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Aside from separation of content and presentation as mentioned, it creates serious accessibility issues and page bloat, among various other problems which we in

by tdavis 18y ago

Aside from separation of content and presentation as mentioned, it creates serious accessibility issues and page bloat, among various other problems which we in the standards movement have tried to impart upon fellow developers for years. I encourage you to look into these issues. Here's a write-up I found from Mozilla, but there are many: https://developer.mozilla.org/en/The_Business_Benefits_of_Web_Standards https://developer.mozilla.org/en/The_Business_Benefits_of_We...

Tichy 18y ago
I thought inline styles are a web standard (not sure about Javascript, but there are standards for it, too).
- run4yourlives 18y ago
  They are, they're just not a best practice. Editing css outside of your html without having to worry about inline styles is a lovely thing to do.
ntoshev 18y ago
Can you elaborate on the accessibility issues and page bloat, because the link doesn't. It lists "Increase traffic" and "Happier staff" among the benefits. Do you think pg would be happier if he followed some guidelines for web design? ;)
- tdavis 18y ago
  I think pg would be less happy because he'd have to admit I was right about this whole silly standards thing ;) As for your questions: The page bloat issue is pretty apparent: it takes a lot more markup to wrap everything in tables than it does to use floated / positioned block elements such as <div/>. Individually marking up each <font/> tag with color, bgcolor, etc. also wastes a shitload of bytes. Accessibility is another issue entirely, but is generally hindered by inline Javascript because such JS is not based on progressive enhancement; rather, it directly hijacks events on specific elements rather than improving the experience for JS-enabled browsers. In the case of HN, it appears that "vote" links work with or without Javascript, though the latter loads a blank page after voting. This is certainly better than the alternative. Additionally, superfluous markup has a tendency to disrupt the functioning of assisted-reading devices such as screen readers. There's a whole world of people out there advocating the use of web standards, all for very practical reasons. I'm not going to re-post all their thoughts and arguments here, but if you're not educated in the matter I highly recommend becoming so, if for no other reason than understanding what we crazy people are screaming about. Many people far more dedicated than I have written countless articles on the matter; a good place to start would be Roger Johansson's blog: http://www.456bereastreet.com/ http://www.456bereastreet.com/ but there are many others.
jrockway 18y ago
Yeah, maybe. Invalid or not, HN is the only social news site that I know of that works well in emacs-w3m and on my phone. It also works better in Conkeror than Reddit. So while it may be un-accessible, it works better than the sites that are accessible.

by tdavis 18y ago

Tichy 18y ago

I thought inline styles are a web standard (not sure about Javascript, but there are standards for it, too).

run4yourlives 18y ago
They are, they're just not a best practice. Editing css outside of your html without having to worry about inline styles is a lovely thing to do.

ntoshev 18y ago

Can you elaborate on the accessibility issues and page bloat, because the link doesn't. It lists "Increase traffic" and "Happier staff" among the benefits. Do you think pg would be happier if he followed some guidelines for web design? ;)

tdavis 18y ago
I think pg would be less happy because he'd have to admit I was right about this whole silly standards thing ;) As for your questions: The page bloat issue is pretty apparent: it takes a lot more markup to wrap everything in tables than it does to use floated / positioned block elements such as <div/>. Individually marking up each <font/> tag with color, bgcolor, etc. also wastes a shitload of bytes. Accessibility is another issue entirely, but is generally hindered by inline Javascript because such JS is not based on progressive enhancement; rather, it directly hijacks events on specific elements rather than improving the experience for JS-enabled browsers. In the case of HN, it appears that "vote" links work with or without Javascript, though the latter loads a blank page after voting. This is certainly better than the alternative. Additionally, superfluous markup has a tendency to disrupt the functioning of assisted-reading devices such as screen readers. There's a whole world of people out there advocating the use of web standards, all for very practical reasons. I'm not going to re-post all their thoughts and arguments here, but if you're not educated in the matter I highly recommend becoming so, if for no other reason than understanding what we crazy people are screaming about. Many people far more dedicated than I have written countless articles on the matter; a good place to start would be Roger Johansson's blog: http://www.456bereastreet.com/ http://www.456bereastreet.com/ but there are many others.

jrockway 18y ago

Yeah, maybe. Invalid or not, HN is the only social news site that I know of that works well in emacs-w3m and on my phone. It also works better in Conkeror than Reddit. So while it may be un-accessible, it works better than the sites that are accessible.