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Comment by krapp | original | HTML Can Do That
[−]krapp · 2026-08-20 Thu 16:10 UTC · link
That's what javascript is supposed to be for. All of this is what javascript is supposed to be for.

HTML describes layout, CSS describes style, JS adds interactivity.

Want sortable tables? Get a jquery plugin and spend five minutes, done.

This was all solved a decade or more ago.

[−]zephen · 2026-08-20 Thu 19:03 UTC · link
> HTML describes layout

News to me.

[−]krapp · 2026-08-20 Thu 19:13 UTC · link
That's understandable, because almost no one actually works with HTML directly anymore, but it's true. HTML contains tags like <H> for headers, <p> for paragraphs, <br> for line breaks <pre> for prerendered text, <ol> and <ul> for ordered and unordered lists, <table> for tables as well as <main>,<div>,<header>,<section>,<nav>,<article>,<aside>,<summary> and <footer> to both explicitly and implicitly describe the layout of an HTML document. In fact, "HTML" itself is an acronym (HyperText Markup Language) in which the "Markup" describes the function of HTML to "mark up" text in a similar way that editors once did in the print industry, describing which parts of the text should be bold, italicized, etc. or divided up and in what way.
[−]crab_galaxy · 2026-08-20 Thu 19:27 UTC · link
HTML describes the structure of a document, not really the layout.

If HTML had <inline> <block> <column> <row> or <grid> tags, sure. But CSS determines the layout via display/position properties.

[−]krapp · 2026-08-20 Thu 20:06 UTC · link
<span> is inline

<div> is block

<table>,<tr> and <td> are your grid, row and column.

CSS improves on describing layout with positioning but HTML was still doing that before CSS even came along.

[−]Zardoz84 · 2026-08-21 Fri 07:27 UTC · link
Suddenly it's 1999
[−]zephen · 2026-08-20 Thu 22:20 UTC · link
Thanks for the downvote, but you're wrong.

> explicitly and implicitly describe the layout of an HTML document.

No, this doesn't happen.

> In fact, "HTML" itself is an acronym (HyperText Markup Language)

Duh.

> in which the "Markup" describes the function of HTML to "mark up" text in a similar way that editors once did in the print industry, describing which parts of the text should be bold, italicized, etc. or divided up and in what way.

Which has fuck-all to do with the layout.

[−]hk__2 · 2026-08-20 Thu 19:46 UTC · link
> Want sortable tables? Get a jquery plugin and spend five minutes, done.

I want sortable tables without having to rely on a third-party plugin to a third-party library. HTML describes content, not just layout. It would be a `sortable` attribute on the table, just like you already have attributes that have nothing to do with layout such as `autocomplete` or `aria-*`.

[−]krapp · 2026-08-20 Thu 20:13 UTC · link
Everyone already complains that browsers are too bloated and now you want to have every browser support sortable tables when a single, simple JS file would work?
[−]ducktective · 2026-08-20 Thu 20:46 UTC · link
>single, simple JS file

It's all fine and dandy until marketing bros decide to shove all kinds of shady modals into that JS file. The JS side is not exclusive to trivial interactivity.

[−]krapp · 2026-08-20 Thu 20:57 UTC · link
What "marketing bros?"

It's open source software. You can see what it does, and you just put it on your server. We're talking about pre NPM javascript here, no continuous deployment, everything is vendored and local and no one is going to change that file without your knowledge and permission. And if someone does, you have much bigger problems on your hands.

What you can't own and control is the browser vendors and how they choose to implement things, or not to. You can edit a JS file to your specific needs, but you're stuck with whatever the browser decides.

[−]ducktective · 2026-08-21 Fri 02:25 UTC · link
My point was, people block js of websites by default. Why? Cause website devs abuse js and don't exclusively use it for basic interactivity of stuff like sorting table columns.

There is an incentive to use HTML for common interactivity purposes.

[−]ndriscoll · 2026-08-20 Thu 21:40 UTC · link
The overwhelming majority of web pages are static documents, and it's a document format, so basic document primitives make sense. Same with something like line charts or pie charts. Bloat is things like USB APIs that present obnoxious security surfaces.
[−]account42 · 2026-08-21 Fri 12:09 UTC · link
HTML has done interactivity before JS existed. No reason to not add support for sorting tables. JS is better suited to only handle non-standard cases where no native functionality exist as browser vendors can afford to spend infinitely more time to make sorting better than you can spend on doing it for one website.