This is a great thought exercise in progressive enhancement …that Scott then turns into a real exercise!
A plea to let users do web things on websites. In other words, stop over-complicating everything with buckets of JavaScript.
Honestly, this isn’t wishlist isn’t asking for much, and it’s a damning indictment of “modern” frontend development that we’ve come to this:
- Let me copy text so I can paste it.
- If something navigates like a link, let me do link things.
- …
Here’s a nifty demo of popover but it’s not for what we’d traditionally consider a modal dialog.
Can we please stop adding complexity to our systems just so we can do it in JavaScript? If you can do it without JavaScript, you probably should. Tools shouldn’t add complexity.
You don’t need a framework to render static content to the end user. Stop creating complex solutions to simple problems.
I wasn’t able to tune into this live (“tune in?” what century is this?) but I’ve enjoyed catching up with the great talks like:
It would be much harder for a 15-year-old today to View Source and understand the code structure that built the website they’re on. Every site is layered with analytics, code snippets, javascript plugins, CMS data, and more.
This is why the simplicity of HTML and CSS now feels like a radical act. To build a website with just these tools is a small protest against platform capitalism: a way to assert sustainability, independence, longevity.
2022 was once unimaginable to some web folks.
Had you heard of these bits of CSS? Me too/neither!
The joy of getting hands-on with HTML and CSS.
Separate your concerns.
Using the CSS trinity of feature queries, logical properties, and unset.