High level question: Why do we need to
care about such things? Or, what's wrong
with just HTML and just some simple usage
of old CSS3 or whatever it was? That is,
why do Web pages need to be so complicated?
Since we have decades of word whacking software
without such features, why do we need such
features now?
My Web pages are all really simple: Each
is 800 pixels wide, with just a little use of
CSS and then nearly all just HTML, with the
layout using tables. I have yet to write
a single line of JavaScript although
Microsoft's ASP.NET writes a little for me.
To me, my Web pages look quite functional,
usable, easy to understand and use, etc.
For the need for a lot more, I don't
get it and worse: On the Internet
I see a lot of really
complicated Web pages that jump around
while loading and then again when I use my
mouse to put the page into the focus
and use the scroll wheel on the mouse
to scroll the page. I don't like the
jumping around.
Why go to the trouble to build
such complicated Web pages?
I'm not criticizing but trying to learn
and inviting answers.
Why bother? HTML was just another text
markup language, and nice, and CSS helped a little.
Isn't that enough?
I learned some HTML, and it was fine,
and now I want to
move on and just use it and not
stop here and make a career out of
adding unbounded complexity.
Shouldn't things be as simple as possible
but not simpler? Why be so complicated?
To me, the complicated Web pages I see
are a disaster, slow down my computer, etc.
-- I'd much rather have
just simple Web pages with old HTML,
only simple CSS, and little or no
JavaScript.
Sorry, can't and won't get onboard with this. It's not 1995 anymore. Join the rest of us in the 21st century with pages that are functional and attractive.
It sounds like you have in mind a
set of likely changes and have
designed the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript
to make the changes in that set
relatively easy. Okay.
For my Web pages, I questioned if that
candle was worth a match. Or another
such analogy goes, "Don't build a
brick outhouse.". Or as I wrote,
as simple as possible but not simpler.
It's just a Web page! But that's
the way I've been thinking and posted
here to see where people differ in their
thinking.
One possible issue is changing where
the text, pictures, video clips,
ads, etc. are depending on the
number of pixels or whatever
in the user's screen, browser window,
etc. For my pages, I just decided not
to do that -- I just didn't see any
very big reason to do that. Or,
if a user gets used to my Web pages,
then they will still have the same
layout -- text, text boxes, URLs,
ads, links to Help, etc. on any other
screen, with any other browser, etc.
Is it really important to change what
the page looks like depending on
the user's screen size? Or, if we
know what text, ads, text boxes,
etc. we want, can't we just display
it, basically one way for everyone?
Why so important to change? As a
programmer it's more work for me,
and as a user I just want it simple.
Because going to all this trouble has distinct advantages.
- With media queries in CSS my page can be responsive, scaling its size and content from 320px smartphones to multi-monitor desktops. I don't have to build and maintain multiple pages or specifically target individual devices.
- Using semantic tags makes it simpler for search engines to index your content and for visually impaired people to use screen readers and understand it.
- With advanced JavaScript I can reduce the friction of multi-page forms. AJAX lets us do instant checks on data against a remote database without loading the rest of the layout. Google helpfully suggests the rest of your query as you type.
Of course, it's not hard to go overboard with modern web tech, and these features can introduce bugs and alienate users running old hardware and software. But such is the price of progress.
> - With media queries in CSS my page can be responsive, scaling its size and content from 320px smartphones to multi-monitor desktops.
I guess I just don't want my pages to change, just
want them to look the same. On a big screen on a desktop
computer, one of my pages is still just 800 pixels
wide -- that's all I need for what I'm trying to
display to the user. I'm not trying to take up his
whole screen.
I see what from the user side Google has
done with AJAX -- it's nice. But Google
has nearly infinite money and wants the
most polished UI/UX they can get. But there's
some irony here: In most respects, the Google
screens are quite simple, and nothing "jumps
around" either during loading or usage. And the
loading is fast.
For sending one of my screens, I need send
only 400,000 bits; so, my screens should
send and load quickly.
I'll consider semantic tags. Thanks.
Yes, multi-page forms could be a bummer;
each of my forms fits easily on just one
page. But my UI is just dirt simple
for the user.
For
> old hardware and software
I'm not sure what I'm running is too old
to matter. But if there are such users,
then maybe they will like my pages because
I suspect that the pages will look fine
in any browser up to date as of 5, maybe
10, years ago.
> It's not hard to go overboard with modern web tech
That's an impression I got.
I've had a related point: Let's compare, say,
the Microsoft Word UI and Web page
UIs of, say, 10 years ago. Then,
the Word UI can take weeks to master, for
just that one program, more for Excel,
more for Outlook (I finally found how to
increase the font sizes, etc. in Outlook),
while there were tens of million of
Web sites 1+ billion people could use right
away. Why? Because all the sites were
simple and similar. Lesson: If Web
programming offers as much opportunity for
unique UIs, then we could lose the big
advantage of the Web that anyone can
use any page quickly. If that happens,
then I want to vote with the majority
and let others have unique UIs.
I certainly agree that some (probably most?) web pages have way more UI logic than they need to present the information to the user. Loading animations, back-to-top buttons, fixed position headers, social-share bars, and so many more UI components are totally unnecessary.
However CSS does have an important place even in the most basic presentation of information: proper styling can vastly improve readability. Especially on mobile devices where the layout must change to fit the device and a fixed 800px is totally unacceptable. This adaptation to fit the device is what sets webpages apart from more rigidity constrained types of documents.
Also, there's some degree of artistic expression in a nicely designed webpage... It's beside the point of why extensive styling capabilities are "needed", but that's part of why they're so popular.
> Especially on mobile devices where the layout must change to fit the device and a fixed 800px is totally unacceptable.
Why? Why should "the layout ... fit the device" --
I'm not trying to fill the user's screen;
I don't want to fill the user's screen.
The smallest iPhone screen size I see
is 320 × 480 pixels. With the horizontal
scroll bars, the 320 pixels would be usable,
and if the Web browser would permit using
the 480 pixels for the 800 pixel width of my pages,
then that would be even better. Some of the
other iPhone resolutions are 750 × 1334,
1242 × 2208, and 1080 × 1920 pixels, and there my
pages 800 pixels wide should look nearly perfect.
What's the problem? I'm not seeing a problem?
I'm trying to learn. Where am I going wrong?
What am I not seeing?
> With the horizontal scroll bars, the 320 pixels would be usable
Try reading an article while operating a horizontal scrollbar... it's a horrible experience because every line requires you to scroll from left to right, and then back to the left.
Also, your 800px page will still have a horizontal scrollbar on those devices because they're rendered at 2-3x, making the effective pixel-width of an iPhone 300px-400px. They could just zoom out really far and then use a magnifying glass to read it... thanks to the high resolution that would be possible, but it still wouldn't be pleasant.
> I'm trying to learn. Where am I going wrong? What am I not seeing?
Try visiting your site on a smartphone, a TV, a tablet, etc... you'll see the issue.
You're basically asking why half of us bother doing our jobs. It's not that you're criticizing; it's that you're cheerfully insulting people while pretending to be inquisitive about something you have no interest in learning about.
You don't care about this? That's great. Don't care. The people who built it aren't asking you to care.
I am "interested in learning", and that's
exactly why I'm asking.
If you are writing complicated code for
Web pages, then maybe you have some reasons
wby -- I was asking for your reasons.
If such Web page functionality is your job,
then the question would be, why?
My Web pages at 800 pixels wide should look fine
on any screen I can think of, although
maybe on some really small screens some
use of horizontal scroll bars might be needed.
On a large screen on a desktop computer, just see all
800 pixels at once, and still my Web pages
don't take up much room on the screen;
I'm not trying to fill the screen and
I'm guessing that that's a UX advantage.
I'm not sure if you're serious, and I think that's why nobody is stating the obvious - not everyone is building the same thing as you. There is not a chance in hell my company could get away with using just plain html. We have an interactive site, with a large team, with multiple workflows, client libraries and inter-connected dependencies. You're asking a really silly question, just because you made a shack in your backyard does not equate to making a house, then asking the home builders, "I made my entire shack out of wood and nails, why can't you make your house like that?"
What I've built looks like a Web site to me;
the pages look quite usable.
"Client libraries" -- wow.
"Interactive" -- my Web site is interactive:
I wrote a session state store, have two more
back end servers, and have SQL Server. The server
side is plenty complicated, but the client side
is quite simple, and I'm still missing why
the client side situation should often be otherwise.
Or, what the heck is wrong with just HTML, some
CSS for a little convenience, and some JS if
necessary? HTML has the basics: Tables,
links, one line text boxes, multi-line text
boxes, text, images, etc.
Pull-downs and roll-overs --
as a user I don't like them, so as a programmer
I'm not using them. Anything that covers up
what's on the screen I don't like for anything
less important than announcing nuclear war.
With high irony, we're quite productively
using HN with simple HTML, no pull downs or
roll overs, nothing or next to nothing in
icons (I hate icons),
and, I just had Firefox save this
HN page, some HTML with only a little JS
with the HTML,
two GIFs, 65 lines
of CSS that looks nicely simple, and nothing else.
Works fine.
I would think that the "dependencies" would
be handled on the server side with some
help from, say, in real time a session state store and/or
for longer term a database.
For CSS, it finally dawned on me: There can be
another place to put such cases of commonality --
the code that writes out the data to be sent to
the client. I'm doing some of that and, then,
using the classes in Microsoft's ASP.NET to
generate the data sent to the client. So, to
change fonts, colors, change the color for
every other line of a table, etc., just do that
in the code that calls the ASP.NET classes.
Heck, if want,
change the colors of lines in the tables
based on the phases of the moon, the temperature
where the user's IP address is, for each time they
see a new copy of the page, with no reds next to
greens if know that the user is male (25% of the
male population is partially red-green color
blind, including me), etc. Try that in CSS!
Generally server side programming is easier than
client side programming because (1) on the server
have access to about all there is in computing and
(2) on the client are throttled by, ugh, JS and,
still, can't really see the stuff run.
For what bytes I'm sending
to the users, I'm trying to keep that simple.
I'm losing why it should be complicated,
say much more complicated than just HN,
or, really, why the CSS that is the subject of this
thread is such an aid. Or, for generating what
the user sees, I'm using essentially Microsoft's
most powerful programming language, the .NET
version of Visual Basic (C# is different
mostly only just in syntactic sugar) --
gotta be a lot more powerful than
JS on the client or CSS.
Why send complicated stuff to the clients?
Why program in JS unless really have to?
Why try to make new features of CSS
ways to write software? What's so
important to do that often need
JS instead of just HTML?
I'm just going to reply to a couple points on JS: We write code that runs on the client-side primarily for performance. Rendering without needing to send more data over the network or run more code on our servers is a huge win... Especially when we're not building traditional "web pages", but rather full web-apps - requiring fairly complex UI and business logic.
Plus, JS isn't something to be avoided these days. Its become a full-featured language and is as powerful if not more powerful than .NET
For my site, I'm just going for
"traditional web pages".
Sure, it did occur to me that I could program
my site so that the user saw only one
URL and that URL would keep changing as appropriate
for the user's dialog. A few minutes after
I noticed that possibility, I gave it up.
Sure, with that possibility, maybe the big
deal would be write nearly all the
'logic' in JS to run on the client, with
a lot of AJAX threads, using the server as
a remote database or some such. Okay, if
you want to do that. I'm not sure I've seen
many such Web sites. Maybe someday I will
want the architecture of my site to be
like that, but for now I'm staying with
tradition.
And for using a lot of JS on the client,
I'd be concerned about the ability of
a lot of advanced
JS to do what I wanted, reliably, on
all the mobile to desktop computers in the
world; instead I just want to
send some simple HTML, a little
CSS, and maybe some minimal JS that Microsoft
writes for me, which will be okay, I hope.
Okay, good: As long as I'm staying with
a traditional Web site architecture,
without JS I'm not
missing much. Good to know. I'll conclude
the same about version n + 1 of CSS.
As a front end developer, I think it is easier and more maintainable to use styles for the appearance, and JavaScript for the behavior...
That being said, I find the complexity of many designs (CSS or JS driven) more distracting to users.
Now, for marketing sites, built by designers, CSS is likely going to be much better for performance. If the JS works as intended. Designers benefit from not having to be focused on programming.
What "behavior"? Are you implementing an
on screen calculator, some word whacking
software, the game of Nim, chess, checkers,
a drawing program using some HTML5 scalable vector
graphics (SVG),
all in JS on the client side? Okay.
You definitely don't create website on a professional level. If you want to build hobby websites with a fixed width of 800px as it is 1995... that's up to you. Complicated webpages don't have to be slow... if you landed on such one, then you've landed on a website created by an amateur.
That my Web pages should work nearly
everywhere is not a big deal. Instead, it's
simple. Except for a little JavaScript
Microsoft writes for me, I'm just using
some simple, old HTML with a little CSS.
What goes to the client is, for the Web, just
dirt simple.
Then each Web page is exactly 800 pixels wide,
small screen, big screen, small window, big window,
Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, etc., all the
same exactly 800 pixels wide, period. There are
both vertical and horizontal scroll bars.
The content of the pages is really simple,
basically just some text, a simple PNG image,
some links as at the top of these pages at
HN,
some simple, standard HTML controls,
and nothing else. As I recall, the
fonts are all 35 pixels high, that is,
relatively large fonts. All the layout
is with just HTML tables -- I'm not
asking the Web browser to position or
scale anything. No roll overs, pull downs,
pop-ups, icons -- HN doesn't have such either.
So, on any browser window with at least 800
pixels of width, my Web pages should look fine;
some users may want to use some
magnification option in their Web browser --
I'm not going to program that logic.
Simple. Dirt simple. No doubt. That
my Web pages take up only 800 pixels
of width on some workstation screen
4000 pixels wide is okay with me.
If my site has any value, then it's not in
fancy HTML, CSS, or JavaScript. Same for
HN.
I can understand that for a lot of sites,
there is client side JavaScript that
keeps looking at the size of the browser
window and walks some tree of the
document object model or some such
and dynamically positions text,
ads, images, video windows, etc.
That could get complicated on one
computer and much worse on
a billion computers from
smartphones to workstations.
For solving that problem, I didn't
figure out how or even attack it.
If you are working on such a problem,
you have my sympathy;
if you get a good solution, you
have my congratulations.
What I'm doing is dirt simple;
no doubt you could have done it
easily except for just one issue:
Do you want such a simple Web page?
HN does. Some other sites do.
So do I.
But, yes, when my site goes live, I'll
eagerly announce on HN. Then you can all
say that my Web pages look like they
were designed
by 5 year old child in 1995
in 15 minutes after stealing
five beers from his parents' refrigerator --
will be about right. Even more likely,
by a drunk, baby T Rex.
I'm not trying to
build a brick outhouse or use a $3 million
Ferrari to get six loaves of bread and
three gallons of milk. Instead, simple
as possible but not simpler.
My Web pages are all really simple: Each is 800 pixels wide, with just a little use of CSS and then nearly all just HTML, with the layout using tables. I have yet to write a single line of JavaScript although Microsoft's ASP.NET writes a little for me.
To me, my Web pages look quite functional, usable, easy to understand and use, etc.
For the need for a lot more, I don't get it and worse: On the Internet I see a lot of really complicated Web pages that jump around while loading and then again when I use my mouse to put the page into the focus and use the scroll wheel on the mouse to scroll the page. I don't like the jumping around.
Why go to the trouble to build such complicated Web pages?
I'm not criticizing but trying to learn and inviting answers.
Why bother? HTML was just another text markup language, and nice, and CSS helped a little. Isn't that enough?
I learned some HTML, and it was fine, and now I want to move on and just use it and not stop here and make a career out of adding unbounded complexity.
Shouldn't things be as simple as possible but not simpler? Why be so complicated? To me, the complicated Web pages I see are a disaster, slow down my computer, etc. -- I'd much rather have just simple Web pages with old HTML, only simple CSS, and little or no JavaScript.