View Source still exists, the presence of JavaScript and CSS means that HTML is more meaningful (as it's it's free of display information and behaviour). But looking at the DOM is the inspector is even more useful to undertsanding the tree structure.
I agree with the sentiment of the article, but developer tools are better, not worse, than they were 20 years ago.
Developer tools are better mostly because webpages are 100's of times more complex now than they were in the past whereas the typical amount of information on the page is still roughly the same.
Understanding how a modern webpage source in combination with a browser results in what you see is a pretty complicated affair, in the past you just did 'view source' and it was obvious what went where.
The web is now much more machine-to-machine than it was in the past when the humans could process the pages roughly as easily as the machines could.
The point I was making was that web pages in terms of HTML aren't more complex than they were in the past. An HTML page now often has a smaller amount of elements and element attributes than the equivalent page created using older tech because every element doesn't have styling hacks and behavior added to them. HTML (stuff like GAE or BEM aside) is purer than ever.
Unfortunately removing the 'styling hacks and behavior' has split the pages up into many different components that all interact in quite complex ways. The HTML being 'purer' has not made things simpler at all. Now there are many places rather than just a few where style and functionality can be modified. And that can obscure intent quite quickly. As opposed to <b>this is bold text</b> which any fool (this one included) could understand.
There are obvious benefits to separating layout, style, software and content. But it isn't categorically true that this will always result in something that is easier to understand by a human.
> Now there are many places rather than just a few where style and functionality can be modified.
Styling is done in style sheets, functionality is done in JavaScript (with the exceptions already mentioned). Trying to create, say Hotmail in 2018 would result in a much better to understand and debug app than the 1998 version was.
It has only shifted the hacks out of sight into CSS/JS. Postulating "semantic" HTML and then invent a bunch of ad-hoc syntaxes (CSS) hasn't achieved anything in terms of expressibility really. The original purpose of markup attributes in SGML is precisely to represent presentation and other auxiliary properties in a uniform and manageable way. The concept of "semantic" HTML is, for me, just a rationalization of the HTML/CSS/JS trifecta after the fact. Instead of having presentation properties in HTML, now we have an incredibly complex rendering system that is almost infeasible to implement from scratch.
For a seasoned programmer, sure. But a layperson had a much better chance of understanding an early 90's webpage with the exact same content as a modern day one.
Actually, it isn't. Because it left out all the moving parts that are now in the CSS. That second example is complete, the first one isn't, the second one gives me a fair idea of what the result should look like, the first could look like anything (even a blank page...).
Yes, it seperates style from presentation. That's a great way to get an understanding of the structure and content of the document and seperate concerns. 'Table data holding table data' does not do this well at all.
Not responding further after this because `Actually, it isn't.` isn't a setence typically found in a polite adult conversation.
I agree with the sentiment of the article, but developer tools are better, not worse, than they were 20 years ago.