[OT] HTML: div/iframe hybrid?

[H. S. Teoh via Digitalmars-d]

On Thu, Feb 26, 2015 at 11:50:04PM -0500, Nick Sabalausky via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> On 02/26/2015 04:34 PM, H. S. Teoh via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> >On Thu, Feb 26, 2015 at 03:36:04PM -0500, Nick Sabalausky via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> >>
> >>Yea. Speaking of, that mobile-directed "no zoom" css thing is
> >>seriously fucking evil. If browser devs had any basic integrity
> >>whatsoever they'd deliberately ignore that abomination of an
> >>attribute, or at least let any B&D users who enjoy being told what
> >>they can't do on their own miniature device just opt-in to it.
> >
> >I find this trend extremely disturbing and exceptionally annoying. I
> >wish every browser would come with an option to override everything
> >the author tries to shove down your throat and using what YOU, the
> >user, specify as default instead.
> >
> 
> Yea. I'm a steadfast believer in the the design principle of "highly
> configurable with reasonable defaults". Ideally, everything should be
> configurable and nothing should NEED to be configured. Or as close to
> that as possible.

Making everything configurable is hard, though. Well, not *that* hard if
you design your code properly, but in the webdev world, sometimes it's
all about unreasonable deadlines and shipping it as fast as possible.
Good design -- what's that?? As a result, making things configurable is
harder than it ought to be, and the returns are low 'cos most people
won't even bother configuring anything in the first place.  Result:
nobody cares, and nobody implements it.


[...]
> One of these days I still want to make an FF addon to just bring
> sanity back to the whole freaking thing. Maybe later split it off into
> its own Webkit/Chromium-based browser. I'm seriously fed up with
> Mozilla's BS (like you mentioned in a later post, way too much
> Chrome-envy, among other issues), but the only alternatives are worse.

When Opera ditched Presto, I died a little inside. Back in the day,
Presto was the only serious alternative to the other major offerings (I
even introduced Opera to my non-techie cousin and she liked it!), and
was the only one that offered the level of configurability that I liked.
In the early days it was also slim and fast, though it started bloating
up toward the final days.  But then Opera died and went the way of
Chrome and now we're stuck with the IMO inferior choices.

At least Vimperator made FF tolerable. Not enough, though. Perhaps one
of these days when I have time (har har) I'll take it even further, and
fully eradicate the rodent dependence and other Chrome-envy and replace
it with something useful. Like a D REPL, I dunno. j/k :-P


> >Just give me the content, m'am, keep all the frills to yourself. Oh,
> >you mean there's nothing left after the frills and eye-candy are
> >gone? Well, then, I'll move on to another site that actually sports
> >content, thank you very much, have a nice day.
> 
> And "content" does NOT mean "A barely-meaningful slogan or two and a
> vaguely related image tossed onto a mostly-blank page. Scroll down to
> get a few more slogans and clipart." (*cough* mobile-first design
> *cough*)

I've already given up that fight. I used to think time machines were
fictitious, but clearly *somebody* has invented one and is seriously
screwing with our timeline, it's now the 90's in 2015 and contentless
splash pages are all the rage. Only, instead of Flash or Java like in
the real 90's, it's now CSS and HTML5 canvas. I don't know where all the
lessons learned in the 90's went -- y'know, all those webpage design
tutorials advising against contentless splash pages and recommending
delivering oh, y'know, actual content? And sane navigation? -- but
clearly the guy with the time machine has seriously screwed things up
and nobody remembers the past to learn from its mistakes. Except users,
whose memories were left intact so that they'll suffer for it
needlessly. Sigh...


> But yea, that's the thing I don't get about the JS proponents: The
> argument always goes back to "It allows sites to be more dynamic!"[1]
> Umm, ok, and that's a good thing why exactly? They never seem to have
> a real reason of course, it's just taken for granted that "more
> dynamic" is unquestionably better, because it just is, and because we
> can. Oh yea, and call something "passe" because that'll REALLY prove
> some sort of worthwhile point.

It's just like how in the bad ole days, MS would label something "smart"
because it sells better that way, yet everytime people hear MS say
"smart" they go on the alert for something really dumb. Or "active" (aka
"public arbitrary code execution service"), "dynamic" (aka "<marquee>
repackaged in a less offensive name"), or any of those overused,
beaten-to-death adjectives that have been bleached of all traces of
actual meaning.


> [1] Then they also like tossing around the meaningless buzzword of
> "richer experience", thus proving they're only regurgitating
> groupthink and haven't actually thought through much of anything.

Yep, caveman-style "point-n-grunt" is obviously "richer experience"
because it's "more intuitive" and therefore points the way to the
future, whereas an actual HCI language like a CLI is "passé" because it
actually requires thought and constructing grammatical sentences to
represent complex ideas rather than monosyllabic grunts for "me want, me
no wait, give now".  Ah, the signs of progress!  :-P

And TBH, I also despise the word "content"... because it makes it sound
as if there's anything else that matters. Back in the day, the whole
point of going online was to get what people nowadays call "content", or
more accurately, "information". The 'net back then *was* primarily just
"content". Nowadays, however, "content" is a rare commodity, a mere tool
to be hogged, controlled, and exploited to lure hapless netizens to
poorly-designed sites and keep them there so that they can suffer
needlessly by being force-fed eye-candy, pointless animations, and
lately, the ever more trendy Empty Space. Keep those 0x20's coming, Bob!
Fight the good fight! ^W^W^W^W^W^WI mean, those U+00A0's...


T

-- 
People say I'm indecisive, but I'm not sure about that. -- YHL, CONLANG