Progressive Enhancement Is Dead
tomdale.net
Progressive Enhancement Is Dead
1–10 of 263 posts
Re: Progressive Enhancement Is Dead
#2I pretty much agree with all of the points in this article. I do wonder, though, why Bustle.com (the example used) is an Ember.js app and why it displays nothing but a blank page if Javascript is turned off. Skylight makes perfect sense as a full JS app. But Bustle, a content site, seems to be more of an "interactive document" (as he mentions).
Re: Progressive Enhancement Is Dead
#3I think the point that's overlooked here is that the offenders aren't the clever apps that would be impossible to write without javascript. Go ahead and write those. I'm happy for you, really.
The problem is pages that require javascript to display static content. There are very few good reasons for an article, or an image gallery, or a homepage that could have been displayed just fine a decade ago to now need javascript so it can do some stupid flashy thing that breaks the expected interface behaviour. And frankly, that's most of what I'm seeing in "Sigh, Javascript."
Re: Progressive Enhancement Is Dead
#4"Friendly reminder that "people with JS disabled" includes those on high-latency networks, bad firewalls, and browsers you don't support." - @jcoglan
Re: Progressive Enhancement Is Dead
#5The websites as applications is correct. I see grumblings from some old time grumpy folk about why does this site need JavaScript. Because it's a runtime now. The web has evolved, and aren't you glad it did because flash is dying.
Re: Progressive Enhancement Is Dead
#6"And most importantly: Don’t be ashamed to build 100% JavaScript applications. You may get some incensed priests vituperating you in their blogs. But there will be an army of users (like me) who will fall in love with using your app."
This statement needs a huge, HUGE caveat that you should only be building 100% JavaScript apps in situations where doing so makes sense. For example, I find the new Blogger "web app" infuriating. I shouldn't have to stare at a loading screen to read a half-dozen paragraphs of text, that's just stupid. Just serve the HTML. No one is going to "fall in love" with your app if your app shouldn't exist in the first place because the old-school solution provided a superior experience.
Re: Progressive Enhancement Is Dead
#7"Friendly reminder that "people with JS disabled" includes those on high-latency networks, bad firewalls, and browsers you don't support." - @jcoglan https://twitter.com/jcoglan/status/370173041193406464
And people using NoScript.
Re: Progressive Enhancement Is Dead
#8I think the point that's overlooked here is that the offenders aren't the clever apps that would be impossible to write without javascript. Go ahead and write those. I'm happy for you, really. The problem is pages that require javascript to display static content. There are very few good reasons for an article, or an image gallery, or a homepage that could have been displayed just fine a decade ago to now need javasc…
Check out meteor.js for why JavaScript would be needed for "static only content". Real time updates. That's why. Everything is an app.
Re: Progressive Enhancement Is Dead
#9There's no reasons sites like tumblr shouldn't work without javascript. Period. And while there are some things on the web that are genuine applications (trello, dashboards, etc.), the vast majority of things are content driven, which should never require js.
Re: Progressive Enhancement Is Dead
#10I pretty much agree with all of the points in this article. I do wonder, though, why Bustle.com (the example used) is an Ember.js app and why it displays nothing but a blank page if Javascript is turned off. Skylight makes perfect sense as a full JS app. But Bustle, a content site, seems to be more of an "interactive document" (as he mentions).
Bustle actually uses PhantomJS to create static versions of the site, for serving to search spiders.
The advantage of using Ember.js for Bustle is that it's really, really, ridiculously fast. Seriously, try it. Go to bustle.com and click around.
They could make it work without JavaScript, but they're a new company with a long list of technical challenges to solve. They ran the numbers and the percentage of users with JS disabled is so microscopic it just doesn't make sense to spend time on it.