3 ms·

If you think of technology progress as a global simulated annealing problem, it is ok to step back a bit to get out of the local maxima. Web Dev may have taken

by chime 13y ago

If you think of technology progress as a global simulated annealing problem, it is ok to step back a bit to get out of the local maxima. Web Dev may have taken us back 20-30 years in certain areas but once caught up, it can take us much further than the previous methods could have ever expected us to. The previous methods in this case being, compiled software that require specific devices/OSes and require a very high level of competency in all aspects of development.

weland 13y ago
Web solutions also require specific devices and web browsers, really; I can't think of a single jaw-dropping JS demo around here that didn't meet with several complaints related to it simply not working under certain browsers (and a lot more complaints about performance). Aye, if you put enough time and hacks into it, you get it to run on pretty much any browser. Until the next update, that is. > require a very high level of competency in all aspects of development Crude tools, development methods and principles are a surrogate for simplicity, not an actual manifestation of it. Barring the fact that you sacrifice performance, code maintainability and, to a high extent, security, I also think the question of productivity remains open. I find it stunning that young web developers are ecstatic about how their tools allow you to get from idea to result so quickly, when they are pretty much on-par with where Motif was in the mid-'90s. Not to mention the truckload of CSS hacks you need to make something that looks like a button (but without native looks) out of an anchor-that-really-shouldn't-be-a-button-but-it's-the-closest-thing-html-has-got. I don't think that can take us much further than compiled software could have taken us -- and slowly, but surely (with stuff like asm.js), it looks like a lot of people are rediscovering that.
- ehsanu1 13y ago
  https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/button https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/bu...
  - weland 13y ago
    I think we both know that's not what I was referring to. It's stuff like this one (PhoneGap, but really, it's like this almost everywhere): <a href='#' class="button header-button header-button-left">Back</a>. Unless I am mistaken and you can build the whole UI out of form elements (perhaps you can, but I'm not sure I've actually seen that done anywhere), that's simply not sufficient.
    - ehsanu1 13y ago
      I took your comment to mean that no button element exists, but I suppose that was not your intention. But I did realize you were referring to links being abused as buttons. I think the issue is simply that buttons tend to have more default styling you need to override, which is more likely to vary across platforms since the default style is generally chosen to mimic the system's native buttons. Whereas default styling for links is quite simple across all platforms. Besides that, there is no particular problem with using real button elements instead of link elements as far as I'm aware, just a matter of habit and convenience.

by chime 13y ago

weland 13y ago

Web solutions also require specific devices and web browsers, really; I can't think of a single jaw-dropping JS demo around here that didn't meet with several complaints related to it simply not working under certain browsers (and a lot more complaints about performance). Aye, if you put enough time and hacks into it, you get it to run on pretty much any browser. Until the next update, that is. > require a very high level of competency in all aspects of development Crude tools, development methods and principles are a surrogate for simplicity, not an actual manifestation of it. Barring the fact that you sacrifice performance, code maintainability and, to a high extent, security, I also think the question of productivity remains open. I find it stunning that young web developers are ecstatic about how their tools allow you to get from idea to result so quickly, when they are pretty much on-par with where Motif was in the mid-'90s. Not to mention the truckload of CSS hacks you need to make something that looks like a button (but without native looks) out of an anchor-that-really-shouldn't-be-a-button-but-it's-the-closest-thing-html-has-got. I don't think that can take us much further than compiled software could have taken us -- and slowly, but surely (with stuff like asm.js), it looks like a lot of people are rediscovering that.

ehsanu1 13y ago
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/button https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/bu...
- weland 13y ago
  I think we both know that's not what I was referring to. It's stuff like this one (PhoneGap, but really, it's like this almost everywhere): <a href='#' class="button header-button header-button-left">Back</a>. Unless I am mistaken and you can build the whole UI out of form elements (perhaps you can, but I'm not sure I've actually seen that done anywhere), that's simply not sufficient.
  - ehsanu1 13y ago
    I took your comment to mean that no button element exists, but I suppose that was not your intention. But I did realize you were referring to links being abused as buttons. I think the issue is simply that buttons tend to have more default styling you need to override, which is more likely to vary across platforms since the default style is generally chosen to mimic the system's native buttons. Whereas default styling for links is quite simple across all platforms. Besides that, there is no particular problem with using real button elements instead of link elements as far as I'm aware, just a matter of habit and convenience.