Gotta shout out to the song linked in the article. Got me laughing good
A JavaScript-Free Front End
11–20 of 215 posts
Re: A JavaScript-Free Front End
#12These are handy tricks, even in JS at scale, and I'd recommend their usage if you can (big if, business requirements come first for most of us). That said, I don't really buy into the no JS/purism movement for load/execution speed. For bite-sized apps or simple pages, sure. However, it's completely possible and not that hard to develop full-blown web application suites using full JS for everything (structure, style, and function) and not have issues with load or speed. I'm not sure if there's a footgun here, but the issue falls squarely on the developers.
Re: A JavaScript-Free Front End
#13I like this article, but the title is misleading.
"I did actually use some JavaScript on the new Slimvoice, but only when an interaction could not be replicated in any other way."
Overall, the article does point in a good direction.
Re: A JavaScript-Free Front End
#14Since I'm caching and gzipping everything, each subsequent pageview is around 6 KB; far smaller than the SPAs I've seen with equivalent functionality.
That's ace. But my internet connection has a 2 second latency so I still have to wait an annoyingly long time every time I interact with your app. My connection is terrible too, so it drops every 10th request, and now I'm seeing a lot of broken pages. If only you'd written an offline-first PWA and used background-loading and prefetching with some intelligence to retry failed requests in order to deliver content before I actually need it this would have worked so much better.
But hey, the app is perfect for you on your robust wifi, so it must work out there in the real world, right?
Snark aside, there's a good reason to build web software in a variety of different ways. Pick the one that suits your users. Don't assume everything works perfectly and every internet connection is strong, fast wifi. That just means a lot of users (especially poorer ones in rural communities) are going to struggle with what you're selling.
Re: A JavaScript-Free Front End
#15100 percent agree. Use as little JS as possible on front end. And then definitely use zero JS on backend.
Definitely...only use C on the backend, any other language is just a hack.
Re: A JavaScript-Free Front End
#16Honestly, a lot of this comes down to ignorance on a lot of points. You can do a lot with CSS2.x+ selectors, and it's awesome. That said, JS/JSS and component systems aren't bad either. It depends on what you're creating and who your audience is.
Most of this stuff isn't new, it's about a decade+ old at this point. Backend developers often tend to turn up their noses on web front ends, so they don't bother to actually learn anything meaningful, and just sit complaining constantly.
Re: A JavaScript-Free Front End
#17Since I'm caching and gzipping everything, each subsequent pageview is around 6 KB; far smaller than the SPAs I've seen with equivalent functionality. That's ace. But my internet connection has a 2 second latency so I still have to wait an annoyingly long time every time I interact with your app. My connection is terrible too, so it drops every 10th request, and now I'm seeing a lot of broken pages. If only you'd wri…
Agree that an offline-first PWA is the way to go. Not _no_ javascript, just _as little as possible_. However, I've also not seen such a good example before of how doable this is, so thanks to the author for the show-and-tell. The label/checkbox example is a new one on me, and covers pretty near 80% of my use of javascript. It's interesting how when you strip html of all the DOM api nonsense it starts to look like an exciting new framework. Forms are such a nice, declarative way to get user input.
Re: A JavaScript-Free Front End
#18Since I'm caching and gzipping everything, each subsequent pageview is around 6 KB; far smaller than the SPAs I've seen with equivalent functionality. That's ace. But my internet connection has a 2 second latency so I still have to wait an annoyingly long time every time I interact with your app. My connection is terrible too, so it drops every 10th request, and now I'm seeing a lot of broken pages. If only you'd wri…
Prefetching is going to waste data in a lot of the world where you pay by the megabyte.
Everything is a tradeoff.
Re: A JavaScript-Free Front End
#19wow this is excellent, / are good tricks
Except for the "works everywhere" suggestion...
https://caniuse.com/#feat=details
And here I thought Edge was a modern browser.
Re: A JavaScript-Free Front End
#20I gotta get better at CSS, I'm somewhat horrified by what I've done in JavaScript that it turns out I didn't need. Does anyone know of a good book on intermediate/advanced CSS to help avoid excess JS usage/complexity?
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