Page transitions aren't the reason we're creating single page web apps
It's time for modern CSS to kill the SPA
41–50 of 516 posts
Re: It's time for modern CSS to kill the SPA
#42Re: It's time for modern CSS to kill the SPA
#43SPA is not only about seamless transitions but also being able to encapsulate a lot of user journey on the client side, without the need of bothering server too much. Let me give you an example - one of my biggest gripes about web ux is the fact that in 2025 most shops still requires you to fully reload (and refetch) content when you change filters or drill down a category. A common use case is when you come to a sho…
I don't know, I think the most painful aspect of having to do a full reload is how I efficient the site is. The actual data is a few KB, but the page itself has to download 100 MB and the web browser is burning through a GB of RAM. Like I don't find Hacker News to be egregious to navigate, and nearly every nav is a reload. It runs fine on my 2008 laptop with 4 GB of RAM. But I go to DoorDash on the same device, and i…
Yeah, the enemy isn’t the need to reload, it’s reloading taking a long time due to too much garbage that’s not the content the user is interested in having to come down off the wire and render. A site that requires an occasional split second reload is always going to be preferred to a behemoth that doesn’t need reloading but has me staring at blank screens and loading spinners half the time I’m using it.
Re: It's time for modern CSS to kill the SPA
#44I'm fully convinced that it's time to kill SPAs on 99% of websites and that the community is too defensive on the topic.
Re: It's time for modern CSS to kill the SPA
#45SPA is not only about seamless transitions but also being able to encapsulate a lot of user journey on the client side, without the need of bothering server too much. Let me give you an example - one of my biggest gripes about web ux is the fact that in 2025 most shops still requires you to fully reload (and refetch) content when you change filters or drill down a category. A common use case is when you come to a sho…
I don't know, I think the most painful aspect of having to do a full reload is how I efficient the site is. The actual data is a few KB, but the page itself has to download 100 MB and the web browser is burning through a GB of RAM. Like I don't find Hacker News to be egregious to navigate, and nearly every nav is a reload. It runs fine on my 2008 laptop with 4 GB of RAM. But I go to DoorDash on the same device, and i…
An SPA can be lean and fast. React is the prevailing Web framework today? Preact is like 5 KiB of code.
What makes SPAs unwieldy is not the technology but the lack of desire to optimize. It loads fine on yesteryear's Macbook Air? Enough, push it.
I very well remember heavy, slow-loading websites of, say, year 2000, without any SPA stuff, even though lightweight, quick-loading pages existed even then, in the epoch of dial-up internet. It's not the technology, it's the desire to cram in more, and to ship faster, with least thinking involved.
Re: It's time for modern CSS to kill the SPA
#46For me the promise of SPAs has nothing to do with fluidity and all to do with having a separate data API and separate frontend (that can be native or web or both)
That’s why I don’t like SSR mixed with client side rendering. Either do a website or an app.
Re: It's time for modern CSS to kill the SPA
#47SPAs 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…
Is this true? When I think of old SPAs I think of java apps running in a browser. Those are definitely older than jQuery. (I love this silly site for downvoting this question.)
Java applets are entirely distinct from SPAs, at least as that term is used in the webdev community.
Re: It's time for modern CSS to kill the SPA
#48This 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.
No one said SPAs have no place, but 99% of websites out there don't need to be one.
Re: It's time for modern CSS to kill the SPA
#49SPAs 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…
Is this true? When I think of old SPAs I think of java apps running in a browser. Those are definitely older than jQuery. (I love this silly site for downvoting this question.)
Those apps came from an era when these terms weren't even coined yet.
Re: It's time for modern CSS to kill the SPA
#50This 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.
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