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Comment by blt | Hacker News Reader

I am unmoved by the many "... in pure CSS" posts, but I guess they are the equivalent of "HTTP server in x86 assembly" for CSS designers.

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I like this, it's neat art. However I must agree that I'm unmoved, I invite anyone who thinks this is particularly clever to visit www.pouet.net for a bit of re-calibration.

It's all relative.

Do go to a site like pouet.net, and recalibrate yourself based on what people were doing way back toward the genesis of the scene, when there weren't any demo competitions and it was just a few guys fooling around with stuff for hack value.

Compare a hack like this to what people were doing back when even something like copper bars was seen as being pretty cool. Don't compare people doing the equivalent of display hacks using a relatively new technology to what the culture around display hacks grew into after several decades of active fermentation. That'd be right up there with poo-pooing a local recreational sports league because the players aren't as good as what you're used to seeing in the professional leagues on TV.

I assumed that there were even neater HTML/CSS hacks on that site, but couldn't find them. Are there any? It's pretty hard to navigate the site.

looked at pouet.net. Not sure what I'm supposed to be seeing?

Ok fair point I shouldn't have been so glib as puet is pretty horrible from a web design standpoint.

It's a website for the demoscene, where people do stuff like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqu_IpkOYBg in 177 kilobytes.

Thanks for following up. I had assumed you were talking about some aspect of the site's design so I just looked through the html for a couple minutes before giving up. And now I'm too busy being impressed to feel like a dumbass

They do that complete render in 177kb...? I remember crack intros but that's insane. Is this in C?

I don't get the fascination with Farbrausch. While I respect and admire the feat which I'm unable to pull of myself, there are comparatively much better realisations both in terms of art and technique. See the following 64k demos:

- chaos theory - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfuierUvx1A

- turtles all the way down - sub dream https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z48t2R2hEJM

- the timeless — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwFVlNytq0Q

- turtles all the way down - brain control - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBKmqkh9bb8

Rewatching those reminded me of how phenomenal Demovibes 9 is: http://www.demovibes.org/dv_info.htm

As far as the Farbrausch comment, I think the appeal of Debris, in particular, is the stunning audio component of the demo. Chaos Theory is beautiful, but the audio/video components don't feel as tightly integrated as some of Farbrausch's work.

C++, maybe a little assembly, and lots of shader code.

Took me about five seconds to read the first post. It's a site for the demo scene.

More like "386 emulator in javascript", methinks.

I do think that these are particularly well done, though. It's very crafty, creative and the pictures look nice.

no kidding. The practicality of this is just non-existent. So you can do many shapes in CSS box-shadow, oh joy.

Show me one instance where this is actually applicable and more semantically appropriate than embedding an SVG and I'll shut up for life.

Just because I like to shut people for life: Advertisement and decoration, you don't need an HTML element with title "pen for background decoration" where you want people to focus in your product. The other one is separation of concerns, many times the programmer and the designer work together, but is sometimes unhealthy to give the designer access to the templates (or php, whatever), is way less dangerous to give him access only to CSS, so using stuff like this helps in such case.

To say nothing of the fact that, because you can embed images in CSS, this sort of thing is only interesting at all if you actually look at the CSS source. It's kind of like someone making scrambled eggs with their hands tied behind their backs. Sure, it's challenging, but why should anybody care?

I agree the novelty has worn off, but for someone who's trying it out and has done it for the first time - it's a pretty cool hack.

Remember your first novelty hack?

I don't want to discourage people from playing around with CSS, or even from trying to make scrambled eggs with their hands tied behind their backs. It's good for people to challenge themselves in all kinds of creative ways. But this is supposed to be Hacker News. Making icons in CSS hasn't been newsworthy in a very long time, and I think it's lamentable that something like this is at the top of the home page while vastly more interesting things (like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8224972) languish in obscurity.

I don't want to discourage people from playing around with snarky comments, or even from trying to make people feel bad with their hands tied behind their backs. It's good for people to challenge themselves in all kinds of creative ways. But this is supposed to be Hacker News. Making hypocritical comments hasn't been newsworthy in a very long time, and I think it's laudable that something like this is at the bottom of the comments page while vastly nicer things (like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8229841) revel in the limelight.

OK, OK, point taken. I would have gone back and deleted my comments but it was too late.

It might be hard to realize that not everyone who visits the site has been around as long as the site has existed. There's nothing wrong for old content to be revisited; either for new eyes or refresher for old.

Plus, I guess I'm sorry the masses don't find some articles as fascinating as you?

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