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I'm betting on HTML
8/1/2023
AI Use Disclaimer:
I wrote this post and then GPT-4 fixed my grammer and spelling
With the advent of large language model-based artificial
intelligence, semantic HTML is more important now than ever. At its
core, the internet is used to transmit data that helps humans
interact with the world as they perceive it. The freedom that HTML/
CSS/JS provide is a double-edged sword because access to data has
become limited. Instead of open and accessible data formats and APIs,
we're kept within the walled gardens of major technology companies
that operate mass social media sites. Because of this,
interoperability between these platforms is effectively impossible,
further complicated by these companies' hesitance to allow easy data
porting. After all, that's their entire product, and without it, they
can't make money. The recent instability of our social media sites
has renewed interest in decentralized platforms like the "fediverse".
Both Meta's Threads and Jack Dorsey's (Twitter founder) Bluesky claim
interoperability with the larger fediverse. This is great!
But guess what? The general population doesn't care!
What I mean is that people are not typically motivated to adopt new
social media platforms for reasons that may not be entirely clear.
I'm not condemning these efforts - I believe there's a future there,
and I'm watching as the development progresses. However, I believe
we're already sitting on a tried and tested solution: HTML.
Historically, heavy use of CSS was needed to prevent HTML content
from looking terrible when rendered in a browser. Luckily, it's not
1997 anymore! There are many new HTML elements that I wasn't aware of
until recently. I believe we now have virtually a complete set of all
UI elements needed to build any modern web application. I don't
foresee corporate designers giving up their fancy JavaScript date
picker that, in a shock to nobody actually breaks the entire site on
mobile, anytime soon. But we're on the fringe, and we can do whatever
we want. In fact, recently I've become acutely aware of reader mode.
All time spent on styling will be obliterated by reader mode, and
that's a great thing!
Moreover, proper tagging is extremely descriptive in a
machine-readable format. This is likely a more compelling reason for
adopting modern HTML than saving design time. The shift from primary
data interfaces to secondary interfaces is already underway. RSS
refuses to die. ChatGPT-like interfaces are likely the future of
human data access. We're going back to the beginning. Advertisers may
be scared, but I'm not! Let's start the revolution and set the world
on fire with modern HTML.
Below are a few examples of UI elements I found novel or useful. No
style has been applied to these beyond the browser's built-in style.
Note that because of this, these examples may look vastly different
(or be completely unsupported) in various browsers. It's well worth
your time browsing the full list on MDN: https://
developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element
: The Abbreviation element
Wrap any abbreviation in this! You can apply a style to highlight
them. Mostly useful for machine reading.