alt Hacker News"Avoid JavaScript reimplementations of HTML basics, e.g. React Button components instead of styled <button> elements."
Tell me you know nothing about web development without saying you know nothing about web dev ...
1. React is an irrelevant implementation detail. You can have a plain HTML button in a button component, or you can have an image or whatever else. React has nothing to do with the design choices.
2. React is also how you get consistent design across a major web app. Can you imagine if every button on every site was the same Windows button gray color, regardless of the site's color? It'd be awful! React components (with CSS classes) are a way for a site like Amazon to make all their buttons orange (although I don't actually know if Amazon uses React specifically). But again, whether they look and act like standard buttons comes down to Amazon's design choices ... not whether their tech stack includes React or not.
Look idiomatic design is incredibly important to web design. One of the most popular web design/usability books, Don't Make Me Think, is all about idiomatic design!
But ultimately it's a design choice, which has very little, if anything at all, to do with which development tools you use.
Replies
> Can you imagine if every button on every site was the same Windows button gray color, regardless of the site's color?
Not a webdev, but can't you just use CSS on the <button> element for that?
> Can you imagine if every button on every site was the same Windows button gray color, regardless of the site's color? It'd be awful!
As it happens, this is how it was for years and years, actually, for most of the existence of the Web. The basic appearance of form elements used to be un-styleable, locked to the OS UI-appearance, for general usability concerns.
>>> Can you imagine if every button on every site was the same Windows button gray color, regardless of the site's color? It'd be awful!
Speaking as a user not a developer, it'd be lovely.
> Amazon to make all their buttons orange
> It'd be awful!
Why do I care about their choice of a screaming color for my buttons?
> same Windows button gray
We don't need to go the other extreme, can there be no middle ground of letting users pick between the boring gray and the bright orange? You know, a good system could even offer you a choice of palette that takes the website color into account...
> Can you imagine if every button on every site was the same Windows button gray color, regardless of the site's color?
Imagine how cool would it be if we had a pure, logical language where we could set properties in a page based on the properties of the objects around it!
> Tell me you know nothing about web development without saying you know nothing about web dev
This Twitterism really bugs me.
You took the time to write a really detailed response (much appreciated, you convinced me). There’s no need to explicitly dunk on the OP. Though if you really want to be a little mean (a little bit is fair imo), I think it should be closer to level of creativity of the rest of your comment. Call them ignorant and say you can’t take them seriously or something. The twitterism wouldn’t really stand on its own as a comment.
Sorry for the nitpicky rant.
> React is also how you get consistent design across a major web app. Can you imagine if every button on every site was the same Windows button gray color, regardless of the site's color? It'd be awful! React components (with CSS classes) are a way for a site like Amazon to make all their buttons orange (although I don't actually know if Amazon uses React specifically).
I don't understand this point specifically. I make all buttons on a site have the same theme without needing a framework, library or build-step!
Why is React (or any other framework) needed? I mean, you say specifically "React is also how you get consistent design across a major web app.", but that ain't true.