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In Defense of the Modern Web

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Re: In Defense of the Modern Web

#161

Post by [deleted] »

Spivak wrote: post #152
perilunar wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Web apps are: * platform agnostic * can't be blocked by a central platform gate-keeper * generally much smaller (download size) than native apps * don't take up permanent space on your device (good for things you only use occasionally) * always up-to-date Personally I prefer native apps for tools I use frequently. Everything else I prefer the web.

* The trade-off is that they're alien to the platform either behave entirely different or at worst poorly emulate platform semantics. * this is true-ish. It's not that they can't it's that they aren't. If Apple or Google just up and blocked a site in Safari or Chrome it's basically dead. "Technically accessible in Firefox" isn't exactly a selling point. You're also gate-kept by your ability to get a public cert. * Tr…

[deleted]

Re: In Defense of the Modern Web

#162

Post by bradstewart »

zeugmasyllepsis wrote: post #141
gambler wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. I've long ago abandoned spaghetti mega-scripts and SPAs in favor of targeted JS libraries that extend HTML capabilities. They're not web components, they don't require some framework to manage, and my HTML works fine without them, but if I load the library and add certain attributes or tags to my markup, I get extra capabilities. The libraries don't require crazy tooling to manage, don't have extensive dependen…

> .. in favor of targeted JS libraries that extend HTML capabilities. Do you mean libraries like Turbolinks[1] and/or Intercooler[2] here? I'm interested in what libraries you use, and others like these which help "bridge the gap" between traditional and single-page sites. [1] https://github.com/turbolinks/turbolinks [2] https://intercoolerjs.org/

Turbolinks and Stimulus are two tools I find quite useful. Yes, I like Rails and the way Rails does things.

Re: In Defense of the Modern Web

#163

Post by sknzl »

danjac wrote: post #86
snazz wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As discussed on a recent thread ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23137324 ), there are a variety of nice frontend tricks to make a server-rendered site feel nicer (LiveView, TurboLinks, Livewire, instant.page). I'm a fan of these kinds of solutions. For my 100% static website, https://instant.page does make it feel instant. TurboLinks feels a little "heavier" and has a more complex interaction with other fronte…

I recently used Turbolinks + Stimulus for a Django side project. While these projects originated in Rails, it was quite easy to add to Django with some middleware and webpack tweaking. Stimulus provides some good structure and constraints for adding JS "sprinkles" to the site and overall it's worked very well. It feels more like I'm building with the browser and HTML rather than against or around them. That said, I d…

I have also thought about adding Turbolinks and Stimulus to a Django project. Can tell more about the changes to the middleware and webpack?

Re: In Defense of the Modern Web

#164

Post by kixiQu »

rephrase wrote: post #130
Isomorpheus wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe that's just confirmation bias and I just don't notice it as much on sites that do it well This seems to me to be the key phrase. I sympathize with all the "JS has gone too far" people in this thread. I also hate bloated JS apps. But, "almost all SPAs are bloated trash" is a distinct claim from "SPAs are intrinsically trash". In my experience it is possible to have lean, high-performance, accessible SPAs witho…

Do you know of good SPAs? Sites that feel snappy even though they're SPAs. Most sites I visit that are SPAs are consistently slow so I've learned to make the same association: SPA = bad.

It seems like this whole discussion would work better with examples where people are willing to say "This is done well, and it has these benefits from having been done in this way"

Re: In Defense of the Modern Web

#165

Post by rephrase »

kixiQu wrote: post #164
rephrase wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know of good SPAs? Sites that feel snappy even though they're SPAs. Most sites I visit that are SPAs are consistently slow so I've learned to make the same association: SPA = bad.

It seems like this whole discussion would work better with examples where people are willing to say "This is done well, and it has these benefits from having been done in this way"

Yup.

Re: In Defense of the Modern Web

#166

Post by evilduck »

rephrase wrote: post #130
Isomorpheus wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe that's just confirmation bias and I just don't notice it as much on sites that do it well This seems to me to be the key phrase. I sympathize with all the "JS has gone too far" people in this thread. I also hate bloated JS apps. But, "almost all SPAs are bloated trash" is a distinct claim from "SPAs are intrinsically trash". In my experience it is possible to have lean, high-performance, accessible SPAs witho…

Do you know of good SPAs? Sites that feel snappy even though they're SPAs. Most sites I visit that are SPAs are consistently slow so I've learned to make the same association: SPA = bad.

We've been experiencing sluggish pages since long before JS really became a thing too. PHP and a slow inline query to render results has been a possible problem for literally decades.

Do you investigate all the fast snappy sites you visit to confirm they aren't single page apps? What about the slow pages that aren't SPAs (most every news site)?

It seems like anyone who wants to dislike JS and/or SPAs can easily confirmation-bias their way into believing it.

Re: In Defense of the Modern Web

#167

Post by kristopolous »

soperj wrote: post #142
filleduchaos wrote: post #42

I was disappointed to find that this post falls into the same pit a number of these defences of the modern web fall into - creating a false dichotomy between "literally no JavaScript whatsoever" and "a framework-authored site with client-side routing". None of the features mentioned in that particular paragraph - user interaction analytics, preloading data and content [on link hover], transitions, avoiding full page…

Agreed. Don't know why we're abandoning all the things we get for free with links just to do it all again in a SPA.

Many people doing the coding haven't really thought that deeply about the systems.

I'd like "web programming" to start with Vannevar Bush's As We May Think, then go to Licklider, Ted Nelson, then hypercard programming (hypertalk). Set up a BBS, a gopher site and then write HTML for NCSA Mosaic.

Read the RFCs and W3C standards, learn about Netscape's SSJS failure before touching nodejs, you know, serious academic scholarship. Maybe look at the failed TCL browser support, which has example snippets in the HTML 4 standard, understand why it didn't work, etc.

I think we'd get dramatically better results

Re: In Defense of the Modern Web

#168

Post by the_jeremy »

snazz wrote: post #69
filleduchaos wrote: post #42

I was disappointed to find that this post falls into the same pit a number of these defences of the modern web fall into - creating a false dichotomy between "literally no JavaScript whatsoever" and "a framework-authored site with client-side routing". None of the features mentioned in that particular paragraph - user interaction analytics, preloading data and content [on link hover], transitions, avoiding full page…

As discussed on a recent thread ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23137324 ), there are a variety of nice frontend tricks to make a server-rendered site feel nicer (LiveView, TurboLinks, Livewire, instant.page). I'm a fan of these kinds of solutions. For my 100% static website, https://instant.page does make it feel instant. TurboLinks feels a little "heavier" and has a more complex interaction with other fronte…

instant.page looks super cool. It seems so simple after-the-fact, but I never thought about it. Thanks for sharing!

Re: In Defense of the Modern Web

#169

Post by robertoandred »

rephrase wrote: post #130
Isomorpheus wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe that's just confirmation bias and I just don't notice it as much on sites that do it well This seems to me to be the key phrase. I sympathize with all the "JS has gone too far" people in this thread. I also hate bloated JS apps. But, "almost all SPAs are bloated trash" is a distinct claim from "SPAs are intrinsically trash". In my experience it is possible to have lean, high-performance, accessible SPAs witho…

Do you know of good SPAs? Sites that feel snappy even though they're SPAs. Most sites I visit that are SPAs are consistently slow so I've learned to make the same association: SPA = bad.

How about the React website? https://reactjs.org/docs/getting-started.html

Re: In Defense of the Modern Web

#170

Post by robertoandred »

fleddr wrote: post #136

Like most deep in the SPA bubble, this author cannot imagine any other outcome than SPA-everything. Meanwhile, any alternative view is put aside as being an anti-JS crusader (which misses the point entirely), simply being old, or even barbaric whilst he continues to high five his bubble inhabitants on Twitter. SPA as the status quo is a myth. It's a Fermi paradox. Where are they? Almost nothing of any importance is a…

The idea that some bad implementations of an idea serve as an indictment of the idea as a whole is utterly ridiculous.

Some images on the web are poorly optimized, but that doesn't mean we should not have images.

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