Have the 'experts' finally lost the plot?

[pziecina]

Hi,

I realised today that I have not started any discussions about the state of web development in a long time, so just to remain controversial here it is.

This is not about Dw, but the web in general, and the lack of 'practice what you preach' design and development principles, that is becoming more common on what were once popular web development related sites.

If you look at the following 2 sites, (picked at random for examples) then resize your browsers so that the Media-queries are rendered, (moving from desktop to mobile) you will notice that they on the whole completely ignore good practices for readability, images, coding, accessibility,  and almost everything else one can think of that they tell everyone they should do, a list apart doesn't even bother to change the header and 'footer' text to make it readable, (only portions of the text are displayed).

https://alistapart.com/

https://www.sitepoint.com/

(Pick your own web dev site at random)

Yes, many of the ones I looked at are using flexbox, srcset/picture, (but not very well) and one or two are even experimenting with css grid layouts, (+fallback code) but what is the point in writing about good practices, telling visitors 'this is how you should be doing it', or even writing many many articles about design and development, then ignoring them themselves, or even worse obviously not testing the code correctly.

It's not just those sites, but many others who are failing the audience they write for. Trying to find good examples of sites using srcset/picture, css grids/flexbox, css shapes, css selector usage, css animations and just about everything else that has been written about over the last 7-10 years, is sadly missing. The days of telling people to read the source code of a site to improved their knowledge, and see how things are done just does not work anymore, and if the major sites in the web development community cannot be counted upon, maybe it is time they 'closed down', or the 'designers/developers' retired, as they are making livings from writing/publishing articles on the sites, speaking at developers conferences, but forgetting to tell those reading or attending their conferences -

"We don't use/do this on our sites"

[Jon Fritz]

In my mind, they're just relaying information, I don't fault them for not following it every time something changes.

Like any other site, they're restricted by time, money, manpower and desire.

[pziecina]

https://forums.adobe.com/people/Jon+Fritz+II  wrote

In my mind, they're just relaying information, I don't fault them for not following it every time something changes.

Like any other site, they're restricted by time, money, manpower and desire.

That would be fine, but many of these people are charging money for attending web development conferences, telling people 'this is how you should be doing it', showing attendees lots of slides, but when those people get back from the conference there is no substance or supporting information on the web for those attendees to follow.

What got me started on this was 2 people having attended a conference over the weekend, asking me how they find, 'that missing info/examples'. When I checked, I found nothing, and asking a number of developers I know, (some I work with) I found that this lack of supporting material was the norm, not the exception.

To me that is like selling a reference book full of blank pages.

[osgood_]

pziecina  wrote

That would be fine, but many of these people are charging money for attending web development conferences, telling people 'this is how you should be doing it', showing attendees lots of slides, but when those people get back from the conference there is no substance or supporting information on the web for those attendees to follow.

Web development conferences have always been the playground for the lazy, idle, mostly unemployed people, book writers etc but yet never produce any real world projects, just out to make a few bucks from unsuspecting newbies. That's always been the case and anyone buying into it have more money than sense. I'm sure most just view it as a jolly, not something to be taken seriously because WTF can you learn from a 2 hour course on Bootstrap.....

[pziecina]

osgood_  wrote

Web development conferences have always been the playground for the lazy, idle, mostly unemployed people,

Sounds like just the type of work I am looking for

[osgood_]

pziecina  wrote

osgood_   wrote

Web development conferences have always been the playground for the lazy, idle, mostly unemployed people,

Sounds like just the type of work I am looking for

It's a good gig if you can get it. We always said that about the tutors who taught us in art college, basically they were unemployable. I think eveyone knows that teaching it rather than acually doing it, is a 'soft' touch.

[osgood_]

pziecina  wrote

a list apart doesn't even bother to change the header and 'footer' text to make it readable, (only portions of the text are displayed).

Looks to all be there and easily readable on on a smart phone?

I think the problem today, know I don't think, I know. There is just too many ways, too many options, too many variations, frameworks, languages, extensions, plugins, cms's etc that it's become a free for all rather than something where good practice can be isolated and controlled. There really isn't any good practice right now, it's open to debate. You say don't use jquery, I say it's ok. I say don't use Bootstrap, others say its ok, so it goes on. Who's right , who's wrong. We are no longer isolated to just writing html, css, pure javascript, php etc we now have a bucket full of 'helpers' most of which don't get it right or do it badly but these are now the main-stream options developers are turning to.

I always go back to the story of when I was learning this stuff. Every 'so called' guru out there was saying less is more, divitis was bad, less mark-up was the way to go. Now it seems all that is a thing of the past, because of convenience, quickness, cheapness afforded by frameworks, poor code which spews from this extension or that plugin or CMS's like Worpress etc.

Coding quality is not considered important any longer. Anyone who thinks it is sadly is old, past their sell by date, (I include myself in that category) the world has changed, not just in web-development but just about everything you can think of is become diluted as cost cutting is applied and in the face of competition who can do it cheaper for a few years, until they go out of business.

All I can say is thank christ I don't have to make a living out of this any longer. I feel for those starting out or are still in it for the long run because its become largely a souless, unskilled career thanks to so called 'modern' workflows which mostly take any skill away from the profession which lowers it to joke status if some of the questions in this forum are to be believed as being represenative of 'real' web development.

[pziecina]

osgood_  wrote

pziecina   wrote

a list apart doesn't even bother to change the header and 'footer' text to make it readable, (only portions of the text are displayed).

Looks to all be there and easily readable on on a smart phone?

... You say don't use jquery, I say it's ok. I say don't use Bootstrap, others say its ok, so it goes on. Who's right , who's wrong. We are no longer isolated to just writing html, css, pure javascript, php etc we now have a bucket full of 'helpers' most of which don't get it right or do it badly but these are now the main-stream options developers are turning to.

Load the 'a list apart' site in landscape mode on a tablet, then rotate to portrait to see the 'cut-off' text.

As for me saying do not use jQuery, and in most cases Bootstrap or other frameworks -

What i actually say is - only use them when one knows how to develop without them, that way one can make an informed decission. If one then decides to use them then fine, ignore me, but without knowing the how without them, they are nothing more than a crutch to lean on, and not necessarily the best or time saver 'helpers' one may think, and may actually turn out to be be the worst option possible.

[osgood_]

pziecina  wrote

Load the 'a list apart' site in landscape mode on a tablet, then rotate to portrait to see the 'cut-off' text.

Text looks ok to me in landscape and portrait. I think those 2 images at the top and bottom, if that is the text you are referring to,  are just decorative. That's the only text that I can see that gets cut off on my devices and that is because they are background images.

pziecina  wrote

As for me saying do not use jQuery, and in most cases Bootstrap or other frameworks -

What i actually say is - only use them when one knows how to develop without them, that way one can make an informed decission. If one then decides to use them then fine, ignore me, but without knowing the how without them, they are nothing more than a crutch to lean on, and not necessarily the best or time saver 'helpers' one may think, and may actually turn out to be be the worst option possible.

The reason I use jQuery is because it is wriiten to be user-friendly, has functions that would take dozens of lines to write in vanilla javascript.

I don't think its wise to use it if you are just alerting a simple message out though. Its got a bad name recently because it was one of the original javascript libraries and has become unfashionable - developers like to move on when something else comes along like react, angular etc.

The problem is you could spend your whole time/life learning/deciding which of these new players to adopt and never get any actual work done.

It doesn't impose on your mark-up, workflow or naming convention as say an html framework does so I'm happy to let it sit there and work in the background. Sure it adds some extra weight to the page but its a trade off, as pretty much everything is.

[pziecina]

That's just it Os, jQuery when it was first introduced solve a lot of browser compatability problems with a very small jQuery file size, (i think it was about 17kb unzipped) but now the jQuery file size is over 240kb unzipped, (about 80kb zipped) -

https://mathiasbynens.be/demo/jquery-size

For what 99% of users it for, it is not required, and even when it is, many are then also adding the jQuery UI file also, which is now over 300kb, (unzipped) and that is before adding any of the jQuery 'widgets', (if you want basic drag and drop functionality, that adds another 400kb).

This is also one of my biggest concerns about all frameworks - They always get bigger over time, what started as a 17kb browser compatibility fix, with an easy to write abstraction code, has now become a js abstraction layer bigger than anything required by anyone.

[Nancy OShea]

The entire web is getting bigger.  When you consider how much data is gathered & transmitted every minute of every day by Google and all other interests, jQuery + frameworks represent an insignificant drop in a super-massive bucket of collective data streams.   We're going to need quantum computers sooner rather than later.

Back to your original point about development sites.  Yes, I've noticed them devolving for quite some time.  It seems like web accessibility and solid functionality have taken a back seat to other concerns.  IMO, CodePen is one of the worst sites ever.  I hate struggling with it.  

[osgood_]

pziecina  wrote

That's just it Os, jQuery when it was first introduced solve a lot of browser compatability problems with a very small jQuery file size, (i think it was about 17kb unzipped) but now the jQuery file size is over 240kb unzipped, (about 80kb zipped) -

https://mathiasbynens.be/demo/jquery-size

The basic jQuery library is 90kb minified. I'm not sure why anyone would be using an unminifield version.

That's less than the size of a hero image or a couple of smaller images.

I think you have to be selective. When you start to link to multiple frameworks, plugins etc I think that's when it starts to becomes questionable.