GoKawiilI wrote about building websites with LLMs — (L)ots of (L)ittle ht(M)l page(s) — and I think it’s time for a post-mortem on that approach:
I like it.
I’ve tweaked a few things from that original post but the underlying idea is still the same, which I would describe as:
Avoid in-page interactions that require JavaScript in favor of multi-page navigations that rely on HTML and are enhanced with CSS view transitions (and a dash of JS if/where prudent).
As an example, on my blog I have a “Menu”. It doesn’t “expand” or “slide out” or “pop in” or whatever else you can do with JS. Instead, it navigates to an entirely-new page that is focused on just the menu options of my site.
I say “navigates” because it’s just a link — <a href="/menu/"> — and it functions like a link, but the navigation interaction is enhanced by CSS view transitions.
Have a newer device with a modern browser? Great, you get a nicer effect.
Have an older device, or an older browser, or JS disabled, Et al.? It’ll still work.
If you can follow a link — which is the most fundamental thing a browser can do — it will work.
So how’s it all work under the hood? In essence, all the pages have a link to the menu (except the menu page). When you navigate to the menu, that link is changed to an “X” which “closes” the menu. The closing is still just a link (back to / ) but it’s enhanced with JS to actually do a “back” in the browser history. This makes it so “opening/closing” the menu doesn’t add an entry to your browser history.
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