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> Think about all the most popular, successful web sites. Google. Craigslist. YouTube. Facebook. Twitter. Even Apple's company site. What do they all have in co

by VMG 13y ago

> Think about all the most popular, successful web sites. Google. Craigslist. YouTube. Facebook. Twitter. Even Apple's company site. What do they all have in common? Text and the occasional image. There's no animation, video, color backgrounds, textures, window decorations, animated drop-down menus, ambient sound, background music, gimmicks, gizmos or gew-gaws. They are all simple and functional, and those six web sites together represent about a trillion dollars in value. With the exception of Craigslist, all of the sites he lists are complex web applications. The author conflates shiny gimmicks and modern web technology.

joevandyk 13y ago
Yes. I'm not sure why he wrote that Youtube has no videos.
- hamburglar 13y ago
  He's only looked at it in lynx.
- rickdale 13y ago
  Especially with the heavy cat home page having a youtube video on it. Besides the slight hypocrisy, I understand the point the author is trying to get off as simplify simplify simplify. When you have been doing it for as long as he has, seems like the natural progression.
  - hamburglar 13y ago
    > I understand the point the author is trying to get off as simplify simplify simplify That's not actually the point. The point is that the author wants to be seen as a badass iconoclast. Unfortunately, he (or she) has no actual valid ideas, so he's joined a cargo cult of simplicity-worship, as if eschewing everything complex in a web design automatically makes it good. The points made are hilariously ignorant. The argument about how it was dumb of people to make Doom for DOS because "DOS wasn't designed for that" is jaw-dropping. Claiming that you should write all web stuff in C, OMG. The defensive explanation about why they build sites with Flash. Oh wait, I just figured it out. These guys are Flash developers and nobody wants Flash these days, so they're flailing, trying to explain why modern web development practices are no good, but sites that consist solely of a Flash widget are totally where it's at. All is clear now.
    - waps 13y ago
      Ah come on. He does have a bit of a point. Sure youtube has videos. Excepting the page that actually plays a single video he does have a point. There's exactly one piece of somewhat moving interface in the entire site. Like in windows 3.1 (and they were hardly the first to do that). The rest is text and a grid of images. Even the most advanced websites are not much better. I mean I love how google has used moving gifs in the google.com/photos stuff to actually show something moving, but that's about as advanced as interfaces get. In some ways, including what can be done with interfaces, the web is only at the level desktop interfaces were at 10 years ago. I think the author of the article wants to compare that to, say, the starcraft menu interface. Or windows desktop applications. Or, to a lesser extent, flash interfaces. This would be a good example. Can you imagine doing this in HTML ? http://demo.northkingdom.com/gettheglass/ http://demo.northkingdom.com/gettheglass/ And he does have a point. Recreating the starcraft interface in HTML5+CSS+Javascript is possible of course. In the same sense that you can write windows 95 in pure lambda calculus (frankly, I think the lambda calculus rewrite would be easier since there's translation tools). I'm with the rest of the people here. Those fancy interfaces have little function, don't interact well with the rest of the world (e.g. search engines, content aggregators, ...), they're accessibility nightmares, ... But they're cool. But my opinion on them has exceptions : for some things, like games, that's more important than all those other things.
      - hamburglar 13y ago
        > There's exactly one piece of somewhat moving interface in the entire site. [(YouTube)] You are making the exact same mistake he is. You are picturing what you remember of YouTube and in your recollection, it is simple. This is because they have done a reasonable job of using a simple design, not because they have avoided "moving" things. Go look and you will find plenty of menus, tabs, comments, and other ui elements that are built of the exact stuff he says is worthless. Holding any of these sites up as an example of being essentially just text and a few images just indicates that you don't have much of an eye for detail.
        waps 13y ago
badman_ting 13y ago
Simplicity is deceptive.

by VMG 13y ago

joevandyk 13y ago

Yes. I'm not sure why he wrote that Youtube has no videos.

hamburglar 13y ago
He's only looked at it in lynx.
rickdale 13y ago
Especially with the heavy cat home page having a youtube video on it. Besides the slight hypocrisy, I understand the point the author is trying to get off as simplify simplify simplify. When you have been doing it for as long as he has, seems like the natural progression.
- hamburglar 13y ago
  > I understand the point the author is trying to get off as simplify simplify simplify That's not actually the point. The point is that the author wants to be seen as a badass iconoclast. Unfortunately, he (or she) has no actual valid ideas, so he's joined a cargo cult of simplicity-worship, as if eschewing everything complex in a web design automatically makes it good. The points made are hilariously ignorant. The argument about how it was dumb of people to make Doom for DOS because "DOS wasn't designed for that" is jaw-dropping. Claiming that you should write all web stuff in C, OMG. The defensive explanation about why they build sites with Flash. Oh wait, I just figured it out. These guys are Flash developers and nobody wants Flash these days, so they're flailing, trying to explain why modern web development practices are no good, but sites that consist solely of a Flash widget are totally where it's at. All is clear now.
  - waps 13y ago
    Ah come on. He does have a bit of a point. Sure youtube has videos. Excepting the page that actually plays a single video he does have a point. There's exactly one piece of somewhat moving interface in the entire site. Like in windows 3.1 (and they were hardly the first to do that). The rest is text and a grid of images. Even the most advanced websites are not much better. I mean I love how google has used moving gifs in the google.com/photos stuff to actually show something moving, but that's about as advanced as interfaces get. In some ways, including what can be done with interfaces, the web is only at the level desktop interfaces were at 10 years ago. I think the author of the article wants to compare that to, say, the starcraft menu interface. Or windows desktop applications. Or, to a lesser extent, flash interfaces. This would be a good example. Can you imagine doing this in HTML ? http://demo.northkingdom.com/gettheglass/ http://demo.northkingdom.com/gettheglass/ And he does have a point. Recreating the starcraft interface in HTML5+CSS+Javascript is possible of course. In the same sense that you can write windows 95 in pure lambda calculus (frankly, I think the lambda calculus rewrite would be easier since there's translation tools). I'm with the rest of the people here. Those fancy interfaces have little function, don't interact well with the rest of the world (e.g. search engines, content aggregators, ...), they're accessibility nightmares, ... But they're cool. But my opinion on them has exceptions : for some things, like games, that's more important than all those other things.
    - hamburglar 13y ago
      > There's exactly one piece of somewhat moving interface in the entire site. [(YouTube)] You are making the exact same mistake he is. You are picturing what you remember of YouTube and in your recollection, it is simple. This is because they have done a reasonable job of using a simple design, not because they have avoided "moving" things. Go look and you will find plenty of menus, tabs, comments, and other ui elements that are built of the exact stuff he says is worthless. Holding any of these sites up as an example of being essentially just text and a few images just indicates that you don't have much of an eye for detail.
      - waps 13y ago

badman_ting 13y ago

Simplicity is deceptive.