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HTML is all you need to make a website

Salma Alam-Naylor on April 05, 2022

I recently wrote about How I massively improved my website performance by using the right tool for the job, and the TL;DR is that being mindful and...
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curiousdev profile image
CuriousDev

This is well written and I enjoyed it, but somehow loses the focus on the core part: That there are requirements, that could be implemented by only using HTML and/or CSS or at least be limited to the necessary technologies. Then suddenly examples are provided showing in an enjoyable way, what you could do with HTML, but if you want to be serious and need to convince a customer with your results, of course you will use what is needed to design a nice website. If it needs a lot of JavaScript, then you would add it. Anyway the more your Website actually is a Web App, the more you will need to do some programming, which cannot be done only with HTML.
But I like how your article reminds people of the importance of understanding the main parts of any website, beginning with HTML, most likely with some CSS and in case of need the code which could be extended by Frameworks etc., when it is acceptable.

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whitep4nth3r profile image
Salma Alam-Naylor

But I like how your article reminds people of the importance of understanding the main parts of any website, beginning with HTML, most likely with some CSS and in case of need the code which could be extended by Frameworks etc., when it is acceptable.

Thank you!

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Elijah Trillionz

Nice piece.
I totally agree with you on this for building websites, but I can't say the same for web apps.

Also I don't think I'd agree with this

Someone else said HTML-only websites are "ugly as hell." I disagree. They're beautiful.

Because honestly I don't think an HTML only website is beautiful in most people's eyes, it can appear well structured, but not beautiful.

But again they say "beauty is in the eyes of the beholder ", if you and your clients find it beautiful, then it is what it is.

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elizadora00 profile image
elizadora00 • Edited

I'ts an amazing article and good to share. Very helpful for creating a html website. Many important things are considered for developing a good and interactive website. This might be help me for implementing many good functionalities into Wheels & Tires. Thanks for sharing.

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Waylon Walker • Edited

markata.dev/ is html only out of the box and I argue its beautiful.

markata.dev is beautifully grey and with white and purple text

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grahamthedev profile image
GrahamTheDev

That uses CSS 😜

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waylonwalker profile image
Waylon Walker

It fits @peerreynders description down below. It's one network request for one document.... plus an oversized favicon thats significantly larger than the rest of the page.

only html in the network tab

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grahamthedev profile image
GrahamTheDev

Ah I missed that, not sure how 🀦, in that case if you don’t mind excessive profanity / swearing I have a follow up for β€œmotherf**kingwebsite” I built you might enjoy:

ultimatemotherf**kingwebsite.com

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waylonwalker profile image
Waylon Walker • Edited

Love that series of sites, your implementation is superb, possibly my favorite one. I'll have to look closer at some point to see if I have made any of these mistakes. satire aside I have taken a lot of inspiration from these to build my personal site (not the home page with it's bloated video at a whopping 4.7kb raw, but the rest of the site.), as well as markata.dev.

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GrahamTheDev

Love both sites, sometimes simplicity is better as the information should be the star!

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SVGator

Now this is something you don't see every day :) Brilliant!

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GrahamTheDev • Edited

HTML only websites? Child’s play!

How about html only β€œvideo encoding”? 😜🀣

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whitep4nth3r profile image
Salma Alam-Naylor

Clever :D

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waylonwalker profile image
Waylon Walker

Adding css vs inlining css feels a bit of a moot point, same effect, but potentially less network traffic if you reuse the same sheet on multiple pages. right?

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peerreynders • Edited

The target is to produce a page that isn't larger (give or take) than 14Kb (10 TCP packets worth, typically the maximum a server will send on the first round-trip on a new connection). And the inline CSS is typically for the above-the-fold content. Hypothetically that should improve First Contentful Paint (FCP) for the page.

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Alexis Simmons

I’m new to my coding journey and I was told I should not learn HMTL because it is useless. Can you give me more insight?

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whitep4nth3r profile image
Salma Alam-Naylor

HTML is fundamental to understanding how a browser page works! What else would you start with? Check out freecodecamp.org and the FIRST module is HTML.

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Alexis Simmons

Thank you!