[HN Gopher] Those HTML attributes you never use ___________________________________________________________________ Those HTML attributes you never use Author : makaimc Score : 427 points Date : 2022-04-02 11:38 UTC (2 days ago) (HTM) web link (www.smashingmagazine.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.smashingmagazine.com) | andrewingram wrote: | When I worked on themes for a blog engine back in 2005/2006, I | used the titled stylesheets to allow me to switch between themes | quickly. There was actually an upper limit on how many you could | have before browsers started breaking, but it was still a useful | capability. | jer0me wrote: | I also like the `formaction` attribute that can be added to | buttons and input-buttons in forms to specify different actions. | I used it to let users choose between multiple payment methods. | NKosmatos wrote: | <blink>Came here for deprecated attributes, but found an | informative article.</blink> | ravenstine wrote: | <marquee>Never forget the fun of the early web!</marquee> | | Yeah, I had the same cynical assumption before reading. | | All in all, I can't remember coming across a deprecated HTML | feature that I needed and didn't already have a better | alternative. | 0des wrote: | Pouring one out for server side includes and my homie cgi-bin | as we speak | matt_kantor wrote: | Those aren't part of HTML, rather features of web servers | that are evaluated server-side. | | Furthermore I think you can still use this stuff. Apache | and Lighttpd are still perfectly fine web servers depending | on the use case. Also nginx supports server-side includes | and fastCGI. | extra88 wrote: | I still have some web pages I update on a shared host that | use server side includes to display the HTML file's last | modified date. | extra88 wrote: | <blink> and <marquee> are HTML _elements_ , the article is | about HTML _attributes_. | | None of the attributes in the article are deprecated, some | are underimplemented (alternative stylesheets). | mxuribe wrote: | The mischievous imp in me wanted to reply with something | like the following: <blink speed="fast">how fast should | this blink?</blink> ...But, then that's just not healthy | for anyone. :-) | extra88 wrote: | You got me, I actually searched for evidence that the | <blink> element supported a `speed` attribute. | | The MDN page about <blink> has example CSS to make the | element blink again. If you wanted to make speed | variants, you could use CSS selectors that set different | durations based on a data attribute and its value: | blink { animation: 2s linear infinite | condemned_blink_effect; } blink[data- | speed: fast] { animation-duration: 1s } blink[data- | speed: slow] { animation-duration: 4s } | bryanrasmussen wrote: | The xmp element worked better for its purpose than any of the | replacing elements, in my experience, http://www.the- | pope.com/listin.html | chrisfinazzo wrote: | I'm a bit surprised the autoplay attribute - at least how | it's been used for <audio> and <video> hasn't been similarly | consigned to the dustbin of history. | | What is taking so long? /s | | (Only a bit of sarcasm there, I actually would like to | know...) | extra88 wrote: | `autoplay` is rarely appropriate to use, but not never. If | a link named "Play 'Never Gonna Give You Up'" goes to a | page with <video autoplay ...>, that's fine. If the user is | informed that the action they're going to take will lead to | audio or video playing, you don't have to make them click | an additional thing (a "play" button) to make the content | play. | nkozyra wrote: | enterkeyhint doesn't do anything on Chrome on Android. | | Which kind of illustrates why a lot of these things are not well- | known. Why do something that that works on Firefox but not | Chrome/Edge or on Safari/Firefox but not Chrome, etc? Specs are | great, but near universal, reliably similar implementation is | key. | | In a lot of cases it means you have to build edge case UX. I'd | rather lean on UX that's mostly under my control and not at the | whim of browser adoption. | | I did at least find some blink discussion on it: | https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/blink-dev/c/Hfe5x... | hackyhacky wrote: | Although your complaint about unsupported features is generally | well-observed, in the case of this particular you feature, I | believe you're wrong. | | This site suggests that enterkeyhint is supported on Chrome: | https://caniuse.com/mdn-html_global_attributes_enterkeyhint | | My own testing also shows that it works. Using the "search" | value of the attribute, I was able to change the enter button | into a magnifying glass. | nkozyra wrote: | Wonder why their codepen example does nothing for me then? | Latest chrome, pixel 6. | easrng wrote: | What keyboard app are you using? I'm using OpenBoard | (Pretty close to AOSP) and it changes the icon on the enter | key for me. I'll make a screen recording in a sec. | nkozyra wrote: | Stock Android keyboard. Doesn't work if I dismiss either, | as sibling comment states. | easrng wrote: | Ok, it works for me but only if I dismiss the keyboard in | between fields. | | https://owo.whats-th.is/D4Vf7g6.mp4 | amelius wrote: | Why aren't all attributes CSS properties? | tannhaeuser wrote: | More like, why aren't all CSS properties attributes. | TAKEMYMONEY wrote: | ...and that's how Tailwind was born | amelius wrote: | Because you can't cascade attributes, whereas you can cascade | CSS properties. | detaro wrote: | Because attributes are not for styling. | ravenstine wrote: | To clarify, they can specify meaning, data, and behavior. | Technically the `style` tag applies any abstract styling, and | there are attributes for things like table-related elements | that can change the superficial appearance (not sure which | one that was); just pretend that the latter isn't a thing. | tannhaeuser wrote: | Don't know if you're kidding ;) but how's <p style="margin- | top: 2em;"> any better than <p margin-top="2em">? | ravenstine wrote: | Neither is necessarily "better", but rather they are | different design choices. HTML at first wasn't intended | to have very much styling at all, and originally there | was some more styling mixed into the HTML itself (like | <font>, bgcolor, etc.). Since now we pretty much want to | make our webpages look like anything, it seemed to make | sense to those drafting the standards to separate the two | concerns, since HTML is mostly about page flow structure | and data display, and page sources would be even harder | to read than they already are if everyone was just | putting their styles within HTML tags. If you're looking | for a data attribute, it can be hard on the eyes to be | constantly sifting through attributes for styling. | | You certainly can do things to overload attributes and do | what you're suggesting (in a sort of hackish way), and | you wouldn't necessarily be wrong in doing so if that's | your preference. Many people just don't like that. | | One of the great things about separating styles out of | HTML is that they can be contained in files and included | separately. With poor connectivity, ideally, it's | beneficial to keep the main page source to be as slim as | possible so that it can still be downloaded and read even | if the styling hasn't yet finished downloading. That's | not nearly as relevant anymore, but it would not be | surprising if keeping pages lean was a motivator in | moving away from putting more stuff in HTML. | salmo wrote: | You do remember the hell that was the font tag, don't | you? | | I think a lot of confusion from HTML being used for UIs | vs hypertext documents. It's a natural evolved mess still | balancing the two. | | But style should apply to the applied representation, | while HTML _should_ represent the intent of the content. | The line is fuzzy, and HTML /CSS has a bad history of | what falls where. | | The cool thing with browsers is that we can bake in style | to support multiple representations at once: monitor, | mobile, printer, etc. Using the style attribute directly | is mostly a side effect of only targeting the browser. | Although your example of relative units is more | ambiguous. Using a proper tag to represent the intent or | falling back to a class where HTML lacks one would be | preferable. | | I think the separation makes more sense if you've used | other document systems. SGML or XML DocBook, LaTeX, ROFF, | etc. | | For the last, if I use the man or mandoc module, all the | man page norms are there for me and I'm just plugging in | the content with the right macros. | | W/o, I'm manually flipping registers all over the place. | | But I've never hear of a roff or LaTeX UI, so... | mushyhammer wrote: | Contrary to popular belief, HTML and CSS are unrelated. | | If any CSS property was also an HTML attribute, any | addition to either spec would have to make sure it | wouldn't conflict. One example is the `content` HTML | attribute and CSS property. They serve different purposes | and have a completely different syntax. | <meta name="description" content="Cool stuff"> | | and .css::before { content: | url(image.bmp) } | tannhaeuser wrote: | Thanks for lecturing me, I'm aware of all that and know | the genesis myth of CSS ;) | | Sorry but I think you guys/gals don't get it - the | question is why do we need two item-value syntaxes. Like, | HTML has 'bgcolor=black' as markup attribute, and owing | to SGML, the effective value for that attribute can be | defaulted, inherited, and assigned in a context-dependent | way. Those mechanisms aren't directly part of HTML | because they don't need to be when it's understood that | HTML as an SGML application can of course make use of all | the authoring mechanism SGML has. But then comes CSS and | defines an entirely new syntax that's _almost_ the same | (eg. "background: #000"). How is that helpful? | | To say it in another way: let's assume we want web pages | in 3D space, and yes I know z-index and CSS parallax | effect are a thing so bear with me. Following the CSS | logic, we should tunnel a background depth/z coordinate | via CSS-in-HTML, like <p | style="background-image: url(bla); 3d-props: 'z is | -100angstrom, depth-of-field is 123deg'"> | | where I deliberately have chosen ad-hoc characters for | the item/value separator and multiple-properties | separator to make the point. | | You know, having a common meta syntax for | elements/attributes is the entire point of SGML as a text | format after all ;) | mushyhammer wrote: | You don't like my "lecturing," but you continue making | preposterous statements and asking questions that can't | be answered without "lecturing." It's like you're saying | "why is the sky is blue when we have water?" and then | correcting yourself with "but I was talking about the | stars, dude. ;)" | | To answer pragmatically: | | - don't use the style attribute | | - you could use XLST, which is style (and more) that uses | the same ML | | - are you suggesting that CSS and HTML should have the | same style? <a style="color=\"red\"">? I don't know how | that's better. | | Maybe you're still missing some lecturing: HTML is | content and CSS is style. What you're saying about 3D | context would be specified in CSS, in a separate file, so | your CSS-in-HTML readability argument (I guess that's | your argument? Who knows) falls pretty flat. | | It's almost the same as complaining that JS doesn't have | the same format as HTML while it totally could, but | instead we have JS-in-HTML. Oh how unfair life is. | | As far as I can see, you're just trolling, so thanks for | the laughs. | | Signed, <a | onclick="this.style.background='url(<svg | title=\"🖕\"><rect fill=\"blue\"/></svg>)'"> | have_faith wrote: | It keeps style instructions together instead of mingling | them with data and behaviour attributes. There's some | exceptions with some elements having attributes like | width and border but it's mostly historical. | tannhaeuser wrote: | Do you really believe that "style" requires entire new | _syntax_ , as opposed to "data" and "behavior", vague as | these categories are? In a markup language based on SGML | already chock full of syntactical constructs for | managing/inheriting item-value pairs? In SGML, attributes | are exactly there for things that aren't to be displayed | to the user; the idea that attributes are for "behaviour" | or whatever is entirely made-up after the fact to justify | CSS' existence. | have_faith wrote: | > Do you really believe that "style" requires entire new | syntax | | Well it depends what you mean by entirely new, the syntax | is that of a stylesheet. If we didn't have external | stylesheets then maybe it wouldn't make sense to have a | style attribute? but we do, so there seems to be some | some logic for why we have an attribute that mimics it. | | Not really sure if this is a worthwhile conversation to | be honest as you seem to want this to be much more | antognistic than it needs to be. | | Good luck in your quest. | dgb23 wrote: | The form attribute on fields is very useful to decouple the What | from the How (it is laid out on the screen). You might for | example want an upload widget, which does a separate request, | right next to some other fields. Instead of wrapping things in | forms (which you cannot nest) you can now freely lay out your | document. Similarly you might want several fields or buttons | spread across your document and don't want to wrap everything | with a big form, or several forms. | bennyp101 wrote: | Yep, super handy for having fields in a form in table. | | Each row can be its own form and you still end up with valid | html. | andrewingram wrote: | I've been meaning to use these attributes for the very reasons | you mention, but I'd need to check the impact on the | accessibility tree. I'm not sure of the impact of having the | submit buttons in a completely different part of the DOM to the | inputs. | extra88 wrote: | The accessibility tree doesn't represent form elements in | relation to their particular <form>, a submit button's | position in the accessibility tree will be equivalent to its | position in the DOM tree. | | The button's name (optionally also its description) and to | some degree its position in the DOM order (what heading | and/or other form elements precedes it) needs to be | sufficient to convey what will happen when it's used. | andrewingram wrote: | That's useful stuff, thanks! | efortis wrote: | My favorite: <abbr title="Abbreviation">abbr</abbr> | hombre_fatal wrote: | I like the title property, especially on <a> elements, but | always found that there was too much delay to discover it as a | user. Like I wouldn't hover that long on a link/abbr unless I | knew something was going to pop up. | | I think this is one reason people quickly move on to using | popover libraries for simple popovers. | acatton wrote: | > The `download` Attribute For The <a> Element | | This can also be done by the webserver with Content-Disposition. | [1] | | But it's cool, I didn't know this could be done with HTML, it | offers a lot of possibilities. | | [1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en- | US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/Co... | strogonoff wrote: | The <a download> attribute sounds great on paper, but if | request fails for whatever reason your user will, very | confusingly, download a file named exactly as you specify but | with error page HTML as contents. | | There is no straightforward way[0] for you to gracefully handle | an error, which is quite an oversight once you factor in that | network isn't always reliable. | | Having used it at first, I switched to server-side logic where | I return data with Content-Disposition header if everything | went well or redirect the user to show a proper error message | in case of a problem. | | [0] I imagine this could be worked around with some JS-based | preflight or other trickery--which sounds like a suitable | solution only if you have no control over the headers returned | for some reason. | jdmichal wrote: | This is true of pretty much anything that wants to directly | invoke the browser's download mechanism. AFAICT the options | are either: | | 1. Use JS, in which case one can handle errors and otherwise | be involved in the request / response process. However, if | you wish to offer a "download" funciton, this necessitates | downloading all the data into JS memory before offering it to | the user. | | 2. Use form-posting with `Content-Disposition`. One can no | longer be involved with the request and response. And any | response which does not have `Content-Disposition` will | result in the browser redirecting. However, the user will be | able to directly stream the download without your page being | involved beyond initiating the request. | | Since the data downloads are gigabytes in our case, we opted | for (2). But I would also love to hear if I'm wrong about | this trade-off. | chrisfinazzo wrote: | Huh. Whenever I've used it, things have all been on the same | domain so this doesn't come up - good to know. | strogonoff wrote: | If your user clicks the link with download attribute and | your server (or reverse proxy, or CDN, etc.) issues an | error page, user agent downloads the HTML of that page and | saves it under the filename you provided. Domain does not | enter the picture. | | (Correction: per spec, the domain _does_ enter the picture | in that cross-domain <a download> is not supposed to work | at all without Content-Disposition response header; that's | slightly different matter to what's discussed.) | chrisfinazzo wrote: | In my uses, I can be almost certain that I won't get a | 404 back as a response, unless I forgot to do something - | although the others are a concern. Even though Netlify | allows setting headers and redirects, I obviously don't | control the image they use or the CDN generally. | | Something to watch out for. | dspillett wrote: | _> The <a download> attribute sounds great on paper, but if | request fails for whatever reason your user will, very | confusingly, download a file named exactly as you specify but | with error page HTML as contents._ | | Though that is at least consistent with other download | options like right-click/save-link-as, so is probably not | incorrect behaviour. | strogonoff wrote: | Yes, it's probably the same behavior: https://html.spec.wha | twg.org/multipage/links.html#downloadin.... Step 7 is | mostly where any improvements would go, I imagine. | | I'm OK with "Save as" ("Download linked file", etc.) | behaving as it does: it is more or less intuitively clear | that with it we sort of "cheat" and use browser's semi- | hidden feature to interact with a website in ways not | necessarily intended by its engineers. With the download | attribute, however, any confusing outcome falls squarely on | me, the developer, so I'd rather stick with plain links and | response headers as a mechanism I have more control over. | | There may be some workarounds to make download behave | adequately in case of an error, such as having your server | behave in some way that causes browser's fetch sequence to | fail with a low-level error. Unless I'm missing something, | it seems like proper network error is the only condition | under which download can actually fail, and I don't think a | typical web framework setup is equipped to intentionally | cause that to happen. I doubt it's worth the bother--if you | have control over the server then why not drop the | attribute and just return the appropriate headers. | alduin32 wrote: | I've had to do something like that for an awful | application where the frontend did chunked downloads, but | didn't check properly for the status code, embedding | error pages directly in the downloaded file. | | As I had no control over the frontend itself, I | configured the reverse proxy so that for requests to | download endpoints, all error responses would instantly | close the connection to the client. | | Your post makes me think that I could generalize this so | that any error to an explicit download would close the | connection at the network level. It would be quite tricky | to be able to distinguish between implicit and explicit | downloads, but I think that if the frontend, backend and | reverse proxy coordinate well together, it can be done | without introducing other problems. | | Of course, it's a big hack that's not worth the bother. | smoe wrote: | I haven't used the download attribute in a while, but the last | time I felt it was a bit too finicky. E.g. only works if the | file is on the same origin and there are more differences | between behavior in different browsers than setting headers | from the server. Think it is still a good enough solution in | many circumstances. | | https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/a#... | chrisfinazzo wrote: | I actually hadn't heard of CD before. Looking at it, using an | attribute seems more straightforward and simple. | | Maybe just me. | jdmichal wrote: | `Content-Disposition` also works for form submission. If a | response to a form submission contains the `Content- | Disposition` header, the browser will expose that to the user | as a download and the page will not navigate. | coryk135 wrote: | This is a very useful attribute if you generate base64 encoded | images and need to create download links that give the files | unique names. | sebazzz wrote: | > The title Attribute On Stylesheets | | w3.org used to feature this, you could view the website in any of | the stylesheets they offered, which were a bunch (about 5-10 if I | recall correctly). | chrisfinazzo wrote: | <cite> is a bit of a surprise to me. The Standard Ebooks[1] | project uses almost religiously it when styling blockquotes. | | [1]: https://standardebooks.org/manual/1.6.3/single-page#5.8 | | I _love_ the <download> attribute, it's a quick way to use the | default file download mechanisms without having to bother the | user with opening a link or prompting. I realize there is the | potential for abuse, but if you're careful, it's wonderful. | | Native lazy loading support is coming to a bunch of things in the | near future, if it's not there already, so this one is living on | borrowed time. | | If you've ever tried to implement CSP on a site, crossorigin and | integrity should be famiilar - alas, CSP is _hard_ , but you | already knew that didn't you :) | extra88 wrote: | You're mixing up elements and element attributes. There is an | <cite> element, which it appears Standard Ebooks uses, and a | cite attribute, which is seldom used, probably because it's not | exposed to the user in any way. | | Writing "<download>", with the word in angle brackets, makes it | look like an element but it's not, download is an element | attribute. | chrisfinazzo wrote: | Ack. Yeah, the first one is my mistake looking at it again - | although I would argue this element is relatively underused | because it's not something you would need outside of contexts | where printing is a concern - SE is a slight exception in | that they are starting from print transcriptions in most | cases. | | I am aware of the distinction, I only used that way b/c HN | doesn't really have a good way to indicate code without | multiple spaces or just blindly using the ` character which | is...not great. | extra88 wrote: | <cite> does have a default browser style (italic), Standard | Ebook's use of <i> within it would be redundant on the web, | I don't know if the conventions are different in EPUB. | | How to use <cite> is often misunderstood. Many think it can | be used to identify the author of a quotation but it should | only be used to name the _work_ a quotation is from. | Standard Ebook placed it inside the <blockquote> but I've | also seen it placed after <blockquote>, I don't know | whether both are considered correct or if it's a point of | disagreement; to me, <blockquote> should contain only the | quoted material itself but I understand the appeal of | having the quote and its source be neatly contained within | one semantic element. | | Using the Markdown convention of putting backticks around | `code` may not be great but at least it won't be confused | for the wrong actual code. | acabal wrote: | SE Editor-in-Chief here. We include <i> within <cite> | because 1) reading systems often have different default | CSS which may not even recognize <cite> and 2) <cite> | often contains both a title and an author, and in those | cases we want only one or the other to be italicized. | SE's default CSS for epigraphs (probably the most common | place where <cite> is found) is to give <cite> small | caps, italicize the title if there is one, but don't | italicize the author. | | I believe our use of <cite> predates the modern | definition of its use, and in any case it's so | infrequently found in a web context that I don't think | there's much agreement about how it should be used | anyway. (For example MDN says the work title _must_ be in | <cite>, but at SE we often only include an author name, | like <cite>--Shakespeare</cite>.) | extra88 wrote: | Interesting, the permissible content in <cite> is | mentioned as an example of conflict between the HTML | standard as maintained by the W3C and that maintained by | WHATWG [0] (W3C allows title and/or author, WHATWG title | only). Since WHATWG has been the sole maintainer for a | few years, I guess their definition "won." | | [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5#W3C_and_WHATWG_co | nflict | WorldMaker wrote: | > cite attribute, which is seldom used, probably because it's | not exposed to the user in any way | | I recall in a (lost) blog theme I had at one point in time | I'd scrounged a nice bit of CSS to add cite attributes | visibly appended to blockquote and q elements. Exposing it to | the user is possible in just pure CSS, but it is a bit of a | shame that browsers didn't style it by default so many people | didn't learn it was a thing. | extra88 wrote: | Yes, you could do something like this: <q | cite="https://www.w3.org/Consortium/">To lead the | World Wide Web to its full potential by developing | protocols and guidelines that ensure long-term growth | for the Web</q> q::after { content: | attr(cite); } | | That will show the source URL for a quote but it's not very | useful, the URL isn't clickable (unless you wrap the whole | <q> in a link), it's not even selectable text. | WorldMaker wrote: | While the semantic web mindset (especially the "Xanadu" | inspired subsets) thought cite should always be a URL, it | didn't technically have to be per the spec. (Without | browser behavior backing it as a URL, it certainly didn't | have any enforcement to be a URL.) In my case I think I | was using it for author annotations in a more "APA or | Chicago Style Manual" style at the time I had CSS like | that in the style of: --Author Name from "Book/Webpage | Title" | | Not selectable is still a bit annoying in that case, but | Author Names don't need to be clickable links and the | point comes across. | extra88 wrote: | The current HTML spec says a cite attribute's value has | to be a valid URL [0]. I don't know if that's a point at | which the WHATWG and W3C versions differed, like on the | <cite> element. I do think it came from a semantic web | mindset, that the attribute isn't really for the user, | it's for programmatic use by the web host, like a CMS, or | other systems. | | It used to be the case that the values of `content` | properties weren't read by screen readers so this | technique would mean the information was solely conveyed | visually, that blind screen reader users wouldn't get it, | but screen readers have been reading `content` properties | for a while. | | In any case, if the citation is important information to | convey, it should probably exist at a text node in the | document, not as metadata that gets pulled out and | displayed by the styling. | | [0] https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/indices.html#a | ttribut... | easrng wrote: | blockquote::after, q::after { content: " - " | attr(cite); display: block; font-style: | italic; } | | Should do the trick nicely. | thomasfl wrote: | The web standards are large and complex. I still discover new | parts of the standards almost every month, even if I have made | websites since the stoneage, in 1995. The title attribute of | stylesheets was new to me. | hk__2 wrote: | Note that instead of using an input type=text and | enterkeyhint=search, you can use input type=search. | fleddr wrote: | These are not equivalents. Input type=search can have side | effects in that it renders the input box differently, for | example with a "X" inside to clear the search. Which may be | good, but it may also conflict with your design system. | hk__2 wrote: | Yes; personally I'd rather have a type=search to have the | semantics and then apply CSS on it, rather than a type=text | with no semantic meaning at all that's modified to behave | like a type=search. | nkozyra wrote: | Sure, but this tip is explicitly to change the text (or icon, | depending) of the onscreen virtual keyboard, so these are | different functionalities. | lloydatkinson wrote: | The search input sucks on iOS - it randomly has square corners | or round corners depending on arbitrary information. | cxr wrote: | enterkeyhint is embarrassingly concrete. Should've accomplished | this by specifying semantics for the alt and rel attributes. | TAKEMYMONEY wrote: | My first thought as well, should we expect `prntscrnkeyhint` | soon? | [deleted] | charcircuit wrote: | Page Style is useless because there is no persistence. Even | navigating to another page on that same website will reset it | back to default. | hiccuphippo wrote: | Their cookie consent window is one of the most confusing ones | I've seen: "We use cookies for login, checkout and stats. Learn | more in our privacy settings." Followed by two buttons: "No, | thanks" and "It's okay". | | No thanks... I don't want to learn about your privacy settings? | It's okay... store everything? | xnorswap wrote: | Cookie warnings have got worse and worse. There are sites now | that list 200+ checkboxes with a handy "reject all", but if you | don't click through to the list of "legitimate interest" sites | you miss out on rejecting 200+ more advertising partners (who | somehow have "legitimate interest") with no reject all option. | dspillett wrote: | This is very common, and why I avoid add-on or user-script | based solutions that click "reject all" - the authors of | those awful dialogues will find yet another way of turning | "reject all" into "go right ahead". | | "Legitimate interest" is proof that "your privacy is valuable | to us" just means "we are happy to shatter your privacy in | exchange for some value". Every "legitimate interest" box | basically says "we see your preference, but fuck you and your | preferences". | chrisfinazzo wrote: | While GDPR and related laws (mostly) do the correct thing | with respect to privacy, their emergence into the real world | has only accelerated this trend. | | Really needs a course correct to find a better balance... | marcosdumay wrote: | It's only a matter of enforcing the GDPR. | leephillips wrote: | I don't see most of these cookie warnings as I use this | bookmarklet: https://lee-phillips.org/nomorecookiewarnings/ | | It's not perfect, but it helps. | hoosieree wrote: | This could be a browser extension, such as a toggle button to | "never store cookies for this site". | jimmaswell wrote: | I'd personally rather support the sites I use and always | accept cookies. | dotancohen wrote: | Not storing cookies is already a feature of every major web | browser, at least the desktop ones. | agumonkey wrote: | The enterkeyhint is brilliant. Yet it's sad it can't affect | physical keyboards because it would be an ergonomic boom for all | the non tech savvy people (input order and submission is often | slowed down and confusing due to that, yet something that was | leaner in old as400 terminal UIs). | | Maybe keyboards will have a few lcd keys, or for cost cutting a | colored led keys to match these kind of hints | tenebrisalietum wrote: | Keys on Optimus Maximus keyboards have individual LCD screens. | Quite pricey last time I checked. | | > non tech savvy people | | Tech, in many situations that intersect with non-tech people, | is now some form of touchscreen with an onscreen keyboard. | | Exceptions are corporate HR departments, whose hardware, | software, and flow seem to ignore the fact that phones are the | primary Internet device now, not PCs like it was in the 90s. | | If your actual job requires you to use a PC, you probably | simply just need to learn to use a keyboard because the apps | you are using are going to be complex to, e.g. Office suite, | etc. | agumonkey wrote: | > you probably simply just need to learn to use a keyboard | | it's not the keyboard, it's the meaning 'RET' has for a | particular form. It can be a per field 'accept then go next' | it can be 'validate the local group', 'validate the main form | and submit it back', 'accept a partial choice but don't | change focus'. That's why the hint is brilliant, it removes | confusion. | | Also people who need this knowledge are never given good | tutors. It's mostly "deal with it, and be fast or else.." | aendruk wrote: | At one point you could get a whole keyboard like that: | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimus_Maximus_keyboard | | Apple has a patent on the concept; maybe there's still one in | our future: | | https://patents.google.com/patent/US20080001787A1 | agumonkey wrote: | Maybe today it's cheap enough to have a fully redrawable key. | Maybe it's still over-engineering for this purpose. | KeytarHero wrote: | I don't really see the point on a physical keyboard. It makes | sense to repurpose the enter key on a phone or tablet where | there's limited real estate and the keyboard covers half the | screen. On desktop/laptop, that isn't necessary - you can just | tab over to the next field (or click it, for the less tech | savvy), and click the "submit" button. | | Also, it's right in front of your eyes, so it's clear when it | says something else. Your computer keyboard isn't, and people | don't usually look at the enter key before hitting it (even | hunt-and-peck typers should have the enter key committed to | muscle memory). Forcing people to look down at their keyboards | before hitting enter would make ergonomics worse, not better. | SSLy wrote: | >Maybe keyboards will have a colored led keys to match these | kind of hints | | There are enormous numbers of keyboards with per-key RGB | lighting available. And the host OS can control them (right now | my keyboard is lighting up with the music) | agumonkey wrote: | but I assume material and software cost of these are too high | for the people i was describing. | Melatonic wrote: | Would be nice to be able to rely on HTML attributes for filtering | but sadly they are just too easy to spoof | ravenstine wrote: | I expected to read this article and think "yeah, no wonder I | don't use those", but those first 2 in particular are pretty | dope. The "Page Style" dropdown in the browser is something I | never really thought you could add to. I think I know the next | thing I'll play with in my next personal project. :D | johannes1234321 wrote: | There are so many fun things a browser could do in it's user | interface. For instance HTML defines <link | rel="previois|next|up|contents|glossary|..." href="..."> which | could allow to have navigation for manuals and similar | documents. | | Or imagine web browsers providing upload progress ;) | | But well, designers like to give all that their custom design. | 9dev wrote: | It's not the designers fault that browsers provide | ridiculously bad default form controls with almost no way of | styling them. Really, we have WASM, Bluetooth APIs in JS, and | boatloads of other extremely advanced engineering feats in | browsers -- but they can't be bothered to provide usable form | elements? Just imagine all the developer time wasted on | creating progress bars or date pickers... | johannes1234321 wrote: | Yeah, aside from <optgroup> there hasn't been much | improvement in that area (well maybe fieldset and related) | in that space. | inopinatus wrote: | I highly recommend re-reading the entire formal standard for | technologies you work with routinely, on a roughly annual basis. | It's a triple whammy of refresher, update, and niche discovery. | | I attribute this advice to AEleen Frisch; albeit without pulling | my very dog-eared copy from the stacks, I recall that words to | similar effect can be found in the epochal _Essential System | Administration_ (2002), possibly in the form of reading every | manpage in your local Unix base system. | TAKEMYMONEY wrote: | No one uses the <a> `download` attribute for the reason we | stopped forcing users to open new browser windows with | target="_blank", they know how to download (or open a new tab) if | they want to, and it breaks or confuses more often than it works. | | Who's using (or even heard of) <abbr> and <dfn> _without_ | `title`? I kinda thought that was what made them most useful, | providing the full unabbreviated version for example. | ok123456 wrote: | The download attribute is helpful when you don't have control | over the mime types the server handles. Downloading is the | sensible option as opposed to trying to display a .bin file. | | Also, it allows you to ensure that if you have a button that | says 'download', it will actually download the file instead of | having it replace the application---the principle of least | surprise. | clairity wrote: | an <abbr> can be marked as a abbreviation without providing the | long form via a title, if you don't know the long form but want | to note it as an abbr, or if the abbr is titled previously and | you're reusing the same abbr multiple times in the same | context. | | not sure about <dfn> without a title though. | vikingerik wrote: | target="_blank" wasn't replaced by user behavior, it was | replaced by Javascript intercepting and logging and tracking | every click. | | That said, opening links in a new tab/window is the less-breaky | approach these days, since every page that the clicks came from | is a mess of infinite scroll and reactive components and all | sorts of other state that gets lost by clicking to another page | and trying to go back. | [deleted] | mdavidn wrote: | I used the download attribute recently to force downloads for | attachments from another service, one whose Content-Disposition | headers are outside my control. | efortis wrote: | The download attribute is helpful. For instance, my app is | offline-first and the "Files" you can create with it are JSON. | Therefore, it's better that they get downloaded so the user can | open or drop them into the app without having to see the raw | data. | jw1224 wrote: | The download attribute is useful with images or files which the | browser would normally preview. If I give my users a button | labelled "Save PDF", I want to know the Acrobat plug-in isn't | just going to hijack the response. | ktpsns wrote: | The graveyard of HTML attributes which never gained public | attention/usage is large and full of useful ideas. | | My favourite was relational links such as | <link rel='first' href='/de' title='Homepage' /> <link | rel='prev' href='/some/bunnies.php' title='Previous Page about | bunnies' /> <link rel='next' href='/some/cats.php' | title='Next page about cats' /> <link rel="copyright" | href="/de/impressum.php" title="Impressum"> <link | rel="alternate" href="/gr/samepage.php" hreflang="gr" title="Page | name in greek"> | | Opera was the only browser which had a toolbar with these | relational links. This was around mid-2000. Unfortunately, this | toolbar never survived or got taken over by other browsers. | | Some relations survived (such as rel="search" for custom search | pages), some got killed-by-ecosystem (such as RSS). | gjvnq wrote: | You can show these things via CSS. By default they have | `display: none` but you can change it something like `display: | inline` so <link> appears just like <a>. You may need | JavaScript to make the clicking work. | gmfawcett wrote: | These <link/> attributes belonged in the <head>. It was page | metadata, not a page element: the browser itself was supposed | to give you controls for forward, back, etc. | ars wrote: | > Opera was the only browser which had a toolbar with these | relational links. | | Frefox had it to, it's this famous bugzilla: | https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2800 opened 24 | years ago. | | They had a toolbar for it for a while, and I used it for forums | and search results. And then they got rid of the toolbar, and | the rel link because used only for search engines. | WorldMaker wrote: | I recall IE (even up through "Spartan" Edge, I think) had a | hard to discover/not quite as useful in practice as it was in | theory support for prev/next links: if you pressed the | browser's forward keyboard shortcut or gesture (but not the | toolbar button since that was usually disabled) when there was | no forward history it would sometimes follow next links. Even | harder to pull off in practice (given how most people navigate | to websites from searches and stuff) if you somehow managed to | land on a page with no back history and pulled off a back | keyboard shortcut or gesture it would try the page's prev link. | I think that feature probably confused way more people than | anyone ever came to rely on it. | ademarre wrote: | Google search used to use rel=prev/next to identify paginated | sequences for indexing, but not anymore. | https://twitter.com/JohnMu/status/1108717486424363009 | | As of 2019, Bing was looking at those links for URL discovery. | https://twitter.com/CoperniX/status/1108790528773021696 | edeion wrote: | I seem to remember this was used by emacs' mode embedding the | w3m browser. It was great to read long structured documentation | sites by just pressing space-bar to "scroll" through pages. | dheera wrote: | Why do we have shit like `enterkeyhint` but not some really | simple things like <input type="slider" | min="0" max="100" step="10" name="foo"> <input | type="toggle" value="true" name="bar"> | detaro wrote: | We have the first, it's just not called "slider". | throwanem wrote: | It's called "range", and I didn't know about it either: | https://developer.mozilla.org/en- | US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/in... | | And a "toggle" input is just a checkbox. | mahathu wrote: | you mean range and checkbox inputs? (they both exist) | dfox wrote: | Mozilla Suite also had toolbar for this kind of links. And | early versions of Firefox either had it too or there was | extension for it. | oneeyedpigeon wrote: | I've made use of those even recently. Even if they're not used | much now, it's potential future-proofing. And I've written | tools that manage content and read these values to organise | pages in a series. | clairity wrote: | yah, rel links are still usuable at least for machine-read | purposes, if not the old 'back', 'forward', 'up', type site | navigation links that browsers used to display if those were | present in the document. | novocantico wrote: | Who knows, maybe someone who works on Chrome or Edge or | Safari is reading this thread and will talk to their higher- | ups about using it somehow. (Wishful thinking?) | toastal wrote: | I'm pretty bummed the title attribute on stylesheets didn't get | the love it needed. We had a native, built-in theme switcher | (except Chromium) that would have been prefered to some of the | contemporary options of needing to put it behind user | preferences. If it could hawe been fixed to persist the selection | as well as not load unused, then we'd maybe see a different | space. | giancarlostoro wrote: | Is there no JS APIs to use those either? Cause that would make | it infinitely cooler imho, then you can surface it as a way to | show off web app themes on the front-end too. | iggldiggl wrote: | Nothing pre-built, but you can cobble something together | yourself - query the DOM for stylesheets, evaluate their | attributes (i.e. especially the "title" and "alternate" | attributes) and then enable and disable them as required. | | I wrote something like that for my homepage, although as I | only needed to switch between two styles and I'm not a front- | end person, I didn't bother with an actual selection drop- | down and just wrote a toggle that cycles through all | alternate stylesheets one at a time. | toastal wrote: | This works pretty nicely if they only refer to which CSS | variables to load and the _main_ CSS file is waiting to be | overridden by these variables. | | I just wish it got a higher priority by browsers to have | good built-ins. | clairity wrote: | i still use this feature in firefox, and it's still one of my | favorite little tricks to add to personal projects for a little | flair. i'd only wish safari would support it as well (i don't | care for chrome or google in general). | nl wrote: | I have a recollection of early versions of Firefox exposing the | stylesheet switcher in the footer chrome. Maybe it was an | extension though? I can't find references to it online. | cxr wrote: | Firefox's style switcher is in the View menu ("Page Style"; try | it out on <http://virtualplastic.net>). The statusbar style | switcher was from the Mozilla suite. There was a nostalgia- | fueled extension for reimplemented the original statusbar | widget in Firefox. | HenryMulligan wrote: | Congratulations on finding a menu item that I had no idea | even existed. I don't know how it is possible, but I am | pretty sure I have never seen that menu item before. I will | be trying this out on various web sites now. Thanks! | cxr wrote: | Prepare to be disappointed. There are probably fewer pages | using this now than there were 15-20 years ago, despite the | rise of "Dark Mode". | | (The menu item was actually mentioned in the article linked | here.) | nl wrote: | Glad I'm not misremembering! | | I found some posts from from 2004 which does refer to the | icon: | | https://fantasai.inkedblade.net/weblog/2004/firefox-altss/ | | https://web.archive.org/web/20041103090311/http://weblogs.mo. | .. | | I wish I could find some screenshots! | zhte415 wrote: | The article didn't use the blockquote cite attribute in the | blockquote that explains why it's not used much. | | This is perhaps internally consistent. | martin_a wrote: | > The decoding Attribute For The <img> Element | | This is an interesting one, although I find native lazy-loading | with the "loading"-attribute more interesting: | https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/im... | extra88 wrote: | The loading attribute is more interesting and useful but I | think it's already fairly familiar to Smashing Magazine | readers. I think the decoding attribute could be useful for | page rendering on very low-end devices, maybe also on pages | with a very large quantity of images. | cfj wrote: | Seeing the download attribute mentionend felt weirdly nostalgic. | I wrote a short blog post about that attribute which shot up to | the number one spot here on HN when I submitted it back in | 2013[0]. | | In the nine years since that post, I have not once used it in a | real project. | | [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5594791 | bugmen0t wrote: | Nit: `integrity` also works for stylesheets, not just scripts | watersb wrote: | Does anyone remember JavaScript Style Sheets? | easrng wrote: | I was never around when they actually existed, but I have | seen mentions in books and things. IIRC Netscape translated | CSS to JSSS internally, at least at first. | mxuribe wrote: | That sounds vaguely familiar...then again, there are many | things from the late 90s/early 2000s web development that i | wish to forget. ;-) ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-04-04 23:01 UTC)