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A day without JavaScript

sonniesedge.co.uk

161–170 of 412 posts

Re: A day without JavaScript

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, most websites are still websites, and one of the biggest problem on the web is the plague of people who think their website should be an application instead. Actual web applications, like e.g. office suites, map applications, ect. are obviously extempt from "should work fine without JS" rule.

Are you really trying to say there's no argument to be made that SPA + prerendering is a design pattern with advantages over flat html, even for static content? Obviously there are disadvantages as well, but it's a tradeoff, and if executed correctly it's one that, as fewer people turn off JS and browsers become better at running web apps, is increasingly becoming worth the complexity for certain use cases.

If the main work your site is doing is showing pictures and text - and this is still and always will be a large part of the web - the browser has a number of features that work very smoothly and reliably out of the box: scrolling, page history, following a link when it is clicked, right-click save as, searchability, basic accessibility, etc. - and typically much quicker rendering than something which waits for a lot of extra HTTP requests and extra work being done in a VM somewhere.

Reimplementing these features in JS is often pretty feasible, and occasionally there are use cases for it, but it's a lot of additional overhead and it's not at all unusual to introduce bugs that really hurt the UX. (UX is not just adding as much branding as possible on top of vanilla browser behavior.)

The average newspaper website should not load 15 megs of junk from 20 different domains with a massive amount of Angular code just so I can read a single paragraph of plain text. This is an example of a document, it's what the web was made for and browsers already do it well without turning most documents into an SPA.

Re: A day without JavaScript

#162
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?

Adobe flash is dead since many years, people that was warned that they should not do only flash website,and for the same people can browse without JS what you tell them now? they site aren't at all usefull, you failed. All website or software should never fail so easily. I truly support jaclaz. No message : you should use blablabla, or enable this, or anything else, people goes away.

Re: A day without JavaScript

#163
I surfed without JS on for a long time. I found that it made the web very very pleasant!

What totally breaks is when you do a complicated bank transfer or work on some older site. They often transfer you across multiple domains, so whitelisting doesn't work, as you can't anticipate what site to whitelist (when you check your points, bank.com redirects you to bankrewards.com, things like that).

What's really needed is a chrome extension to let you turn JS off and on, and if you turn it on, it can be set to auto-turn off after some time. What would be even better is if Chrome offered this behavior in an easily accessible way.

Re: A day without JavaScript

#164
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?

It might make sense to think about who disables JS. Likely it's technically knowledgeable people with a concern for privacy and security. If this describes your users or customers you may benefit from at least some level of non-JS functionality.

Re: A day without JavaScript

#165
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why doesn't the market care? Where is the JS-less Facebook/Twitter/Airbnb competitor that blows the customers away with "properly built" websites?

As the number of people that won't put up with the JS crap anymore and start using JS blockers increase, we will see such websites. Same thing that is happening with ads and ad blockers.

Ad blockers are now going in the other direction with non-intrusive ads being shown.

Re: A day without JavaScript

#166
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note: The color-coding is likely to change in future Chrome releases. I am a little surprised to find such an issue in Google software as it is a topic for first semester CS undergraduates ;-)

Wait what? CS students learn color about color blindness now? I really wasn't in the good classes!

I think it's a joke.

Re: A day without JavaScript

#167

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?

It might make sense to think about who disables JS. Likely it's technically knowledgeable people with a concern for privacy and security. If this describes your users or customers you may benefit from at least some level of non-JS functionality.

those knowledgeable users might be installing JS blockers in their friends and family computers right now.

Re: A day without JavaScript

#168
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…

#1 is largely a matter of personal opinions

This is wrong.

It's amazing what Javascript can do now but it is only amazing because it was a retarded child with abusive parents (early browsers with wildly different implementations).

That taken into account its amazing how far it has come.

Sincerely, The frontend developer

Re: A day without JavaScript

#169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As the number of people that won't put up with the JS crap anymore and start using JS blockers increase, we will see such websites. Same thing that is happening with ads and ad blockers.

Ad blockers are now going in the other direction with non-intrusive ads being shown.

I would be extremely happy to use a JS block that allows non intrusive JS.

Re: A day without JavaScript

#170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 misspelled "good bean-counting". Good engineering requires you to cover for everything you can. Case in point: car seatbelts and airbags. Most people don't crash, right? But you aren't seeing the car manufacturers remove seatbelts and airbags.

When everything is made from beans, the bean supply must be kept in mind.
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