31–40 of 516 posts
SPAs make sense when your users have long sessions in your app. When it is worth the pain to load a large bundle in exchange for having really small network requests after the load. Smooth transitions are a nice side effect, but not the reason for an SPA. The core argument of the article, that client-side routing is a solution for page transitions, is a complete misunderstanding of what problems SPAs solve. So absolu…
Low-bandwidth/spotty connections (combined with aggressive caching) are one of the strongest cases in favor of SPAs (emphasis on the A for Application, not website). Visit (and cache) the entire frontend for the app when you have a good-enough connection, then further use of the app can proceed with minimal bandwidth usage.
They are mostly shitty
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Interestingly, every landing page or website for recent AI apps have looked AMAZING. Designers and standard website developers are totally on point. It's just, crappy developers who can't create a rich experience on top of incredible design that's the issue. CSS is not going to fix what can't be fixed (some people are not supposed to be in this profession, but hey, it pays ... for another three or so years).
SPAs make sense when your users have long sessions in your app. When it is worth the pain to load a large bundle in exchange for having really small network requests after the load. Smooth transitions are a nice side effect, but not the reason for an SPA. The core argument of the article, that client-side routing is a solution for page transitions, is a complete misunderstanding of what problems SPAs solve. So absolu…
I don't know if a bunch of sloppy jQuery modules were ever really a viable option for an SPA. People tried to do it, sure, but I'd say the SPA era really started with backbone.js
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What do you mean by 'interactive like a native app'? The article is focusing on two main parts of making things feel like an app: page view transitions and speed/preloading. To me, those seem like a big part of what makes a site/app feel interactive. And letting the browser do the work and having real URLs has other huge benefits I appreciate. But agree that for things like GMail, etc, a SPA approach definitely makes…
Imagine Gmail, ChatGPT, Slack, and so on as server side rendered websites, but with smooth transitions. This wouldn't work at all. Let's take slack as an example. We had those chat websites 20 years ago. The thread was in it's own frame and got periodically reloaded. It's just bad UX.
This argument is tired and ignorant. Try building linear.app without a SPA framework. The idea that "Native CSS transitions have quietly killed the strongest argument for client-side routing," is dubious at best.
Linear's speed comes from being "offline-first", but I challenge you to name almost any other product in common usage that does it that way. It's just not common. On the other hand if I want to buy tickets I'd rather most of that website be SSR and do SPA where you actually still need it. Or forums, news sites, blogs, and informational sites.
There is so much out there that would be better developed with SSR and then use CSS to make it feel SPA-like than to actually be a SPA.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Imagine Gmail, ChatGPT, Slack, and so on as server side rendered websites, but with smooth transitions. This wouldn't work at all. Let's take slack as an example. We had those chat websites 20 years ago. The thread was in it's own frame and got periodically reloaded. It's just bad UX.
I think you're using "single-page app as opposed to no or limited JS on the client" while an alternative would be "single-page app as opposed to multi-page app". There's no reason you have to implement something like Slack by reloading an iframe.
- excellent frameworks for client side logic (interactivity) - separation of concerns (presentation logic vs. backend) - improved DevEx => inc. speed of development => happiness for all
The sad thing is that an article like this will get plenty of eyeballs due to comments like my own adding to the algo, but it should have never made it above the fold.