Hacker News Reader

Comment by cabalamat | Hacker News Reader

> but anyone that has ever needed to style a <select> to make it look in line with any modern design

Then don't make it look "in line with any modern design". Make it look like an HTML select tag, because that's what it is.

Functionality should (nearly always) trump prettification. (Especially when the results are pretty anyway).

View on HN

I feel like it's important to establish that "controls should look like the browser intended and not be customizable" is an ideological stance, not an obvious and self-evident truth. And it's one that I strongly disagree with, because it's needlessly controlling: why shouldn't developers me able to make something look however they want? The web is a platform for _all kinds of creations_, not just "website that look and feel like websites", and people should have the freedom to do whatever they want and not be constrained by arbitrary limitations of bad APIs.

I feel like it's important to establish that "controls should look like the Web designer intended and be customizable" is an ideological stance, not an obvious and self-evident truth. And it's one that I strongly disagree with, because it's needlessly controlling: why should Web designers be able to make something look however they want? The web is a platform for _all kinds of users_, not just "websites that look and feel like a Web designer wants to", and people should have the freedom to use a site in whatever way they want and not be constrained by arbitrary limitations of bad custom form controls.

That's just petty, and not effective at making whatever point you're making anyway (which, well, I'm not sure what it is).

You know what's petty? Not being able to come to terms with criticism, and then pretending to not understand it.

Gross.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com