Comment by Aardwolf

9 months ago

Yet its pages load much faster than most websites, no cookie popups, no "subscribe to our newsletter" slide-ins, no phenomenon where the content loads but then a second later the page resets and re-loads the content again (probably with more ads or something), no images only getting loaded and popping in view while you scroll (rather than do it a bit predicatively beforehand so they'd pop in outside of your view to give a less slow impression), etc...

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Aardwolf

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sitharus  9 months ago

I don’t understand how that’s at odds with having spec-valid HTML and CSS

  • Aardwolf  9 months ago

    Because updating to become conformant might come with the risk of making it a "modern" overhaul :/

    • jraph  9 months ago

      You don't need

      > no cookie popups, no "subscribe to our newsletter" slide-ins, no phenomenon where the content loads but then a second later the page resets and re-loads the content again (probably with more ads or something)

      to fix rendering layout using tables and cell width to render comment levels.

      Just a few lines of CSS and Arc really. That would be a big overhaul only because HN is very small, but not that big in absolute.

      4 replies →

    • noobermin  9 months ago

      So, I'm fearful of that as most people here, but if any entity can manage a respectful update, it has to be someone Y Combinator can pay.

  • nightpool  9 months ago

    Because HN's development prioritized "good for the user" over "good for browser developers". https://www.w3.org/TR/design-principles/#priority-of-constit... https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc8890

    Anyway, the "errors" that OP mentions are simply just deprecated attribute styling and like, one or two instances of center tags. Hardly breaking anybody's back to continue supporting those.

    • nozzlegear  9 months ago

      Apparently not “good for the user”, given how many people here have commented about the increased font size or custom CSS extensions they need to use on HN to make it readable.

_heimdall  9 months ago

I don't know the HN codebase, but based on the HTML validation results I'd be surprised if it took more than a day or two to fix most or all of the issues.

Almost all of the warning and errors are related to using obsolete Element attributes and invalid <table> definitions. Those shouldn't need any larger rework to clean up.

I don't say this trying to imply that HN needs to fix these or are being lazy in not doing it. YC has priorities and provide HN for free. It's totally up to them whether fixes are worth it, I just wouldn't expect it to be a huge lift.