It won't look right because it literally blanks out the page if Javascript and CSS aren't enabled. That's not a limitation of the web, that's a conscious design choice by the author.
Without CSS, what this would look like is pure data -- a list of animals with a picture and their relevant depth printed next to them. It would be perfectly functional. This is your render target: "what is the information that I wish to convey?"
Now we move to CSS and we make things pretty. A pure CSS/HTML version of this page would look pretty much the same, it just wouldn't have animated backgrounds or an interactive depth calculation. But it would still look nice, and it would still get the point across.
Now we move to JS and we add fun touches like an animated background and interactive depth view. And at this point, we're back to the original page layout and we haven't sacrificed anything at all to get there.
> The point is to get to the above, you need to basically hack your way there.
I want to be clear here -- I'm not advocating for a less experimental, uglier web. The reason you (or whoever the author is) needed to hack their way to this page is because they are over-complicating and over-engineering their UI. This page is using a CSS grid, for no reason at all. It's pulling in webGL code to render a background that could be handled with a simple Canvas. None of the elements on the page are in the right order, so good heckin luck trying to read this if you're blind. Even though, to be clear, the information this page is displaying is an ordered list of animals with some text next to them.
There is zero reason for this page not to be accessible to blind people. There is zero reason why this page can't degrade gracefully without Javascript. Making it accessible would not require you to compromise on the design or the visuals in any way at all. It doesn't need React, it doesn't need inline styles, it doesn't need CSS grid -- you could build the exact same page with no frameworks, and the code would be cleaner and easier to understand.
> Heck under your logic, why even have the OS expose the pixel level api? Just have the OS expose a DOM. 95% of apps are that way so an OS that does this is perfectly fine.
I'm not going to go quite so far as to advocate that native apps shouldn't have direct access to a pixel-level API. And from a pure engineering perspective, it does make sense to build high-level controls on top of low-level ones. But what I will say is that on Linux right now, we still don't have fractional scaling in Gnome, very few of the native apps are responsive, and most will break layouts if you try to mess too much with your OS's font-size or settings. The last time I talked to the MyPaint devs about building a touch-friendly version of MyPaint with bigger buttons, they told me it was impossible because of whatever Python-based widget library they were using. And holy crap, the menu/toolbar in MyPaint is not complicated. If the widget library doesn't support fractional scaling, it doesn't mean that MyPaint menus are doing something crazy or revolutionary, it means the Python widget library being used is crap.
And that kind of makes me think, if we had forced native developers to use an HTML-like interface instead of building pixel-perfect interfaces that aren't future-proof, would touchscreen Linux on HDPI screens be in such an awful state today? Would Purism have needed to rewrite half of Gnome's apps to get them working on a phone?
I'm not sure I agree that the state of native apps is perfectly fine. And I definitely disagree that caring about stuff like accessibility necessarily means that you can't be creative, or that we'll be holding the web back. I think that 95% of the native apps on your computer are probably text based UIs, except they've got a little bit of styling applied on top of them to turn unordered lists into drop-down menus. We have escape hatches for the web apps that are more complicated, that genuinely need to do crazy pixel-level things. Most of them don't.
It's not about getting rid of that styling, it's not about making things ugly. It's about recognizing that we're working twice as hard for interfaces that are half as functional as they could be, and we wouldn't need to sacrifice any of the fun visual stuff we're doing to improve that situation.
No. The author wishes to convey a multimedia experience. This is evident, the page is unique because of this.
The author does not care to convey just textual information. You're just breaking down the core components of the system and picking the one that's required to have any semblance of a page. The "fun touches" are ultimately required. It's like a script vs. a movie, the movie isn't required and the script is ultimately all that's needed but nobody cares about the script do they? It's not even embedded in the movie.
>I want to be clear here -- I'm not advocating for a less experimental, uglier web. The reason you (or whoever the author is) needed to hack their way to this page is because they are over-complicating and over-engineering their UI. This page is using a CSS grid, for no reason at all. It's pulling in webGL code to render a background that could be handled with a simple Canvas. None of the elements on the page are in the right order, so good heckin luck trying to read this if you're blind. Even though, to be clear, the information this page is displaying is an ordered list of animals with some text next to them.
I have to be honest with you, and this is cruel. But when I design a page... I don't care for blind people. I don't focus my design so that it will cascade down into something blind people can read. Books don't have this property, movies don't and because of this... neither should web pages. It is not worth the effort.
>I'm not sure I agree that the state of native apps is perfectly fine. And I definitely disagree that caring about stuff like accessibility necessarily means that you can't be creative, or that we'll be holding the web back. I think that 95% of the native apps on your computer are probably text based UIs, except they've got a little bit of styling applied on top of them to turn unordered lists into drop-down menus. We have escape hatches for the web apps that are more complicated, that genuinely need to do crazy pixel-level things. Most of them don't.
I never said native apps are perfectly fine. I'm also not advocating all sites be designed with pixels. What I am advocating is freedom from HTML and CSS. If the platform of the browser exposed pixel level control with HTML and CSS only as a library and given the amount of people who hate the CSS + HTML... it's almost a guarantee that people will create sibling API's that are on the same High level as HTML + CSS but offering different philosophies. There are multitudes of UI layout languages and tools out there, who said HTML and CSS was the best, and why does it have to be the only way?
That's all I'm saying. You expose pixel level control at the core for the purpose of being able to use and create multiple high level libraries rather being vendor locked into HTML and CSS.
I do want to mention very quickly that on the subject of books and movies, literally every Hollywood movie you can buy ships with subtitles for the deaf, and since ~2015 US law has required that new theaters also include equipment that provides audio descriptions for blind viewers[0]. And I don't know anyone who would seriously claim that the Godfather is lessened as an artistic expression just because deaf people can turn on subtitles.
[0]: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2016-12-02/html/2016-...
This world already exists. You're delusional if it doesn't. I use the word cruel, but you must know that cruel = reality. That's all I'm saying. 99% of the world is not designed for deaf people or blind people. There are arbitrary restrictions on certain things but this is reality and it's not going to change because engineering everything to account for these people come with an engineering cost.
It is not "pointlessly excluding," it's just not worth the engineering cost. But you know this. Any person is aware of this and the reality of the world. There is zero need to call it "pointlessly excluding" that's just a manipulative way of advocating your agenda.
>And I don't know anyone who would seriously claim that the Godfather is lessened as an artistic expression just because deaf people can turn on subtitles.
I don't know either. Did you or I make this claim? Perhaps nobody made this claim and your pulling this example out of nowhere to serve your agenda. You know video games don't account for blind people. This is purely out of cruelty of course, no way does it have anything to do with engineering cost. Obviously you don't know a thing about the cost of engineering mechanisms to get these games to work for blind people so that's why you didn't mention it. Of course it wasn't at all a deliberate choice not to mention the engineering cost to serve your own agenda.
It's not a coincidence that this design also increases accessibility -- it encodes the most meaning.
Please stop accusing everyone of being biased and having an agenda. Not that there is anything wrong with that, since everyone is biased and has an agenda (including you), but the way you're saying it makes it sound like you think it's an important component of other people's comments but not yours.
Ok first of all. There is no universal law that says everyone has to be biased and have an agenda. There's no logic to it. This false notion comes from the fact that most people (not all) people are biased and that when people are biased they are unaware of it. However this does not mean that people can't be unbiased or have no agenda.
Second: Examine the sentence in reference to that phrase. It is literally word for word referring to "engineering" and Not a specific set of engineering projects.
Literally what you are doing is inserting your own opinion onto what that "engineering" is referring to and I am taking it at face value. So I am not wrong when I say that your observations are biased. There is no accusation here, just observation of events.
Being biased is pretty much a part of the human condition since we are limited, finite beings. Do you have all the information? Are you certain you have all the information? Have you taken into account everyone's wishes, desires, needs, analyzed every possible scenario in existence according to some yet-unspecified objective reasoning system? Then you are biased. You are missing something, you are concluding something erroneously. (using the generic you as a stand-in for anyone)
Your agenda is to incorporate a pixel-level API into the web. And that's okay. Mine is to prevent the web into devolving into an opaque black box. That's okay too.
As to the topic at hand, I won't try dissecting comments word for word, because I think this is a loss of time and devolves into a lot of who-said-what, when we can sidestep it by concentrating on the most charitable explanation.
Reading through the thread again, I think the other poster's point was that there are many situations (not all) where designing things in the simplest and most direct way, using HTML as the semantic underpinning, leads to both less engineering effort and to a more accessible design.
Specifically, I do not think he was arguing doubling or tripling a movie budget in order to make another similar movie for blind people. But then again, we weren't talking about movies. We were talking about web sites, in which the loss of HTML would lead to a net loss compared to what we have now.
No. statements of observation do not have agendas. "The sky is blue" is a statement without an agenda. Statements can be made separate from agendas, which makes the statement unbiased.
>Being biased is pretty much a part of the human condition since we are limited, finite beings. Do you have all the information? Are you certain you have all the information? Have you taken into account everyone's wishes, desires, needs, analyzed every possible scenario in existence according to some yet-unspecified objective reasoning system? Then you are biased. You are missing something, you are concluding something erroneously. (using the generic you as a stand-in for anyone)
This is completely false. Biased, means a leaning of ones mind towards a particular viewpoint. People usually use this word in the context of a leaning of ones mind despite being aware of evidence to the contrary or lack of supporting evidence. If the mind does not lean then it is unbiased.
Your judgement of the statement has leaning towards your agenda despite you being aware of lack of evidence supporting it. My statement does not have leaning.
>Your agenda is to incorporate a pixel-level API into the web. And that's okay. Mine is to prevent the web into devolving into an opaque black box. That's okay too.
This "agenda" had nothing to do with my observations, but for yours it colored your interpretation of words. Your observations were biased, mine were not. This is not something that is Okay. Biased observations are usually false.
Given at face value the sentence is referring to a world of engineering with the context of the web as a specific example out of a more general point. You need to make a biased modification to the sentence in order for it to fit your world view.
>As to the topic at hand, I won't try dissecting comments word for word, because I think this is a loss of time and devolves into a lot of who-said-what, when we can sidestep it by concentrating on the most charitable explanation.
The most charitable explanation is here:
Given the original sentence we are referring to:
"You're not advocating for a bold, artistic world when you talk about engineering things to pointlessly exclude people."
The terms:
"Bold artistic world" "engineering things"
"Bold artistic web" "engineering web pages"
"You're not advocating for a bold, artistic web when you talk about engineering web pages to pointlessly exclude people."
You applied context to the statement relevant to your agenda. I did not. There is no doubt when I say that your perspective is in alignment with your agenda given lack of supporting evidence within the sentence itself. When you are biased you are unaware of it.
Definitively from the logic your statement is biased, mine is not.
>Specifically, I do not think he was arguing doubling or tripling a movie budget in order to make another similar movie for blind people. But then again, we weren't talking about movies. We were talking about web sites, in which the loss of HTML would lead to a net loss compared to what we have now.
Earlier you were rude to me. Therefore I don't care to debate this topic with you. Keep your opinion. I care little for it. If you had chosen more wisely earlier I would have gladly engaged with you on this very topic but since you chose not to, there is now zero possibility of further discussion on this topic.
The point isn't whether or not you can do this in CSS + HTML. (Which by the way CSS + HTML is proven to be turing complete so you can actually do anything in CSS + HTML including writing a JS interpreter so you can use javascript on non-JS enabled pages)
The point is to get to the above, you need to basically hack your way there. HTML + CSS is not the ideal medium to program something like that in. It would be better to have a library written over a pixel level API to construct the interfaces you see in the page rather then either hack your way through HTML and CSS or create a library of hacks on top of HTML and CSS.
>I'll make a bolder claim then: 95% of native apps are just interactive documents (with a few category exceptions like games), and most native developers who claim that their interfaces couldn't be represented on the web in HTML are kidding themselves. In the majority of cases, HTML/CSS would be fine for what they're building.
Sure make that claim, even if it were true nobody wants a computer to just be a platform for text based UI. Nobody wants the internet to be JUST that. People want the computer to be a universal computing platform. Games may be category but it's a huge category as no one will buy a computer that only has the capability of displaying text, they buy it for the computing potential to do anything.
Heck under your logic, why even have the OS expose the pixel level api? Just have the OS expose a DOM. 95% of apps are that way so an OS that does this is perfectly fine.
If you want to restrict the potential of what the internet is, then yes. If you want to expand it while keeping your design philosophy in place then the platform must expose a pixel level API and HTML and CSS must be moved to a library. It makes no sense for a lower level library to be written as a component of a higher level library, it should be reversed.