Ask YC: Why does HN use the center tag? | Hacker News Reader

Ask YC: Why does HN use the center tag?

8 pointsdkasper16 comments

It's been deprecated since HTML 4.01 http://www.w3schools.com/TAGS/tag_center.asp

Isn't that before HN even came out (like 1999)? Surely on a site chock full of web developers a little CSS never killed anyone!

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this site has a lot more coding practices that are deemed evil such as tables all the way down, images as spacers and dimensions specified in pixels instead of ems.

However, I don't remember noticing that when I first started reading this site. I remember thinking "My, this design scales really well on strange form factors, such as my mobile phone, and it's perfectly cross browser too".

I love how it works on my phone! Seriously!

The use of deprecated HTML tags and bad practices in general stopped me from exploring Arc further. I found I couldn't hack the HN code without first fixing all of the HTML. Fixing all of the HTML is a herculean task because it's mixed up with all the code, instead of in some kind of template system.

Arc might be a good language for certain things, but it is obvious that PG hadn't made a serious web app in 10 years. Lots of these (framework-agnostic) design decisions have been settled for 5+ years now, and for good reason.

There must be more important things to discuss. Surely...

It is because table layouts actually work while css layouts are better in theory than in practice.

I think css people are proud of getting something to work using css while table people just want to get things done.

Table layouts work well when it comes to visual display of web content. They don't work in the context of screen readers, helping to make content easily scrapeable, search engine indexing, and the rest of the ways the web are used which aren't purely visual.

Don't teach your granny how to suck eggs. (Where "granny==pg" and "eggs==build a web app".)

the center tag seems like a good tag, even if the man got rid of it for some reason

Oh come on, what's with the uncritical hero worshiping here? PG may be a genius hacker and meta-entrepreneur, that doesn't mean that every little implementation detail in HN is perfect. The center tag, font-tag and so on are deprecated for good reasons, which there is no point in rehashing here.

For my part I don't care if people use presentation markup, and HN seem to work fine. However you should be aware that when you use the center-tag, you loose forever the right to look down on programmers who use VB or PHP to "get the job done" and who doesnt care about finding a better way.

look down on programmers who use VB or PHP to "get the job done" and who doesnt care about finding a better way

Ah, you're entering the twilight zone here. Where does one draw the line between "getting the job done" and "finding a better way". I've seen temporary patches running perfectly for 15 years. OTOH, I've seen stuff never get done because it wasn't perfect yet. I'm all for finding a better way, but sometimes 95% is good enough, especially if it releases you to work on many other things.

FWIW, HN is super fast and works on any browser/setting I've arrived with. Sometimes that's all that really matters.

Agreed - just needed to point out that because HN uses presentational markup doesn't magically make it good design as some of the other commenters seem to think.

Probably it just means PG thinks he has better things to do with his time than learning CSS. It might only take you a few hours to learn enough CSS to save you considerable time in the long run. However if you only use like an hour a year on page design anyway, it might still be a bad investment.

please don't misinterpret my statement as hero worship

"Surely on a site chock full of web developers a little CSS never killed anyone!"

Unlike, for example, not using CSS which kills a fairy every time you use a deprecated tag! OMFG!!!

It works, and it isn't doing any harm.

Deprecated <> obsolete.

DOESN'T MATTER!!!

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