[Iv]

Well, HTML was supposed to be a generic language to describe typical documents. Most websites don't need more than the default elements.

From an outside perspective, it is perplexing to see the constant back and forth webdevs do between making website more complex and rediscovering the simpler first principles

[zwnow]

I am sorry but its not the devs who want complexity. Users and Designers want a snappy interactive UI with lots of animations to get the "vibe" right. Devs are usually fine with websites looking like they are straight out of 2003 (considering all the language doc pages I've seen)

[zelphirkalt]

That depends very much on the type of developer.

Personally, I would first try to get the semantic structure of HTML right for the content I want to display. Then I would look at what I can do in CSS to make it look nice, but without going full overboard. Stick to things that are now standard in browsers, and that are responsive and resize and float nicely. Perhaps, if necessary even something like the checkbox hack, but probably try to avoid it, since it is a hack. Then the site already looks sufficiently good usually. At no point in this comes JavaScript into play, because this is about visuals, and that should be handled by HTML and CSS. I will use JS, when I have something dynamically changing and/or interactive on a page, and I will try to make a noscript alternative, perhaps usable by the user simply reloading the page.

However, I have also seen a lot of frontend devs, who just throw JS framework at everything and since everything is JS anyway, they also do things that could be simple HTML and CSS using JS instead. The result are those pages, where one is greeted by a blank white page, when not running JS.

So there definitely are a lot of devs, mostly frontend devs, that do this kinda thing, and it often secures their job by introducing complexity under the guise of looking fancy.

Example from a previous job: Making buttons that have 2 corners cut off, but the main navigation bugs regarding responsiveness, that led to broken layout took 3 months to fix. Transferring a navigation from one project to another? 3 weeks.

[zwnow]

Frameworks are a lot simpler than building with vanilla html, css and js. At least that's my experience... Requires a lot less boilerplate too.

Regarding the noscript alternative solution. I do not know a single modern website relying on users refreshing the page to update content. Except for HN maybe. This approach is very very outdated and will frustrate users.

[zelphirkalt]

The refresh page thing is, as I explained, a fallback for users, who don't want to run or cannot run JS. 99% or more of the users will never see this. I personally would be grateful, if web devs took precautions and paid attention to also having a no-JS workflow for things where it is relatively simple to implement. It also has to do with accessibility. A JS-only page, that results in a blank white page has exactly zero accessibility.

[philote]

It depends, the frameworks I've seen require a ton of boilerplate (ie. the things tools like create-react-app sets up for you) and have quite a learning curve. Using what you already know is simpler, and some of us know vanilla html, css, and js. It also very much depends on what you're making. Many sites don't necessarily need much interactivity or to constantly receive updated data.

[von_lohengramm]

>Users ... want a snappy interactive UI with lots of animations to get the "vibe" right

[citation needed]