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A day without JavaScript

sonniesedge.co.uk

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Re: A day without JavaScript

#141

Post by thinkxl »

linkmotif wrote: post #123
jaclaz wrote: post #120

If I may, it seems to me like there are several possible points of discussion: 1) Javascript is bad (vs. Javascript is good and variations thereof) 2) The use a lot of websites make of Javascript is overcomplex, gratuitious, uncalled for, intrusive, etc. 3) Sites should provide some (even minimal) functionality to people browsing them without Javascript #1 is largely a matter of personal opinions #2 is a known, unden…

I simply will not spend time tailoring a nascent or even mature product to 0.0001% or whatever minscule percentage of the population turns off JS. If you turn off JS, you get a blank screen. Why should I accommodate your cohort? Why write unit tests for someone who takes a standardish client with above 1% market share and does something completely unstandard with it?

> For the same reason we build features in websites that work for blind people (aria tags everywhere), disabled people (accessible buttons), people who speak different languages (i18n), VIM users (GMail keyboard shortcuts), etc.

From a comment below.

Re: A day without JavaScript

#142

Post by niutech »

linkmotif wrote: post #114

What is the motivation behind this mentality? Sure there are still webpages on the web, but there are also web apps. Why or even how would you expect a web app to work without JS? Why would you expect developers to spend time writing a non JS version of their app? Before taking on this endeavor, I would prioritize native apps, optimizations of all sorts, adding features, etc. Unless your app is gmail, why would you e…

The content is the main thing users care about and it should be available as soon as possible even on a low-bandwidth connection, or a low-end device, or using a screen reader. This is what Progressive Enhancement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_enhancement is about.

Re: A day without JavaScript

#143

Post by niutech »

spiderfarmer wrote: post #8

One of my clients loads a 4.5 Mb bower.js (including Angular with a lot of components and jQuery), they also include an extra jQuery script, a full jQuery UI and several other scripts on each pageload . Nothing is minimized. The bower file alone has 300k in comments. The CSS file is also nearly 1 Mb. It's just a simple website with some forms. They have 2 developers working on the site, a scrum master, a project mana…

Have a look at PurifyCSS: https://github.com/purifycss/purifycss

Re: A day without JavaScript

#144

Post by qwtel »

linkmotif wrote: post #140
qwtel wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

because its good engineering. you don't know what might break your JS in the future. you also don't know which user agents people will use in the future. I was quite surprised to discover that some "UC browser for Android" had quietly racked up a 9% usage[^1]. UC doesn't come without JS, but has a limited feature set, and without feature testing there's a good chance it will break your site. It broke [mine]( https://…

Nonsense. This is definitively YAGNI. Good engineering is accommodating the greatest number of people with the resources you have in the least amount of time. Thinking about some abstract future scenario is categorically not good engineering.

you're right. let's get rid of safety nets, because YAGNI. it's so efficient!

Re: A day without JavaScript

#145

Post by linkmotif »

thinkxl wrote: post #141
linkmotif wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I simply will not spend time tailoring a nascent or even mature product to 0.0001% or whatever minscule percentage of the population turns off JS. If you turn off JS, you get a blank screen. Why should I accommodate your cohort? Why write unit tests for someone who takes a standardish client with above 1% market share and does something completely unstandard with it?

> For the same reason we build features in websites that work for blind people (aria tags everywhere), disabled people (accessible buttons), people who speak different languages (i18n), VIM users (GMail keyboard shortcuts), etc. From a comment below.

Great counter example, thank you. Accompdating people with disabilities is totally worth it though imo, as an example of a very minor cohort that's not all about percentages.

Re: A day without JavaScript

#146

Post by always_good »

linkmotif wrote: post #123
jaclaz wrote: post #120

If I may, it seems to me like there are several possible points of discussion: 1) Javascript is bad (vs. Javascript is good and variations thereof) 2) The use a lot of websites make of Javascript is overcomplex, gratuitious, uncalled for, intrusive, etc. 3) Sites should provide some (even minimal) functionality to people browsing them without Javascript #1 is largely a matter of personal opinions #2 is a known, unden…

I simply will not spend time tailoring a nascent or even mature product to 0.0001% or whatever minscule percentage of the population turns off JS. If you turn off JS, you get a blank screen. Why should I accommodate your cohort? Why write unit tests for someone who takes a standardish client with above 1% market share and does something completely unstandard with it?

I find that it's at least (usually more) double the work to build the JS-free version of something for a fraction of the user experience.

For example, imagine a forum where clicking the "edit post" button turns your post into a editor and saves with AJAX so that you can continue scrolling once you make your edit.

To build the JS-free version, you typically need a separate endpoint, a new template, a redirect, and a less empowering editor. And all this for UI that 99% of your users won't see.

It just doesn't seem like a opportunity cost savvy way to build a website.

Then there are the UIs that take some real backsplits to accomplish without Javascript like a table that lets you mass-modify the rows with checkboxes and a at the top that lets you choose options like Move | Archive | Delete.

You can wrap the entire with a such that all of your checkboxes submit to your mass-modify endpoint. That works without JS.

But since you can't nest within other , your delete buttons can't appear in each row.

I have a hard time understanding how so many people in these threads can suggest that the opportunity cost of building for the 1% is always worth it. Does everyone just have basic blogs on the mind when they envision the labor involved in what they preach?

Re: A day without JavaScript

#147

Post by Liquid_Fire »

FLUX-YOU wrote: post #124
oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There should be something as a fallback, though, surely? Take out all the functionality, by all means, but at least give me a map image. If you can't even get link-to-zoom working to display different images, just give me a map image based on my IP location; give me anything rather than nothing.

Can you do lazy loading with just HTML and CSS? You can load the map around the GPS coordinates you start on, but what if you go 20 miles north? How do you: A) figure out what are the new GPS coordinates that your viewport is looking at? And B) load the map within the viewport centered around the new GPS coordinates that you're looking at without ajax?

How would you "go 20 miles north" without JavaScript? The only sensible way would be by clicking a link, at which point you can load your new tiles.

Re: A day without JavaScript

#148

Post by thinkxl »

It's funny how devs feel threatened by a non-JS trend. Even when their favorite frameworks are providing tools to accomplish minimal functionality when JavaScript is off.

Server side rendering has been a big priority in React, Vue, Redux, ReactRouter, etc.

Re: A day without JavaScript

#149

Post by est »

rwmj wrote: post #5

I found that Google actually works better without Javascript. It's much more like the Google of old (c.1998). One significant enhancement (w/o JS) is that you can type something in the search bar without losing your current results while you're typing.

I turned off cookies and js for encrypted.google.com, used it as default search engine. works like a charm.

Re: A day without JavaScript

#150

Post by tcfunk »

carussell wrote: post #127
linkmotif wrote: post #114

What is the motivation behind this mentality? Sure there are still webpages on the web, but there are also web apps. Why or even how would you expect a web app to work without JS? Why would you expect developers to spend time writing a non JS version of their app? Before taking on this endeavor, I would prioritize native apps, optimizations of all sorts, adding features, etc. Unless your app is gmail, why would you e…

Which of the sites mentioned in the article would you expect JS to be necessary to use?

I find JS requirements perfectly acceptable for maps, twitter, youtube, and netflix. Particularly maps.
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