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What Web Can Do Today

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Re: What Web Can Do Today

#111

Post by pdkl95 »

datashovel wrote: post #108
M2Ys4U wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not only people who actively disable JS, though. See the How many people are missing out on JavaScript enhancement? blog post[0] by the UK's Government Digital Service (aka GOV.UK). They calculated that 1.1% of users don't have the JS enhancements activated, and only 0.3% of those were browsers where JS execution was disabled. [0] https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2013/10/21/how-many-people-are-missi...

I would guess a majority of that traffic is going to be crawlers. It's probably more like a small fraction of 1% who are actually missing out. EDIT: Looks like they covered this in comments. Even that doesn't convince me for some reason.

Crawlers load images from tags? Some might. As googlebot runs Javascript, would an image inside be indexed into google image search?

While that's an interesting question, one of my points was about this common type of claim:

> guess

You admit you don't actually know. I don't either, which is why I program defensively and test for any feature I want to use.

A lot of people seem to be projecting what they want to see, reinforced by confirmation bias. Choosing Javascript based analytics is a great way to conclude that almost nobody uses Javascript.

Re: What Web Can Do Today

#112

Post by userbinator »

Pxtl wrote: post #97
majika wrote: post #48

What the web is increasingly unable to do today: provide text content without requiring a code execution environment. This site is another example of that. All non-application websites should provide all their content in semantic HTML at appropriate HTTP endpoints, with CSS styling (in as few requests as possible) as required per the design, and JavaScript (in as few requests as possible) that takes the semantic HTML…

I tend to think rants like this are just being luddites, but all this JavaScript and external resources rest are ruining the experience of the web. Holy crap is everything slow now. On desktop we've all gotten into the habit of tabbing the new stuff and waiting for load while doing something else, but on mobile where that workflow isn't as easy and you have to watch a page load? I'd say HN is one of the very few site…

I encourage you to try the "NoScript challenge" - disable JS, enabling it only for sites you often use and which need it, and browse the Web for a week. If you tend to indulge in rich multimedia you're probably going to give up soon, but if, like me, you're just after text and image content the majority of the time, you might actually prefer it. Pages load nearly instantly (or not at all), there no more intrusive popups/popunders/slideovers/etc. and other annoyances like disabling right-click, text selection, or stuffing text into your clipboard.

The "almost all sites have JavaScript and will break if you disable it" statement is common, and while I agree that the vast majority of sites do have JS on them, whether or not the stuff that will "break" on them if you disable JS is actually of any use to you is questionable.

Re: What Web Can Do Today

#113

Post by userbinator »

Joeri wrote: post #104
pdkl95 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's too hard It's only hard if you want it to be hard. Your tools should be handling most of it for you. If they don't, pick tools that aren't broken or badly designed. When I was writing websites in Rails 2.x, progressive enhancement was usually automatic (same views are rendered as a page or a dynamically-loaded partial). Saying "It's hard because I want to write over-complicated pages with badly designed tools"…

I don't know a single person IRL who turns off javascript. It's the browsing equivalent of running only RMS-approved software, possible in theory, but not very practical, and definitely rare. The business needs of modern commercial websites are hard to build with progressive enhancement, and web apps basically require javascript to deliver a good user experience. Yes, you can build a personal website using progressiv…

I happen to know 3 (two of which I convinced into doing so --- and they're not even what I'd consider "advanced users"), and I am one myself.

The majority of informational sites are actually quite usable without JS. I'd say "the browsing equivalent of running only RMS-approved software" would be never allowing JS, but I'm more pragmatic and only enable it if necessary, for the sites I trust and must use.

Re: What Web Can Do Today

#114

Post by lucb1e »

Proximity sensor, ambient light sensor, vibration, access to contacts, change screen orientation... gee, I didn't know Firefox could do all that on my laptop!

Re: What Web Can Do Today

#115

Post by djtriptych »

Great site - quick usability notes:

- Left align all features

- Align icons

- Align check marks

- Consider using heavier-looking icons for supported/not-supported.

- Promote the checkmark / ex legend to the top of the page.

Re: What Web Can Do Today

#116

Post by faizanbhat »

I think this is a well thought out list. I find it saddening that the 'health' of the web has deteriorated to a point where it's arguably uncompetitive for a vast number of modern applications including information discovery. I find it troubling that information discovery is moving away from the open web into non-neutral native application environments such as Facebook, Snapchat, and Twitter. Sure, information discovery on the web was driven by search engines. But I think search engines are really just part and parcel of the web (and arguably a feature that ought to have been built into web browsers from the beginning). A search engine doesn't express bias towards any information source (at least not by principle).

What troubles me is imagining a future where a vast majority of information that we consume is selected and curated by commercially driven, black box, non-neutral platforms.

I read an article recently about how Google is experimenting with removing the need to download apps by 'streaming' app content through a search box. Presumably, this is how Google search stays relevant in the post-web era where more and more information flows through walled gardens installed on mobile devices. Now, instead of re-inventing the web, shouldn't we be working towards 'fixing' the one that exists? This list provides a decent 10,000 ft overview of the problems.

Eager to hear your thoughts.

Re: What Web Can Do Today

#117

Post by datashovel »

pdkl95 wrote: post #111
datashovel wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would guess a majority of that traffic is going to be crawlers. It's probably more like a small fraction of 1% who are actually missing out. EDIT: Looks like they covered this in comments. Even that doesn't convince me for some reason.

Crawlers load images from tags? Some might. As googlebot runs Javascript, would an image inside be indexed into google image search? While that's an interesting question, one of my points was about this common type of claim: > guess You admit you don't actually know . I don't either, which is why I program defensively and test for any feature I want to use. A lot of people seem to be projecting what they want to see,…

Good points.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/noscript/

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ghostery/mlomiejdf...

These are some very popular plugins, so my thinking is maybe the answer lies somewhere in between, where security-conscious users are white listing sites they want to run scripts on. Not that they're running completely in js disabled mode. Even though it's a subtle difference I think it's relevant to the strategy one goes in with regarding noscript tag.

So this would make sense to me. If that's right, that most noscript users are just running these plugins, then those folks know that they're going to miss out with some sites, or they'll selectively enable javascript on a case-by-case basis.

This would probably require more extensive review of logs, to see if the person who originally downloaded the noscript image eventually came back to the site with javascript enabled. The likelihood is this would only happen if the site was not functional when they visited with javascript disabled.

Re: What Web Can Do Today

#118

Post by JupiterMoon »

Joeri wrote: post #104
pdkl95 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's too hard It's only hard if you want it to be hard. Your tools should be handling most of it for you. If they don't, pick tools that aren't broken or badly designed. When I was writing websites in Rails 2.x, progressive enhancement was usually automatic (same views are rendered as a page or a dynamically-loaded partial). Saying "It's hard because I want to write over-complicated pages with badly designed tools"…

I don't know a single person IRL who turns off javascript. It's the browsing equivalent of running only RMS-approved software, possible in theory, but not very practical, and definitely rare. The business needs of modern commercial websites are hard to build with progressive enhancement, and web apps basically require javascript to deliver a good user experience. Yes, you can build a personal website using progressiv…

I don't know a single person that does not run an adblock anymore.

Re: What Web Can Do Today

#119

Post by _urga »

Browsers are great at rendering.

But they are terrible when it comes to exposing the raw power and capability of a machine to web apps that the user wants to trust. They spec their API implementations by committee (and committees of committees) and they rarely implement any spec in its entirety. The web is becoming increasingly fragmented as a result.

The web is good for "web pages", but bad for "web apps". The web currently has no concept of a trusted web app.

For example, we have been waiting for years for browsers to give web apps some way to access the filesystem, and all we have is an open dialog and a file instance (and the debris of the failed filesystem api). And when will web apps (not "web pages") get TCP or UDP? The browsers will never be able to match the module ecosystem and core power of Node.

The way forward:

1. Give the power back to users. Give them a boolean way to indicate that they trust and want to install a web app.

2. If the web app is trusted and installed, give it access to Node.

In a matter of months, this could exponentially boost web apps, lighten the bloated browser codebase, keep the focus on browser rendering, and keep committee fingers off web app innovation.

Re: What Web Can Do Today

#120

Post by spion »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #83
jacquesm wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CSS happened in 1996, the first couple of years of the web we had no CSS, all styling was done with inline attributes up to that point. The frustrating bit is that CSS was supposed to separate content/structure and markup, but now we have pages without content but with markup where the content is loaded after the fact. This really overshot the mark.

Also note tat the separation of content and structure is mostly nonexistent as it's currently practiced. People like to talk about it as a Golden Rule, a holy virtue, and then proceed to write even worse code than they did with tables. Generally, if you find yourself writing a tangled mess of divs in order to support CSS tricks, you're not really separating content from the structure. HTML5 semantic tags helped a lit…

Have you considered that there may be an actual reason why people write a tangled mess of divs. Could it be because the entire model is crappy and people don't know what to do to make it show things the way they (or their client) want(s)?
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