Don’t some web frameworks support ahead of time compilation? If I remember correctly, at least Svelte?
If you don’t need HTML explicitly, wouldn’t static site generators also work? They should also support inline HTML, if Markdown or whichever markup language a given generator uses isn’t quite enough.
That’s what I said. Use PHP as a static site generator. You write .php files which are almost exactly semantically the same as .html files, then you have a 10 lines of code build.php script which outputs it all to raw html and assets, but with the power of being able to import your navbar and such more easily. It’s like master pages in ASP.NET if you’ve ever used that, but that may be dating myself lol. You generally don’t need a framework at all. I can give an example of what I use for my own website if needed, but I’m too tired to get my laptop until tomorrow
I understand what you meant. I mostly mentioned frameworks because you complained about a lack of HTML imports. I haven’t used ASP.NET in particular, but I’ve used PHP & non-js server-side libraries with template support.
Still, the focus of your original comment was blogs, for which I think that PHP/HTML is overkill. At least for the average blogger.
Markdown is a lot more approachable for the average person than HTML. Still, basic knowledge of it can’t hurt, and like I wrote earlier, static site generators typically allow you to add raw HTML if necessary.
I know that there are lots of approaches to static sites with reusable components. I’ve used PHP for it too, as well as template languages and even shell scripts.
Oh yeah I guess… but in my experience non-tech people can’t even manage a .txt file asset directory, so Markdown is far too complicated for them.
The original article was advocating for manually typing out your .html .js and .css files. Like just complete raw dog it 90’s style, which is even harder for most people, so I kind of just assumed tech knowledge.
Anything short of a clicky-draggy online interface or asking Claude to do it is generally outside the reach of most non-tech people. I don’t think any average bloggers are going to become front-end developers just to start their blog; I basically just completely ignored that part of the article because it’s kind of insane. So my comments have been targeted towards people with at least mild programming knowledge.
If you’re hand typing out .html anyway, it’s like a 5 minute additional process to set up PHP and copy a build script online. That way you’re still sticking to the “fundamentals” as closely as possible, in this context raw assets, but now you have the power of imports and other cool stuff if you need it. I do agree with that part of the article. People are too willing to jump in to any which framework because they’re popular, when in most cases the amount of frameworks you need is zero. Just write some articles and you’ll know what you need after 10.
My problem with stuff like 11ty is that, in theory, it’s good. It abstracts away the HTML. But to actually use it, you have to understand HTML anyway; and at that point, why the middleman? Just write HTML. The second you need an <article> tag or a <section> or an <aside> or a <nav> or a <ul> of <a>nchor tags but some of them are external so they need the noref shit… you get my drift. You end up writing HTML inside your markdown, but now you are finagling two different languages. I don’t really see how # is much simpler than <h1> anyway.
Don’t some web frameworks support ahead of time compilation? If I remember correctly, at least Svelte?
If you don’t need HTML explicitly, wouldn’t static site generators also work? They should also support inline HTML, if Markdown or whichever markup language a given generator uses isn’t quite enough.
That’s what I said. Use PHP as a static site generator. You write .php files which are almost exactly semantically the same as .html files, then you have a 10 lines of code build.php script which outputs it all to raw html and assets, but with the power of being able to import your navbar and such more easily. It’s like master pages in ASP.NET if you’ve ever used that, but that may be dating myself lol. You generally don’t need a framework at all. I can give an example of what I use for my own website if needed, but I’m too tired to get my laptop until tomorrow
I understand what you meant. I mostly mentioned frameworks because you complained about a lack of HTML imports. I haven’t used ASP.NET in particular, but I’ve used PHP & non-js server-side libraries with template support.
Still, the focus of your original comment was blogs, for which I think that PHP/HTML is overkill. At least for the average blogger.
Markdown is a lot more approachable for the average person than HTML. Still, basic knowledge of it can’t hurt, and like I wrote earlier, static site generators typically allow you to add raw HTML if necessary.
I know that there are lots of approaches to static sites with reusable components. I’ve used PHP for it too, as well as template languages and even shell scripts.
Oh yeah I guess… but in my experience non-tech people can’t even manage a .txt file asset directory, so Markdown is far too complicated for them.
The original article was advocating for manually typing out your .html .js and .css files. Like just complete raw dog it 90’s style, which is even harder for most people, so I kind of just assumed tech knowledge.
Anything short of a clicky-draggy online interface or asking Claude to do it is generally outside the reach of most non-tech people. I don’t think any average bloggers are going to become front-end developers just to start their blog; I basically just completely ignored that part of the article because it’s kind of insane. So my comments have been targeted towards people with at least mild programming knowledge.
If you’re hand typing out .html anyway, it’s like a 5 minute additional process to set up PHP and copy a build script online. That way you’re still sticking to the “fundamentals” as closely as possible, in this context raw assets, but now you have the power of imports and other cool stuff if you need it. I do agree with that part of the article. People are too willing to jump in to any which framework because they’re popular, when in most cases the amount of frameworks you need is zero. Just write some articles and you’ll know what you need after 10.
My problem with stuff like 11ty is that, in theory, it’s good. It abstracts away the HTML. But to actually use it, you have to understand HTML anyway; and at that point, why the middleman? Just write HTML. The second you need an <article> tag or a <section> or an <aside> or a <nav> or a <ul> of <a>nchor tags but some of them are external so they need the noref shit… you get my drift. You end up writing HTML inside your markdown, but now you are finagling two different languages. I don’t really see how # is much simpler than <h1> anyway.