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A day without JavaScript

sonniesedge.co.uk

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Re: A day without JavaScript

#221

Post by aninhumer »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #34
nigma wrote: post #23

I turned off JavaScript and Cookies for all sites a few months ago and only whitelist (or open in another Chrome profile) when they refuse to display or need an authenticated session. There are some sites that require JS to render, but the great thing is that majority of pages I visit work just fine as plain html/css. In general I feel less distraction from popups, overlays, ads, etc.

I use uMatrix as a substitute for NoScript + uBlock, and while it's a pain to get some sites working manually without bulk-enabling everything on them, I'm mostly happy about it, and the web looks better for me.

I tried using uBlock (EDIT: uMatrix) for a while, but I felt like it was a lot of hassle, and most of the time it still wasn't granular enough to actually block the things I wanted to without breaking sites. It seemed like usually all of the bullshit javascript making sites sluggish came from the same domain as the few bits I might actually want. (Or at least needed to make the site useful.)

Re: A day without JavaScript

#222

Post by gvb »

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…

The sites that REALLY piss me off are the ones with a timed redirect like:

http://www.example.com/nojavascript" />

which show a usable flash of the site for one second and then bounce me to a useless "You must enable JavaScript to use this site." page. By the flash I know that this is technically not correct.

Re: A day without JavaScript

#223

Post by drdaeman »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #77
pharrlax wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In theory, maybe there is an argument. In practice, most of the time it'll be a pretty bad one. For me it's about how user-hostile those decisions are. I can understand SPA-s when e.g. the service would be infeasible if all the processing was done server-side. But more often than not, it's just laziness . The devs can deploy a sleek-looking SPA in 5 minutes with their JS toolchain, forever dooming users to download t…

> The devs can deploy a sleek-looking SPA in 5 minutes with their JS toolchain

Oh, if that'd be true...

Our experiments with React took quite a lot of time (like, weeks) before we got things in shape. And then some more time before that shape wasn't a pear.

And if the backend is not in JS, server-side rendering is quite a mess.

Re: A day without JavaScript

#224

Post by sedachv »

tcfunk wrote: post #150
carussell wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why? You can use Youtube just fine with w3m and an external media player: http://francismurillo.github.io/2017-01-11-Using-vlc-With-w3...

Re: A day without JavaScript

#225

Post by syrrim »

douche wrote: post #53
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not unreasonable to expect hyperlinks or images to work without JS. Fancier stuff sure, but basic navigation through a content only site should be functional without it. This is what HTML does and you have to be profoundly lazy to screw that up.

My favorite pet peeve is JS links, that aren't actually links, but spans or divs with click handlers, so there's no way to right-click->open in new tab or ctrl-click->open in new tab. It's like intentionally doing something that is harder, and works shittier; I don't get it.

My favourite pet peeve is the lyrics wikia, which has some css embedded in a tag that blocks out the lyrics and replaces it with a "sorry! This site requires javascript" message.

Re: A day without JavaScript

#226

Post by sedachv »

pharrlax wrote: post #64
TeMPOraL wrote: post #37

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.

> as fewer people turn off JS and browsers become better at running web apps

In my anecdotal experience, I am running across more people that are turning off JavaScript, partly because browsers are becoming more bloated and worse at running web apps.

Re: A day without JavaScript

#227

Post by mattgreenrocks »

thinkxl wrote: post #148

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.

Two reasons:

* existential: questioning the zeitgeist is taboo, especially with the amount of momentum the web has

* personal: it implicitly devalues the skills some are investing large amounts of time

However, once a new platform emerges (and one will), devs will have to deal with both of these issues anyway, so they might as well start.

Re: A day without JavaScript

#228

Post by catdog »

madsbuch wrote: post #68
pmlnr wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Browsers are JS runtimes now. Get over it. Sure, dude, ignore anyone without a machine that can run MBs of JS within a reasonable time.

This is a question about JS vs no JS, not about optimizations of JS.

The fastest code is the code which never gets written.

Re: A day without JavaScript

#229

Post by geuis »

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…

For unused CSS, Helium https://github.com/geuis/helium-css

Re: A day without JavaScript

#230

Post by emodendroket »

adtac wrote: post #207
sametmax wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. Except you need to do Ajax and fetch doesn't cut it. So new lib. And manipulate the dom with something better then the browser API or you loose your mind. So new lib. Then normalize browser events. Oh wait, you can do that manually. But you are writing a new lib. Eventually the code will grow to be the size of jQuery anyway. Only not as well tested, documented and cached.

>Eventually the code will grow to be the size of jQuery anyway. Um what? jQuery is huge. You won't possibly use everything in it.

Well, define "huge." It's like 28KB that your user may already have cached if you use a CDN. https://mathiasbynens.be/demo/jquery-size
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