No CSS Club

[Wowfunhappy]

Due to the long line length, I had to shrink my browser window in order to read this submission comfortably.

I dunno guys, I kind of like CSS.

[ptx]

On the other hand, if all sites were like this, we would just keep our browser windows at a smaller size and it would work fine.

[Fred34]

I think the trick is to avoid the hr tag and to center the pages. I run a no css website https://www.pilledtexts.com/ and just have the readable content in .txt files where I can add a max width.

[codetrotter]

No one will ever need more than 800x600 pixels resolution

[Pannoniae]

What do you mean? It perfectly adapts to any browser width; if you want to resize it, just resize the browser window. It's perfectly readable on both a 4k screen and a small phone.

What more do you want? :D

[sdiq]

Similarly, I can no longer browse HN on a Firefox browser on Android. I am not really sure what exact settings changed. This started a few weeks ago.

[master-lincoln]

What browser are you using? Mine (Firefox on Android)wrapped the long lines nicely.

[wouldbecouldbe]

:) I think it's sarcasm.

[web3-is-a-scam]

reader mode ftw

[ftl64]

"No HTML Club" stands as the only logical step forward in this evolution. Browsers are perfectly capable of rendering plaintext, what could we ever need those pesky "tags" for?

[edent]

I agree. That's why I made http://no-ht.ml/

I submitted it to the site a few minutes ago.

[pjmlp]

Great, finally back to the golden age of OS specific native applications with networking protocols.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

The "No HTTP Club". Take a look at this beauty...

ftp://192.168.3.79/bestmo~4.txt

Of course, none of you have accounts, so please go ahead and postal-mail me for one, I'll get back to you in 6-8 weeks.

NO HTTP CLUB

PO Box 1147

Chungus AL 35035

[hk__2]

> what could we ever need those pesky "tags" for?

Links.

[kidsil]

Made a CSS-only website just a few days ago https://www.kidsil.net/2023/07/css-only/

[mypastself]

Look at Mr. hoity-toity here with his use of ASCII, as though ones and zeros alone can’t do the job.

[goodpoint]

No HTML and no HTTP would be even better, unironically.

[excusemyfrench]

Can we at least add this meta tag in the head of the document ? I don’t know if it is considered styling but it is not css. My eyes will thank you:

  <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0" />

Source: https://stackoverflow.com/a/39239194

[ezequiel-garzon]

It is considered CSS [1], which makes sense to me as this relates to styling. What has never made sense in my mind is to have completely unstyled pages rendered with microscopic fonts on smartphones. Doing so for old sites that, at the beginning of the mobile revolution, assumed on their CSS sheets 1024px wide screens is reasonable (though still debatable). Not so for CSS-free pages, whether they were authored in 1991 or in 2023.

I'm sorry if I got carried away, I wasn't replying to you in this last part :) For the record, I would also make this exception, though it would be neat to be able to select those without even the meta viewport tag.

[1] https://drafts.csswg.org/css-viewport/

[kkoncevicius]

I don't understand why it has to be added to every single page. Is there a reason this is not implemented as a default browser behaviour for devices where it matters (i.e. mobile phones)?

[lapcat]

All you need is initial-scale=1.0, and width is redundant.

I discuss this in more detail here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36112889

[sublinear]

Counterargument: sane users expect consistent presentation across all browsers and viewport dimensions.

A CSS reset overrides the user-agent stylesheet and the rest of the CSS determines the final style. This is the best practice. If you don't like web pages, then don't use them.

The final form of this club would be to settle on their favorite serialization format bit banged into their nervous system so they can be one with the matrix. /s

[flagrant_taco]

This is still subjective. Some users would prefer to see consistency across all sites they visit rather that consistency on the same site across all browsers.

When every site uses it's own reset there's no consistency while in the same browser, which is way more common for most users that don't have a separate browser for every site they visit.

[adr1an]

I'd rather look at this club as some sort of 'code golf' than take it seriously as a manifesto. Actually, even as a manifesto their point is valid, as a form of minimalist art. I consider the web as to be a canvas for many artists too. You don't need to agree to admire their work (e.g. dadaism is not frowned upon today)

[GoblinSlayer]

Salesmen expect consistent branding, not users. Users expect consistent presentation across sites.

[CaptainFever]

I guess those who prefer reader mode and user-agent styling are insane, then? /s

[mlok]

To all No-CSS webmasters : you can still respect your readers light/dark mode preference with this simple line :

<meta name="color-scheme" content="light dark">

[Tomte]

I consider that the browser's obligation. If I'm not specifying any font or background color, I cannot be responsible to add special media queries because someone chose a dark theme.

[Linux-Fan]

Thank you for bringing this up. I had been looking for an “easy” way to enable a Dark Mode on my website without overriding user-configured default colors and this seems to do it pretty well.

My page uses a minimalistic CSS and only changes the colors for syntax highlighting -- which is now slightly broken in the dark mode but probably still an improvement over the white background for those people who want the dark mode :)

[lapcat]

One problem though is that the default link colors can be unreadable in dark mode. That's why I use @media (prefers-color-scheme: dark) to set a:link, a:visited, a:active colors.

[butz]

Maybe it's time to add some decent looking CSS defaults to browser, but only for websites without CSS includes. Page width, better fonts, maybe even mobile specific improvements could be added. Of course, I understand that would introduce incompatibility with old websites.

[lolinder]

> Of course, I understand that would introduce incompatibility with old websites.

Why, though? If the website has no styling (we can exclude sites that use <font> and friends), the whole premise of HTML from very early on was that it only specifies content and the user agent controls formatting.

[tentacleuno]

That sounds good, but it'd most likely end up as YACL (Yet Another CSS Library).

[underdeserver]

Dennis Ritchie's site is given as an example, but it's filled with ancient bgcolor and width HTML attributes, which are, how to put it, not better than CSS.

[XorNot]

I wonder if what we're really lacking is just a decent set of default web fonts. The main modification I do when I kick out a basic HTML presentation of some data is throw in bootstrap so I can get a more comfortable font experience.

Shouldn't this be the default though? Why is the default bad?

[psnehanshu]

These websites have no individual identity, they all look the same.

[pjot]

58 bytes is all you need.

  main {
    max-width: 38rem;
    padding: 2rem;
    margin: auto;
  }

[mkl95]

CSS will improve your readers / users quality of life if you use it properly. To me that's enough to keep using it.

[ttepasse]

In the mid 2000s there was (and still is) CSS Naked Day, at 9. April, when you disable the CSS on your website to show of your semantic HTML markup:

https://css-naked-day.github.io

[ignoramous]

CSS-based trackers can be a thing, if they aren't already:

- https://blog.pastly.net/posts/2016-09-04-how-css-alone-can-h... (related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10833629)

- https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2019/05/09/css-tracking-tri...

[vogon_laureate]

After the No HTML club trumps the rest, we’ll need to have No Web Server to finish the job. I see only upsides to this.

[gerikson]

There's gemini already....

[lapcat]

I used to be no CSS, but a little CSS can improve readability. There's nothing magical about the browser default fonts, margins, etc. And no max-width can be problematic.

You might want this to prevent the text size from changing when you rotate to landscape on mobile:

  html {
    -webkit-text-size-adjust: none;
    text-size-adjust: none;
    -moz-text-size-adjust: none;
  }

[shpx]

It's really the "html.css-only Club" since you're still using the browser's default stylesheet

https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/third_party/+...

https://github.com/WebKit/WebKit/blob/main/Source/WebCore/cs...

https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/source/layout/style/re...

[nullbyte808]

Is this like "No Nut November" but for Web Developers?

[3stripe]

There’s definitely something to be said for “hardly any CSS” websites that are brutally functional.

For example was looking at http://www.steephill.tv/ yesterday for cycling news (recently shut down sadly)

[Julesman]

Wow. How drastically edgy. What an independent thinker. Really sticking it to The Man. Epic.

[davidgerard]

I mean, all the best websites are no-CSS.

I felt guilty at adding "<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">" so my no-CSS site wouldn't look on mobile like a website for ants.