Jason Knight

The less code you use, the less there is to break

Aug 21, 2018

Methinks we have different definitions of the word 'cool'... since wasting bandwidth on animated nonsense on a error page is so mind-numbingly... well, I lack the words in polite company.

Made all the worse by the current page's glut of "JS for nothing", meta tags no legitimate UA cares about particularly on a 404, classes on elements that have zero reason to even have classes, preloading link nonsense wasting the user's bandwidth, empty title attribute, and 5.8k of minified markup doing the job of around 1k of code!

You'd almost think it was slopped together with the train wreck laundry list of how NOT to build a website that is bootstrap.

But given the wording of the request, I shudder in horror at the monstrosities you are likely to get out of this "competition" given the request for animated trash... though what would actually be useful to users in such a page would be to simply have the 404 be the same template as the rest of the website! Same sidebar with normal navigation, showing the user, votes, followers at the bottom... same background, same left side bar that scrolls with the content, then plug in the error message into the center column with those same helpful links.

NOT some bloated trash animated nonsense.

Not exactly what I thought you were talking about for 'contests' -- particularly since if I were to make an entry it basically involves rewriting or recreating the site itself. Though it could use it what with the nutters 105k of markup without the content even being loaded filled to the brim with "JS for NOTHING" that tells large swaths of potential users to go plow themselves. Again, I know a number of people who would be interested in this site if the over-use of CSR mated to massive bandwidth bloat didn't tell them where to stick it!

The voting counted on the day submission ENDS is also pretty hinky, especially with the "please spam the devil out of it" plea. Actually comes across as pretty sleazy overall.

Marco Alka

Software Engineer, Technical Consultant & Mentor

Aug 21, 2018

why don't you give it a try then? Create a lean 404 page! Actually, I'd like to see your take on the challenge :)

Marco Alka Thing is what I'd do for a 404 page for this site would recreate more than half of the home page... since that's what the 404 page should likely be! Put all the useful stuff from the existing sidebars on it, then show the text they currently have (with actual semantics) in the content area... possibly with that cute little 2x2 of topics that's shown underneath each thread?

I'm not sure I'm up for biting off a one week project as a coding challenge given the train wreck of CSR the existing site is.

though to be brutally frank there is NO excuse for the existing 404 page to have significantly more code than:

<!DOCTYPE html><html lang="en"><head><meta charset="utf-8">
<meta
    name="viewport"
    content="width=device-width,height=device-height,initial-scale=1"
>
<link
    rel="shortcut icon"
    href="/static/images/favs/favicon.ico"
>
<link
    rel="stylesheet"
    href="template/screen.css"
    media="screen,projection,tv"
>
<title>404 Not Found - Hashnode</title>
</head><body>

<h1><a href="/">HashNode</a></h1>

<div class="statusError">
    <h2>We can’t find the page you’re looking for</h2>
    <p>Error code 404</p>
<!-- .statusError --></div>

<div class="links">
    <h2>Here are some helpful links:</h2>
    <ul>
        <li><a href="/">Homepage</a></li>
        <li><a href="/">Discussions</a></li>
        <li><a href="/blogs">Blogs</a></li>
        <li><a href="/news">News</a></li>
        <li><a href="/about">About Hashnode</a></li>
    </ul>
<!-- .links --></div>

</body></html>

Unless you REALLY think people are going to save a link to the 404 to their desktop. For the EXISTING page, that's all that should be needed.

In fact, I might just do that as my submission, rewrite the existing one to 1) not be a fat bloated pig rolling around in bootcrap, and 2) fix the responsive layout bugs so common to the DELUSION that bootcrap can handle that for you.

Seriously, the ONLY thing you can learn from bootcrap is how NOT to build websites.

Oh wait, it's ONLY on Codier? Well nevermind then. NOT a fan of that broken inaccessible USELESS DISASTER of a website.

When they said coding challenges in that voting thread, this is not what I was thinking of. Is it too late to change my vote?

Hey Jason Knight

First, I'd like to thank you for your best intentions and listing all the things you felt we needed to improve. We've always been open to feedback and criticism, and we've made some changes to the blog post and added comments on Codier such as :

feel free to animate or include external libraries to make your solution as cool as possible, but also ensure it is lightweight and usable.

However, I must say that the language you've used is not something we'd love people to use over here. I understand that you wanted to get our attention and show us the areas of improvement, but your comments weren't as constructive as they should've been. We're proud to say that we're the friendliest dev community on the web and we're working hard on keeping Hashnode going in that direction. We'll never delete comments from other people if we disagree with them and we'll never turn our head when our community sends some constructive criticism to us. We're open to collaboration and promote transparency on all levels.

That being said, we'd really appreciate it if you could copyedit yourself in the future and remove sentences that would simply agitate or upset the reader. We understand that you have strong opinions, but the way you put some things together simply offends people and creates toxicity. It even puts off people from participating in the challenge. Our primary goal is to motivate our users to practice their skills and do something fun.

Here are the most problematic things you've written:

some bloated trash animated nonsense

The voting counted on the day submission ENDS is also pretty hinky, especially with the "please spam the f* out of it" plea. Actually comes across as pretty sleazy overall.

1) not be a fat bloated pig rolling around in bootcrap, and 2) fix the responsive layout bugs so common to the DELUSION that bootcrap can handle that for you.

And the one we hope you'll rephrase:

Well nevermind then. NOT a fan of that broken inaccessible USELESS DISASTER of a website.

Again, we understand that you don't agree with some things we're doing here, but there's no reason to offend anyone and use such language. Instead of attacking and insulting people's work, you can suggest areas of improvement and talk about what should be changed and why.

We're open for any kind of discussion, but we can't and won't allow toxicity on this platform. There are enough forums on the web that promote just that. Let's keep this discussion and this platform friendly and open.

Also, I'm really looking forward to seeing your solution out there! Show us what you think we should do and how.

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