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Using the Web for a Day with JavaScript Turned Off

smashingmagazine.com

111–120 of 180 posts

Re: Using the Web for a Day with JavaScript Turned Off

#111
post #39

Oh my lord, this article is non-sense. Had you gone to a website and had not been able to read anything I would say... good point. But you went to a Wordpress admin to prove your point. Lord have mercy... you're really going to hate your experience once WP switches to a JS based editor. Quick, let's try using Facebook and other apps built on JS frameworks and complain about the functionality not working. Let's try se…

I know a guy who built a single-page web app for a blog. Really.

It takes a few seconds to load the post titles, it'll make your computer grind to a halt if you have more than two tabs of it open, it took months to write, and it doesn't do anything you couldn't do with plain HTML and some AJAX request handlers... but Brawndo has electrolytes!

I bet it looks pretty good on his resume.

Re: Using the Web for a Day with JavaScript Turned Off

#112
post #8

Back in 2006/7 I remember we'd use "progressive enhancement" to make a site work without JavaScript and then add JavaScript enhancements for those who had JS enabled. At some point (maybe after the popularity of Google Maps?) nobody wanted progressive enhancement and it was totally cool to just ignore users who had JS turned off. It made web app development so much easier, but probably less user friendly. It feels li…

> At some point (maybe after the popularity of Google Maps?)

I feel like there was a huge uptick in developers ignoring users with JS turned off when Angular and React started becoming popular. It's interesting to note that big tech companies, who have a financial interest in pushing websites away from progressive enhancement techniques, were the ones behind the creation of those frameworks.

Re: Using the Web for a Day with JavaScript Turned Off

#113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean about dropping i18n? How can we drop that, force everyone to speak Esperanto?

English obviously. It is quite far fetched, but I'm just tired of seeing countless hours wasted because the numbers aren't localized properly or RTL breaks layout. It's superfluous, people should have their native tongue and should learn English as means of international communication. Also imagine encoding problems which are also great PITA going away with ascii-only technologies.

Do you speak one language only? Even one additional language would change your perspective here. You won't be able to translate all that properly into one language.

A people's language is a window into their culture and their being. Each language (and even dialect) have their own insightful and delightful quirks.

I could only lamely elaborate here on own experience.

Re: Using the Web for a Day with JavaScript Turned Off

#114
post #43
post #8

Back in 2006/7 I remember we'd use "progressive enhancement" to make a site work without JavaScript and then add JavaScript enhancements for those who had JS enabled. At some point (maybe after the popularity of Google Maps?) nobody wanted progressive enhancement and it was totally cool to just ignore users who had JS turned off. It made web app development so much easier, but probably less user friendly. It feels li…

>It made web app development so much easier I aim to develop web UIs using (mostly) progressive enhancement. I adopted several practices and developed some libraries supporting this process. As a result: 1. When I need to create something, I know exactly which data structures to use. This is determined by what is available in modern browsers. 2. I can quickly prototype solutions using plain HTML focusing on logic rat…

This can't be upvoted enough. Making sure your site works from the ground up will improve the product, the process and the developer. Less, easier to read code, less development time, easier to maintain, more and better understanding of the subject matter. And probably better usability as well, since one took the time to think it through.

Sometime you have to cut corners, sure, but if you know what you are doing, the PE way is probably the easier one from the start.

Re: Using the Web for a Day with JavaScript Turned Off

#115
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

English obviously. It is quite far fetched, but I'm just tired of seeing countless hours wasted because the numbers aren't localized properly or RTL breaks layout. It's superfluous, people should have their native tongue and should learn English as means of international communication. Also imagine encoding problems which are also great PITA going away with ascii-only technologies.

Do you speak one language only? Even one additional language would change your perspective here. You won't be able to translate all that properly into one language. A people's language is a window into their culture and their being. Each language (and even dialect) have their own insightful and delightful quirks. I could only lamely elaborate here on own experience.

No I speak Russian and English. Russian is native.

Re: Using the Web for a Day with JavaScript Turned Off

#116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I only want Javascript for when it actually speeds up a site. Which, from my experience, is simply: AJAX for all form submissions Service Worker for caching Turbolinks[0] for page navigation And those are easy to implement as progressive enhancements. If JS is disabled, the submit button does a regular page submit, the Service Worker is simply not registered and instead uses your web server's cache policy, and…

Honestly wouldn't bother with forms failing over. That sounds like double the work to support a few people. If you want to participate, enable JS, otherwise view the site as read only.

Not sure if I follow? For a form submission, you'd set it up like a normal HTML form. The would do it's regular thing. If Javascript is enabled, then you'd hijack the button with event.preventDefault and do your AJAX.

Re: Using the Web for a Day with JavaScript Turned Off

#117
post #8

Back in 2006/7 I remember we'd use "progressive enhancement" to make a site work without JavaScript and then add JavaScript enhancements for those who had JS enabled. At some point (maybe after the popularity of Google Maps?) nobody wanted progressive enhancement and it was totally cool to just ignore users who had JS turned off. It made web app development so much easier, but probably less user friendly. It feels li…

> It feels like JS is a hammer to fix the nail of the page reload.

JS is useful for much more, e.g. collaborative editing, where the user doesn't have to wait for a server round-trip. JS is essential for a real-time multi-user interactive web.

Re: Using the Web for a Day with JavaScript Turned Off

#119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I only want Javascript for when it actually speeds up a site. Which, from my experience, is simply: AJAX for all form submissions Service Worker for caching Turbolinks[0] for page navigation And those are easy to implement as progressive enhancements. If JS is disabled, the submit button does a regular page submit, the Service Worker is simply not registered and instead uses your web server's cache policy, and…

Honestly wouldn't bother with forms failing over. That sounds like double the work to support a few people. If you want to participate, enable JS, otherwise view the site as read only.

I think that is fair. But if you can't make your dropdown work without js, please leave your developer membership card by the door.

Re: Using the Web for a Day with JavaScript Turned Off

#120

Honestly, I don't see the wordpress backend as a relevant test case. Whoever else you might be catering to, it's fair to assume that someone building a website would have JavaScript enabled while developing.

90+% of the people using Wordpress backends do not build websites. They just author content.
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