The counterargument: In Defence of the Single Page Application: https://williamkennedy.ninja/javascript/2022/05/03/in-defenc...
Sufficiently advanced parody is indistinguishable from reality.
Building an HTML-first site doubled our users overnight
51–60 of 605 posts
Re: Building an HTML-first site doubled our users overnight
#52Recently I had to migrate an old SpringBoot app that had a React front-end to a new cluster. Not wanting to mess with super-old dependencies, I opted to rewrite it on a new version of Java/SpringBoot. When it came to the frontend, I paused. I couldn't come up with a single good reason why this app needed React. I rewrote the frontend in straight HTML with a little bit of JavaScript for DOM manipulation. I literally used `var` instead of `let/const` just to drive the point home... (yes, that was overkill). But you know what I didn't need? A BUILD PROCESS! No npm deps. No vite/rsbuild/etc. It was like I had forgotten we could even DO that.
Don't get me wrong, I actually have enjoyed React over these past 10 years. But, including it blindly is just silly.
Re: Building an HTML-first site doubled our users overnight
#53Designing for failure modes (bad network, old devices, no JS) often leads to better systems even in the happy path. This is a good case study of that.
[dead]
Re: Building an HTML-first site doubled our users overnight
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not on their iPhones operating over 5G or the corporate WiFi.
Read the article. Typical users had old browsers often with poor reception. One user was using a PlayStation Portable which had very limited WWW capability.
The person you are replying to is saying the PMs are using new phones on WiFi, not that the customers are.
Re: Building an HTML-first site doubled our users overnight
#55If you're a "React person", as the article puts it, friendly reminder that you can render components to HTML and serve that to the user.
I have done exactly that on a project that was under similar constraints. The UI models live in .tsx files and the browser gets pure HTML with zero JS by default.
Re: Building an HTML-first site doubled our users overnight
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
Funny enough. I’m opening this on mobile internet connection and it stuck at loading spinner. I don’t know if the problem is with my internet (probably not) or support for mobile so I can’t even read the content.
I think that's the joke :) all other articles load fine instantly, just this one that has a spinner
Heh it got me then :)
Re: Building an HTML-first site doubled our users overnight
#57Having been building websites since the mid 90's, I laugh at terms like "HTML-first website"
Reminds me of “pre-jit”
Re: Building an HTML-first site doubled our users overnight
#58in the bio ... "has over twenty years of experience building highly accessible and usable web applications"
why not take the html5 standard (see https://html.spec.whatwg.org/ ) and if needed (dont think so for these use cases... "for clients ranging from energy companies to political parties") htmx or alpinejs ...
Re: Building an HTML-first site doubled our users overnight
#59Totally agree, gov pages should be widely accessible. Also gov services should NEVER mandate internet access. There should always be a way for tech-illiterate people to ask someone, and fill their forms