On 16/05/2012 00:23, Kornel Lesiński wrote:
On Tue, 15 May 2012 23:17:54 +0100, Chris Heilmann <code...@gmail.com>
wrote:
The fetish for brevity is something I never understood. More
understandable code is faster to write than cryptic short code.
There is significant difference in verbosity for a *very common case*
of serving images for high-dpi ("Retina") display (which I suspect is
only going to get more common):
<img src="lowdpi" srcset="hidpi 2x">
vs
<picture>
<source media="(min-device-pixel-ratio: 2)" src="hidpi">
<img src="lowdpi">
</picture>
It will get tiring when it'll have to be used for every image on the
page.
Authors couldn't be bothered to type extra markup for all vendor's
prefixes in CSS. Nobody bothered with verbose SVG gradient syntax
which was usable before CSS gradients. HTML5 DOCTYPE is loved. Brevity
matters.
Now there is a massive list of assumptions. People were happy for YEARS
to do a:
<object width="420" height="315"><param name="movie"
value="http://www.youtube.com/v/oHg5SJYRHA0?version=3&hl=en_US&rel=0";></param><param
name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param
name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed
src="http://www.youtube.com/v/oHg5SJYRHA0?version=3&hl=en_US&rel=0";
type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="420" height="315"
allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"></embed></object>
For a video. You know why? Because it worked! SVG didn't work inside
HTML for a long time that's why these gradients didn't work - not
because it was too long. HTML5 Doctype may be loved but people even
forget using that one (case in point - codecademy HTML classes totally
forget about it - WHEN teaching new people how to write code for the web).
Tooling works around these issues, not making a language shorter. You
learn that when you teach people to start using the web. Let's not get
too excited about what the people writing specs use and like but see
what makes a platform that is understandable and works.
