Ask YC: Why is YC's layout table based?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=100460

by german • 19 years ago

14 91 19 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I'm a big fan of HTML, and I really don't understand why Hacker news is using tables instead of lists. Lists make a lot more sense than tables in this case, also the CSS will be easier to modify.

divia• 19 years ago

This came up a while ago. pg's answer was "Because we're smart enough to realize that html is object code?"

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50154

ayc4• 19 years ago

That is. Table is 'not optimized object code' compared to lists. So you should ask: why your object code is not optimized (and it slow loaded and slow rendered on my PC :).

emmett• 19 years ago

How old is your computer? I've found news.yc load times are close to instant.

palish8• 19 years ago

Premature optimization is literally a waste of life.

brett• 19 years ago

PG might tell you it's because html is object code: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50159

But then you'll note that his code is full of tab, tr, and td macros so it's not like html tables are completely abstracted out. So a better answer might be that he puts a premium on quickly getting things out that work and ignoring details that the user never knows about; I'm guessing you didn't know the page was table based until you looked at the source. I'm also guessing that it's as easy for him to make arc changes as it would be for you to make the corresponding css changes (were the page list based).

german3• 19 years ago

You're right, I realized that the page was table based by looking at the source.

Programmers love to read beautiful code, As a web designer, I love to read beautiful and meaningful HTML. ;)

randallsquared5• 19 years ago

Tables are embedded in the Arc code for news.yc, as brett mentioned, but probably it could be rewritten in a few hours for a list-based layout. Of course, changing the layout would require an Arc developer, which is the disadvantage to not using templates. You may have noticed that most hackers seem to think web design is unimportant and/or should require a programmer for each change.

mroman2• 19 years ago

Well, if you "love to read beautiful and meaningful HTML" why does your site http://prezentit.com/ have HTML errors?

First one is on line 34. An end tag isn't finished . . . there are several more, and I am not even a web designer.

That's a lot of nerve, criticizing the work of others, while not getting your own done right.

juanpablo• 19 years ago

I think because it's easier... for him. I don't like it either though.

mrtron3• 19 years ago

smacks head

Not this again...

The answer being who gives a shit? Does it look fine in most browsers?

halo• 19 years ago

Who gives a shit? Hackers. And, y'know, with this happening to be Hacker News and all, it works.

imsteve5• 19 years ago

You can't "hack" html or css, they aren't languages. Furthermore, CSS is a lie. A lie for designer snobs.

run4yourlives20• 19 years ago

>The answer being who gives a shit?

As a web developer, you should. It will save you work in the long run (see below).

As a hacker, you should, the same way you care about the beauty of readable code in any other language.

As a business owner, you should, because it will save you money, in bandwidth costs, future maintenance, training etc etc.

>Does it look fine in most browsers?

It looks fine in most browsers because the browser decided to make it look fine. That doesn't mean that it'll look fine in the browser everyone is using tomorrow. That means more work for you down the road, for no particular reason.

Do I care about it? No, not really. But I do get a little annoyed at hackers that concern themselves with code elegance in every language except HTML.

imsteve5• 19 years ago

> It will save you work in the long run

That's the biggest lie of them all. And maintenance? No one does that, they do re-writes. How many hours have I wasted on this joke of not using tables?

cedsav4• 19 years ago

Does it matter for this site? No.

Should you, as a developer (ahem... I mean hacker), care about the quality of the markup your app is producing. Definitively yes..

sbraford3• 19 years ago

My only problem with table nazis is when they do their job poorly.

i.e. they insist on a tableless layout, yet when you look at their design in IE6/7, the right sidebar always seems to end up at the bottom of the page.

So instead of working on real code / markup, you always seem to be fixing a broken sidebar CSS issue, due to insistence on not using tables. (i fix these problems in 5min w/ a table-based layout)

samson• 19 years ago

I think PG must have known, what I only ended up finding out myself after trying too hard to make everything CSS, is that it doesn't always need to be.

I kinda wish I could have an outter body experience +add that with time travel, and go back a few months so I can kick my old self in the ASS(twice) for wasting hours trying to make a forums page in all CSS, only to give up and accomplish it with tables, in what felt like seconds compared to the time I had spent previously.

CSS is of course a really good thing, especially if your building a big site(my site still mainly CSS based), But there's no need to spend unneeded time on things that the end user won't see,notice or care.

cedsav4• 19 years ago

CSS has a learning curve yes, so it always going to seem harder than it should be in the beginning, but otherwise it shouldn't make a difference time-wise to create a table or css based layout.

palish8• 19 years ago

... Until you realize that your fancy CSS doesn't display properly in IE6.

icky• 19 years ago

Because it's Hacker News, not Designer Gallery.

ashu• 19 years ago

CSS is used for two purposes: for styling and for layout. In my mind, the value obtained by using CSS for larger site layouts is not much. Usually, the claim is that CSS layouts help you re-target the content for another device and stuff, easily. Based on my experiences, I think that's a grand dream not likely to come true. You have almost completely re-think your UI when you are developing for a different device. Re-using CSS layouts is nearly impossible for that.

ericb2• 19 years ago

I agree. CSS as a layout system is poorly thought out and even more poorly implemented. Why, to center an object, do I have to remember trivia like "the parent needs a width." You need hacks and non-intuitive tricks for cross-browser CSS. Tables are verbose, but they "just work" more often. I still use CSS layouts, but man what a steaming pile.

run4yourlives20• 19 years ago

>Why, to center an object, do I have to remember trivia like "the parent needs a width."

Because you're still viewing the page as a table. Once you stop doing this, you stop asking questions like these.

run4yourlives20• 19 years ago

>You have almost completely re-think your UI when you are developing for a different device. Re-using CSS layouts is nearly impossible for that.

You don't re-use the CSS, you re-use the HTML. That's the point. All it needs is a new style sheet, not a whole new webapge.

randallsquared5• 19 years ago

I expect that by "CSS layout", they meant "HTML which is laid out by CSS".

ivan• 19 years ago

Because you should read news not the source code.

rugoso• 19 years ago

LOL, this is always one o my favorite insults, "he uses tables in his html"

sbraford3• 19 years ago

along with "i heard he produces invalid markup" (cue beavis & butthead laugh)

run4yourlives20• 19 years ago

Most likely because PG or whomever else coded the site doesn't know how to use HTML with CSS, doesn't care to learn, and doesn't think it's important enough to learn.

People might down-mod me for that, but it's basically the truth.

Now, the only real benefits that Paul would probably consider CSS giving him would be the bandwidth usage (stylesheets are cached) and maintenance issue.

I can't imagine either of those two would be enough to coerce him into learning a whole new way of doing things.

I certainly think that PG is missing many more benefits by not coding the site properly, but from his vantage point, (and everyone else who would see learning css as confusing and pointless) it's likely that the risk/reward assessment is not pointing in favour of a tableless layout.

pg6• 19 years ago

Because the data is tabular?

german3• 19 years ago

I have to disagree with you Paul, A list suits much more this kind of data than a table.

run4yourlives20• 19 years ago

Um, Tabular data of a single column is usually referred to as a list. :-)

Seriously though, it's not just a list, it's an ordered list.

palish8• 19 years ago

It's not just an ordered list! It's also a database!

But seriously, you can play that game forever. At some point, you have to pick one definition and stick with it. This site uses tables.

pg6• 19 years ago

There are only three columns on the front page now, but when I was working on the site I experimented with different layouts in which there were more. Why constrain myself by using a degenerate case of tables?

I can't believe this thread has 49 comments (and counting). What a classic bicycle shed.

bayareaguy• 19 years ago

I like YC's current look. Could CSS really improve it?

Here's a suggestion. If you think the answer is yes, then how about posting a link to a site that could show us how and we'll up/down mod your post accordingly.

rob• 19 years ago

I am concerned that Hacker News doesn't even have a DOCTYPE in the source code.

henryw• 19 years ago

with the value added to us readers, i think we can overlook this issue and get back to coding. would you yell at your girlfriend for cooking you a nice dinner and putting the fork on the wrong side of the plate?

mberning• 19 years ago

What you can do is what matters most. Something works or it doesn't. How you do it is purely subjective.

tzury• 19 years ago

getting-things-right-vs-getting-things-done http://evalinux.wordpress.com/2008/01/02/getting-things-righ...

Ask YC: Why is YC's layout table based?

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