not everything in life needs to be optimized.
    - 3y ago

Retr0id 3y ago

I'm a bit confused by this too. My static site generator also generates mostly-pretty HTML, but not because there's a prettification pass, it's just because the templates themselves are pretty (because I wrote them that way). Surely the prettiness of the source that you actually edit is even more important than the final result?

hunter2_ 3y ago
> Surely the prettiness of the source that you actually edit is even more important than the final result? A pretty final result can help with all sorts of future scenarios, like piping curl into grep for quickly checking if something exists. Similarly, I despise CSS preprocessing since figuring out a solution in the browser then has to be backported, hopefully with a source map to assist.
- Retr0id 3y ago
  Right, that's why I don't use minifiers. My pretty templates render to pretty HTML, with no additional prettification pass needed.

forgotmyinfo 3y ago

Gzip exists, and text compresses pretty well. Unless it's 20 MB of JavaScript just to render some text, that you're best just removing.

brainzap 3y ago

I also format my blog HTML, I cant say why, but I want it to be tidy and readable.

_mlbt 3y ago
I think readability of HTML is something that people of a certain age just expect. I remember in the early days of the web just doing a “View Source” for interesting websites and learning a lot of really neat tricks to apply to my own websites.
- jjgreen 3y ago
  You should definitely do that at https://www.lingscars.com/ https://www.lingscars.com/
  - filcuk 3y ago
    I can't tell if it's real or satire, but I like it (not in a visit ever again way)
    - jjgreen 3y ago
      Real, as well as being a work of art.
  - jkestner 3y ago
    Wow, the presentation belies the nicely written source (excepting obfuscated JS). It's a depixelated love letter to 90s sites.
- alxeder 3y ago
  the next generation is using devtools, inspect element
  - _mlbt 3y ago
    Browser dev tools are incredible, but they just hit different than view source. The web of the 90s and early 2000s was just so accessible as a kid curious about how it all worked. You could cobble together a personal website on Geocities and learn by copy and pasting code you found on someone else's website that did something cool. It just promoted this really beautiful experimentation and cross pollination of ideas that is mostly lost now.

Ylmaz 3y ago

These pages should be served compressed anyways right? Then there will be no difference in size anymore.

_mlbt 3y ago

You see this concern about file size of websites all the time, but the extra white space is not what makes websites large, it’s all the images, fonts, and JavaScript libraries that get bundled with them. For most sites the HTML is negligible and compresses well if you enable GZip.

chrisweekly 3y ago
True. Also, for a typical web page, over 90% of user-perceived latency occurs AFTER the HTML has been fetched, unzipped, and parsed. That doesn't mean minification and compression are worthless, but it may help put things in perspective.
cantSpellSober 3y ago
Yep, I know images are big, fonts are evil and what gzip is. Instead of "why not?" the author could sell the "why" there.
- djbusby 3y ago
  Soon as I saw the title I thought their "why" was: so it looks good when I view source.
  - cantSpellSober 3y ago
    "why" in the repo, not the HN title
- jkestner 3y ago
  I'd say, it's to optimize for source readability. That's something many of us relied on to learn HTML, and we need to keep that path open.
- dinkleberg 3y ago
  Not everything in life needs to be optimized.
  - 3y ago