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Second-Guessing the Modern Web

macwright.org

21–30 of 467 posts

Re: Second-Guessing the Modern Web

#21

> There’s no category winner like React as an alternative I'm really rooting for frameworks like Phoenix LiveView, Rails Turbolinks, Laravel Livewire to fill this void. SPA like interactivity by just rendering HTML templates and sending them to the client via Ajax or websockets sounds great to me. I wouldn't miss JavaScript one bit.

Rails turbolinks is magic!

Re: Second-Guessing the Modern Web

#22
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I strongly feel we should create a lightweight HTML fork that is again document-centric and doesn't allow for all of this javascript nonsense. Something that doesn't allow for stupid custom UI or behavioural tracking. Just text, images, videos, and links. HTML already has such a mode. It's called "turn off JavaScript". Fortunately, there are still plenty of good sites in that style. (You can still have ads with plain…

Where do you get your news and stuff without JavaScript? I think HackerNews is just about the only website I regularly use nowadays that works without JavaScript

I can read the news on https://www.bbc.co.uk/ without JS, for example.

Re: Second-Guessing the Modern Web

#23
The problem with not using a JS framework is that eventually, the investors/business person/design team/frontend enjoying devs wants this highly animated site with all sorts of little toggles, confirmation boxes, popup models, toasts, etc.

It is far nicer doing that in React where you can just casually npm in some online component that does that rather than in vanilla JS or jQuery. React is basically a compromise between nice interactive websites and keeping it as programming.

Nothing stays simple and when it stops being simple, you want React.

Developers like simple sites like Hacker News. Nobody else does.

Re: Second-Guessing the Modern Web

#24

Dan Abramov put up a tweet thread agreeing with this piece, and talking about how the React team is now looking at trying to come up with some server integration capabilities to enable a hybrid model for the rest of the community: https://twitter.com/dan_abramov/status/1259614150386425858

This is some spin mastery. "yes you're right, React is bad, we're continuing to work on it and make it even better"

Re: Second-Guessing the Modern Web

#25

Wikipedia has been taking some strides in this direction. For example, on the "mobile" site, if you follow a link from an expanded page section and then go back, the section is no longer expanded, and you lose your place. (Then it re-expands, but you're in a completely different place on the page now.) This type of stuff is one of the reasons why I choose to support older browsers like Netscape, IE, and Lynx. I think…

It turns out that aside from HTTPS, most older browsers can do quite well with HTML websites! If you do it right, all old browsers will be able to render it because it'll work in WorldWideWeb.app.

Re: Second-Guessing the Modern Web

#27

Dan Abramov put up a tweet thread agreeing with this piece, and talking about how the React team is now looking at trying to come up with some server integration capabilities to enable a hybrid model for the rest of the community: https://twitter.com/dan_abramov/status/1259614150386425858

This is some spin mastery. "yes you're right, React is bad, we're continuing to work on it and make it even better"

I mean, what did you think he was going to say? React is bad, we're dropping it?

Re: Second-Guessing the Modern Web

#28

The only important question is whether this is a technology problem or a business problem. Fundamentally the problem is this: Web developers don't know what they are doing and oversell their capabilities. To be more clear though, this isn't a new problem, just that the symptoms of the problem have changed as the tools have evolved. I remember starting at Travelocity in 2007 and they sure as shit didn't know what they…

What you describe as "broken" is what I imagine to be the ideal situation. I expect travel agencies and similar websites to have a rock-solid back-end, and I don't care at all for any Javascript fanciness. In fact I would expect their websites to work with JS disabled.

The fact they canned whatever special project the JS developers were working on might have been the right decision (and I just checked, Travelocity is still in business).

Re: Second-Guessing the Modern Web

#29

Either you omit some interactive elements on load, or you try really hard to make sure that the JavaScript loads faster than users will click, or you make some elements not require JavaScript to work - like making them normal links or forms. Or some combination of those. I realise I'm in the minority, but I use JS whitelisting, which means that any SPAs I come across in my web searches (a disturbingly large number, a…

> instead of settling down and focusing on getting the most out of a platform

How do you know when to settle? Should we have stopped at jQuery?

We are doing exactly what you are asking for, but not in the way you like. Web developers are getting the most of the web platform. The result is that new frameworks and libraries are keep popping up. Most will sink, a few will float and it's okay, this is how evolution should happen. I don't like all tech solutions that I encounter just because they are new. I simply just don't use them in my projects, simple as that.

I'm sorry, but the web not just a hypertext document system to find some information, it has outgrown this idea probably 20 years ago.

Re: Second-Guessing the Modern Web

#30
post #6

HTML should never have grown into the mutated application runtime it is today. The presentational concerns for documents are different from application rendering. The javascript stack should have been something entirely separate. I strongly feel we should create a lightweight HTML fork that is again document-centric and doesn't allow for all of this javascript nonsense. Something that doesn't allow for stupid custom…

We already know what happens when that system is created, though. Because it’s what the web used to be. And the result was that people hacked around it: rendering entire page structures as static, unresponsive images.

And that’s exactly what would happen again.

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