5 ms·

I wrote HTML in the 90s. Modern standards like flexbox are objectively better than the float hacks and tables we used before. The geocities aesthetic is cute bu

I wrote HTML in the 90s. Modern standards like flexbox are objectively better than the float hacks and tables we used before. The geocities aesthetic is cute but it is extremely limited. The web is now a competitor for native apps. That would never have been possible without the fast pace of innovation. Don't knock it.

hereonout2 1y ago
Yep it's an odd take! I was last a "web developer" almost two decades ago, but dipping back in on a few occasions I am always appreciative of how much innovation has happened since then. The world before the huge investment in browser technology was dark. Tables and spacers for meaningful layout and flash or shockwave for anything interactive. I remember a time when css based drop down menus were seen as some sort of state of the art.
- mediumsmart 1y ago
  > I remember a time when css based drop down menus were seen as some sort of state of the art. They still are on mobile for navigation - full screen sans js
  - psychoslave 1y ago
    Yes, presenting a large catalog of products (a few hundreds), for discovery purpose an efficient menu is still a big challenge in term of UX and technical implementation all the more when portability, accessibility, and cross-devices is taken into account. Things that definitely look like trivial banality at shallow level often end up to need a lot of attention on many concurrent details.
- graycat 1y ago
  Uh, a guess is that 1+ billion people are already good at using "drop down menus" along with check boxes, radio buttons, single line text boxes, multiline text boxes, push buttons, links. So, when those user interface controls are sufficient for the purpose, using something else might reduce the collection of happy users. The Web site of my bank stays close to such now classic controls.
  - hereonout2 1y ago
    Maybe this misses the point slightly? I'm talking about a time when investment in browser development and web standards was so lacking that being able to achieve things like this blew everyone's mind: https://meyerweb.com/eric/css/edge/menus/demo.html https://meyerweb.com/eric/css/edge/menus/demo.html Hackernews, were it around back then, would've gone as crazy for this post as we do the latest AI model today.
    - degamad 1y ago
      It shocks me that I remember css/edge so well after all these years.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - graycat 1y ago
      > Maybe this misses the point slightly? Maybe! My thoughts were, say, tangential or incidental. A guess is that a central issue is how much in new features should we develop and use? I see a dilemma: (A) I mentioned the old controls that go back to early Windows and even IBM's 3270 terminals. An advantage of these controls is that lots of software tools implement them and billions of people already understand them. (B) Being too happy with the old stuff or even the present risks progress that is possible and worthwhile. Your post seemed to illustrate (B). But generally in the industry, with smartphones, laptops, desktops, Apple, Google's Android, Windows, browsers, apps and extrapolating, we could have an explosion of new features that would complicate work for everyone and fragment the industry. Ah, maybe Darwin would explain: Lots of mutations with only the best lasting?? For my work, I'm thrilled with the tools and technology available now that I get to exploit.
Jach 1y ago
CSS grids are pretty nice, flexbox is ok, float hacks were fine and an improvement over table shenanigans. On the other hand I quite liked the simple hbox/vbox explicit elements that things like ActionScript + MXML had (Flex). I liked Flex overall quite a bit, even if it was just another ill-fated attempt at freeing us from the browser strangleholds like Java applets and the rest. Having native platform functionality and a bunch of other nice things readily available now (barring Safari, especially mobile Safari, holding everyone back worse than IE6 did) is nice, but it doesn't quite feel like innovation when much of that was available via plugins back in the day.
psychoslave 1y ago
We have to compare apple to apple here. What was the state of native applications back then? The main point that we could derive from this is that it's hard to make predictions, especially about the future, and all the more when geopolitics is involved. But still it's fun and sometime inspiring.
- cuu508 1y ago
  Building GUI apps in Delphi was awesome.
- hattmall 1y ago
  I've never understood the hate for table layouts. They literally just make sense. And now all they advanced css frameworks have basically just recreated table layouts via divs with row and column classes. I get the need for responsive designs but I still think we could have gotten there with tables. It's like people got mad that tables were being used to for something other than strictly tabular data, so they recreated the idea behind table as a layout tool with "css grid" and made it 50x more complicated. I wish web design could follow like woodworking where the most focus is on using the base tools very effectively. The introduction of new tools is mostly frowned upon. Of course that's all because of the inherently dangerous nature of using power tools. Regardless of tech stack you aren't to likely to lose a finger from coding.
  - kilpikaarna 1y ago
    The move from table layouts to divs+css was based on the idea that mixing markup and layout/styling was bad. Then a few years later as everyone moved to React et al. it was good again. Sigh.
    - rcxdude 1y ago
      Yeah, a switch in mode between "make an XML document and then make something else to present it" (I think suffered massively from never actually being completely achievable with CSS, let alone comprehensible) and "just make a UI toolkit for javascript" (where in a full webapp world, the underlying documents are usually JSON and the presentation layer is javascript using HTML+CSS to talk to a layout and rendering engine).
peacebeard 1y ago
The web tried to be a competitor for native apps by offering technical parity but it wasn’t enough. Web versions of serious apps tend to be broken and have a banner asking you to download the native app. You can argue about why it happened, but it happened.
frainfreeze 1y ago
God forbid we go back to native apps and have ownership of our data & software
- stickfigure 1y ago
  > God forbid we go back to native apps which are strictly controlled by two giant megacorps. Fixed that for you. I'm pretty happy not to have "submit to Apple for meticulous review and approval" in my deployment cycle.
  - frainfreeze 1y ago
    That's what got us where we are, the same thing will happen to web platform over time.
bigstrat2003 1y ago
> The web is now a competitor for native apps. It most certainly is not. Web apps still suck ass compared to native. It's just that users are willing to accept even the crappiest solutions because they don't have very significant needs.
sherburt3 1y ago
Having a corporate monopoly controlling the web is a pretty steep price to pay for flexbox.

hereonout2 1y ago

Yep it's an odd take! I was last a "web developer" almost two decades ago, but dipping back in on a few occasions I am always appreciative of how much innovation has happened since then. The world before the huge investment in browser technology was dark. Tables and spacers for meaningful layout and flash or shockwave for anything interactive. I remember a time when css based drop down menus were seen as some sort of state of the art.

mediumsmart 1y ago
> I remember a time when css based drop down menus were seen as some sort of state of the art. They still are on mobile for navigation - full screen sans js
- psychoslave 1y ago
  Yes, presenting a large catalog of products (a few hundreds), for discovery purpose an efficient menu is still a big challenge in term of UX and technical implementation all the more when portability, accessibility, and cross-devices is taken into account. Things that definitely look like trivial banality at shallow level often end up to need a lot of attention on many concurrent details.
graycat 1y ago
Uh, a guess is that 1+ billion people are already good at using "drop down menus" along with check boxes, radio buttons, single line text boxes, multiline text boxes, push buttons, links. So, when those user interface controls are sufficient for the purpose, using something else might reduce the collection of happy users. The Web site of my bank stays close to such now classic controls.
- hereonout2 1y ago
  Maybe this misses the point slightly? I'm talking about a time when investment in browser development and web standards was so lacking that being able to achieve things like this blew everyone's mind: https://meyerweb.com/eric/css/edge/menus/demo.html https://meyerweb.com/eric/css/edge/menus/demo.html Hackernews, were it around back then, would've gone as crazy for this post as we do the latest AI model today.
  - degamad 1y ago
    It shocks me that I remember css/edge so well after all these years.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - graycat 1y ago
    > Maybe this misses the point slightly? Maybe! My thoughts were, say, tangential or incidental. A guess is that a central issue is how much in new features should we develop and use? I see a dilemma: (A) I mentioned the old controls that go back to early Windows and even IBM's 3270 terminals. An advantage of these controls is that lots of software tools implement them and billions of people already understand them. (B) Being too happy with the old stuff or even the present risks progress that is possible and worthwhile. Your post seemed to illustrate (B). But generally in the industry, with smartphones, laptops, desktops, Apple, Google's Android, Windows, browsers, apps and extrapolating, we could have an explosion of new features that would complicate work for everyone and fragment the industry. Ah, maybe Darwin would explain: Lots of mutations with only the best lasting?? For my work, I'm thrilled with the tools and technology available now that I get to exploit.

Jach 1y ago

CSS grids are pretty nice, flexbox is ok, float hacks were fine and an improvement over table shenanigans. On the other hand I quite liked the simple hbox/vbox explicit elements that things like ActionScript + MXML had (Flex). I liked Flex overall quite a bit, even if it was just another ill-fated attempt at freeing us from the browser strangleholds like Java applets and the rest. Having native platform functionality and a bunch of other nice things readily available now (barring Safari, especially mobile Safari, holding everyone back worse than IE6 did) is nice, but it doesn't quite feel like innovation when much of that was available via plugins back in the day.

psychoslave 1y ago

We have to compare apple to apple here. What was the state of native applications back then? The main point that we could derive from this is that it's hard to make predictions, especially about the future, and all the more when geopolitics is involved. But still it's fun and sometime inspiring.

cuu508 1y ago
Building GUI apps in Delphi was awesome.
hattmall 1y ago
I've never understood the hate for table layouts. They literally just make sense. And now all they advanced css frameworks have basically just recreated table layouts via divs with row and column classes. I get the need for responsive designs but I still think we could have gotten there with tables. It's like people got mad that tables were being used to for something other than strictly tabular data, so they recreated the idea behind table as a layout tool with "css grid" and made it 50x more complicated. I wish web design could follow like woodworking where the most focus is on using the base tools very effectively. The introduction of new tools is mostly frowned upon. Of course that's all because of the inherently dangerous nature of using power tools. Regardless of tech stack you aren't to likely to lose a finger from coding.
- kilpikaarna 1y ago
  The move from table layouts to divs+css was based on the idea that mixing markup and layout/styling was bad. Then a few years later as everyone moved to React et al. it was good again. Sigh.
  - rcxdude 1y ago
    Yeah, a switch in mode between "make an XML document and then make something else to present it" (I think suffered massively from never actually being completely achievable with CSS, let alone comprehensible) and "just make a UI toolkit for javascript" (where in a full webapp world, the underlying documents are usually JSON and the presentation layer is javascript using HTML+CSS to talk to a layout and rendering engine).

peacebeard 1y ago

The web tried to be a competitor for native apps by offering technical parity but it wasn’t enough. Web versions of serious apps tend to be broken and have a banner asking you to download the native app. You can argue about why it happened, but it happened.

frainfreeze 1y ago

God forbid we go back to native apps and have ownership of our data & software

stickfigure 1y ago
> God forbid we go back to native apps which are strictly controlled by two giant megacorps. Fixed that for you. I'm pretty happy not to have "submit to Apple for meticulous review and approval" in my deployment cycle.
- frainfreeze 1y ago
  That's what got us where we are, the same thing will happen to web platform over time.

bigstrat2003 1y ago

> The web is now a competitor for native apps. It most certainly is not. Web apps still suck ass compared to native. It's just that users are willing to accept even the crappiest solutions because they don't have very significant needs.

sherburt3 1y ago

Having a corporate monopoly controlling the web is a pretty steep price to pay for flexbox.