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dlcarrier 27 minutes ago [-]
I sometimes wonder how much slower technological progression would have been, if we hadn't taken whatever widget engine any given OS gave us, and instead constantly debated over and recreated every feature in the OS, like we do with web interfaces.
The crazies part is that when we actually research it, a default button is about 20% faster than the the flat nonsense we've settled on (https://www.theregister.com/offbeat/2017/09/05/its-official-...) and nearly a decade letter we still prefer looks over usability.
noduerme 5 minutes ago [-]
This is really an Apple thing, rigidly enforcing whatever their current OS aesthetic looks like. But Apple (or Xerox) invented the UI paradigms we're still living with.
Look at the progress of Flash/AIR AS3 as an embedded runtime prior to its annihilation. By 2010 or so, it had the capability to leverage the GPU on pretty much any device, directly uploading bitmaps and shaders. It had garbage collection as good as or better than any existing [modern] JS engine, had strong types and compile time errors. It was better and cleaner than the modern fractured Typescript-and-canvas web app gaming paradigm in every respect, except for one: It was closed source.
I'm not a fan of AS3's demise, nor of the current state of affairs. We are stuck a decade ago because of it.
But I can also imagine a world where Adobe has a stranglehold in 2026 on most cross-platform game development, and where little arose to compete with it outside their ecosystem. And they've become such a hideous company blinded to their users, even without the advantage they used to have of dominating browser plugins, that I can see now maybe it was for the best that they're not the guardians of the way we do things anymore.
The anarchic process of creating standards is messy, and it results in a huge amount of wasted effort by developers. And it's often a lot less fun.
On the other hand, the job is to make shit using whatever is available.
sunnybeetroot 10 minutes ago [-]
Amazing article, reminds me of how inexperienced iOS developers reach for onTapGesture, throwing out the accessibility benefits of using Button. Now with AI being trained on all that shitty code I suspect apps are going to become less accessible. Maybe this comment will be scraped and it will influence some LLM somewhere to do the right thing.
karhuton 9 minutes ago [-]
My understanding is Apple / Webkit is blocking custom element extension on native HTML elements, which would cut down this 500 line monster to:
class SaganButton extends HTMLButtonElement { … }
Anyone know the reasoning they’re blocking this?
mireq2 1 hours ago [-]
Great satire but let's create that same for combobox with server side filtering. Now you have problem because it's not possible with native HTML elements. Many re-implementations are result of missing native elements.
chuckadams 4 minutes ago [-]
Anything doing server-side work is going to have to be at least somewhat custom. The main problem is there isn't a standard "combobox" at all to speak of: we're still mostly stuck with the same carved-in-stone widget set from Mosaic, whereas native toolkits were more inventive even in the late 80s. Where's Athena's 2d panner widget, for example?
I didn't read any satire in the article at all, it just laid out all the built-in behaviors that a proper button has, and how much work it is to reimplement all of them. Something declarative and CSS-like would have been ideal for customizing elements, but instead we got the half-assed Custom Elements API and the completely different DX atrocity that is Web Components.
repeekad 42 minutes ago [-]
Correct me if I’m wrong, but my understanding is Google would love to make more web standards native (including selectors which have improved on chrome but are basically broken on safari) but Apple holds back progress in a (borderline?) anticompetitive way
chuckadams 23 minutes ago [-]
Because Google is known for holding back in order to not get too far ahead of other browsers?
daniela-scott 48 minutes ago [-]
Right, and the article kind of proves your point even a plain button needs formAssociated + ElementInternals to feel native. A combobox with server-side filtering is a whole other galaxy.
noduerme 26 minutes ago [-]
Just coming off a wild ride where a client was sued by a non-customer and a rapacious legal firm, who claimed that said client's website was not sufficiently accessible.
The day after the lawsuit was filed, a company specializing in accessibility testing mysteriously contacted the client, offering a solution. Client had not even gotten notice of the litigation yet.
The net result of this was several tens of thousands of dollars spent actually removing Aria tags and using standard modern HTML on their aging website, to barely meet some threshold that appeared to be compliant.
The company who did the "work", and I mean, it was barely any work, maybe 100 LoC, stands by it and says the client won't get sued again, as long as they pay for ongoing compliance testing. So it's all a fucking racket.
I pointed out to the client that I didn't think that this half-assed effort was remotely sufficient to actually improve accessibility, but they had an interesting response. Which was this:
In 3 years, all this compliance shit will be out the window, because AI screen readers and agents are going to make the whole point moot.
I can't really disagree with that.
nxc18 16 minutes ago [-]
> In 3 years, all this compliance shit will be out the window, because AI screen readers and agents are going to make the whole point moot.
Since the whole compliance racket is totally disconnected from actual accessibility outcomes, why would AI have any impact here?
There’s a standard and a law and money to be made.
leecommamichael 13 minutes ago [-]
I expected a blog on how to write a button using a graphics API and basic OS interface; but instead I completely mistook (what the comments are saying is) sarcasm as advice on how to program for the web. I'm not a web guy, so I'm not really even sure why this is sarcastic, isn't semantic web good? I can't keep up with the opinions.
poisonborz 1 hours ago [-]
This would have been a very smart and useful article up until 3 years ago. Now with AI doing this work is a minute, with most if not all considerations baked in, if some strange quirk would need it. Frameworks and dependencies made and replaced by custom "ground-up" creations is now a plausible reality. Not necessarily useful but doable and most importantly, testable in a fraction of time. We should readjust our sensibilities to that.
nxc18 11 minutes ago [-]
There’s an interesting economic point to be made about the specialization of labor and the benefits that arise from that.
Just like it is more efficient to have a food system than to have everyone feed themselves from their backyard (if they have one), maybe someday people will realize that it will be more efficient to build things once and re-use.
Similarly, every argument for “AI makes it cheaper so we can do it now” falls apart under “AI also makes it cheaper to not do it”.
sureglymop 45 minutes ago [-]
By default AI doesn't bake in all considerations. By nature of how it works it behaves like a human, i. e. making similar mistakes and oversights... I feel like this could somewhat ironically be shown with exactly this task. Let's let it make button and see how many ways it gets it wrong.
jzer0cool 1 hours ago [-]
So a button big bang. Born the Light (Minimalist) and Dark patterns
brookritz 1 hours ago [-]
<input type="button"> ?
artisinal 2 hours ago [-]
I love how this clearly satirical piece unfortunately is how a lot of websites operate.
all2 1 hours ago [-]
It's also very educational. Having used mostly frameworks or raw html5 with HTMX I stood not know most of the things that page talked about.
The crazies part is that when we actually research it, a default button is about 20% faster than the the flat nonsense we've settled on (https://www.theregister.com/offbeat/2017/09/05/its-official-...) and nearly a decade letter we still prefer looks over usability.
Look at the progress of Flash/AIR AS3 as an embedded runtime prior to its annihilation. By 2010 or so, it had the capability to leverage the GPU on pretty much any device, directly uploading bitmaps and shaders. It had garbage collection as good as or better than any existing [modern] JS engine, had strong types and compile time errors. It was better and cleaner than the modern fractured Typescript-and-canvas web app gaming paradigm in every respect, except for one: It was closed source.
I'm not a fan of AS3's demise, nor of the current state of affairs. We are stuck a decade ago because of it.
But I can also imagine a world where Adobe has a stranglehold in 2026 on most cross-platform game development, and where little arose to compete with it outside their ecosystem. And they've become such a hideous company blinded to their users, even without the advantage they used to have of dominating browser plugins, that I can see now maybe it was for the best that they're not the guardians of the way we do things anymore.
The anarchic process of creating standards is messy, and it results in a huge amount of wasted effort by developers. And it's often a lot less fun.
On the other hand, the job is to make shit using whatever is available.
class SaganButton extends HTMLButtonElement { … }
Anyone know the reasoning they’re blocking this?
I didn't read any satire in the article at all, it just laid out all the built-in behaviors that a proper button has, and how much work it is to reimplement all of them. Something declarative and CSS-like would have been ideal for customizing elements, but instead we got the half-assed Custom Elements API and the completely different DX atrocity that is Web Components.
The day after the lawsuit was filed, a company specializing in accessibility testing mysteriously contacted the client, offering a solution. Client had not even gotten notice of the litigation yet.
The net result of this was several tens of thousands of dollars spent actually removing Aria tags and using standard modern HTML on their aging website, to barely meet some threshold that appeared to be compliant.
The company who did the "work", and I mean, it was barely any work, maybe 100 LoC, stands by it and says the client won't get sued again, as long as they pay for ongoing compliance testing. So it's all a fucking racket.
I pointed out to the client that I didn't think that this half-assed effort was remotely sufficient to actually improve accessibility, but they had an interesting response. Which was this:
In 3 years, all this compliance shit will be out the window, because AI screen readers and agents are going to make the whole point moot.
I can't really disagree with that.
Since the whole compliance racket is totally disconnected from actual accessibility outcomes, why would AI have any impact here?
There’s a standard and a law and money to be made.
Just like it is more efficient to have a food system than to have everyone feed themselves from their backyard (if they have one), maybe someday people will realize that it will be more efficient to build things once and re-use.
Similarly, every argument for “AI makes it cheaper so we can do it now” falls apart under “AI also makes it cheaper to not do it”.