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Exactly this. I wonder if the people downvoted you realize that HN is basically just a big table and a bunch of div, and they use this very site just fine?
by raincole 9mo ago
Exactly this.
I wonder if the people downvoted you realize that HN is basically just a big table and a bunch of div, and they use this very site just fine?
- dotancohen 9mo agoAs a user, I don't care. As a disabled user with a screen reader, I might care. As a developer tasked with maintaining it after the original dev left, I most certainly would care a great deal.
- xmprt 9mo agoExcept that as a developer you have access to the original source code where things are well structured. It only turns into div soup after the React/Vue code gets compiled down to HTML+CSS+JS that can run on any browser.
- raincole 9mo agoAs a developer you maintain the source templates, not the compiled/generated HTML. The HTML is messy doesn't mean the source templates are so. Semantic web is basically "please think of the crawlers."
- zeroCalories 9mo agoBesides the points raised here, I think it's worth noting that using stuff like the article tag does not necessarily make things easier to maintain. You do indeed get a lower line count, but you're coupling the structure and meaning. Sometimes that's fine, but a11y can be tricky to get right and it's often easier to push it off until you've got something working first.
- oneeyedpigeon 9mo agoIt's possible to know that HN is basically a big table, use the site just fine, and still recognise that there are disadvantages to that approach.
- chuckadams 9mo agoAnd it's nearly impossible to customize any part of the layout with user styles because of that.