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Progressive Enhancement Is Dead

tomdale.net

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Re: Progressive Enhancement Is Dead

#101

Post by trafficlight »

ris wrote: post #100
trafficlight wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In all honesty, why should I care about you, the tiny minority? Why should I waste any time at all worrying about you?

Nobody's saying you should. But designing things in a progressive-enhancement-type way will mean that you have no need to worry about all these "minorities" as most things will generally more or less work. Besides we're all minorities in one way or another. I'm sure I could find some dimension by which you're a minority and you'd be pretty cheesed off if you weren't catered for for some trivial reason.

Not everything in this world has to cater to me. I'd prefer it if everyone stopped trying to be all things.

Re: Progressive Enhancement Is Dead

#102

Post by ris »

tomdale wrote: post #24
shawnz wrote: post #20

This author is making an assumption that progressive enhancement exists only so that people who are browsing without Javascript can have a better experience. Of course, this isn't true. Progressive enhancement is a good thing because it encourages you to be as descriptive as possible at every layer of your technology stack. Why does it matter in practice? Well, there's more than one reason, but consider that not ever…

First, the accessibility argument is a red herring that I'm getting frustrated people continue to try to throw around. Screen readers support JS, okay? Let's put this argument to bed. http://words.steveklabnik.com/emberjs-and-accessibility Okay, thank you for letting me get that off my chest. Second, one nice thing about "embracing 100% JavaScript" that I talk about in the post is that it requires you to implement a…

"I agree that putting content behind JavaScript sucks; I'm just advocating that the content be JSON (or some other normalized format), not HTML."

Ah, so don't put it "behind JavaScript", but put it in a format that a browser can't natively handle in a sane way. And use a grab-bag general object format instead of one that has built-in semantic definitions that are be useful in a document context, like, idunno,

?

Re: Progressive Enhancement Is Dead

#103

Post by drostie »

mmastrac wrote: post #13
Pinckney wrote: post #3

I 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…

What, exactly, is the issue with writing a simple content site that requires JS? If you aren't pulling in half a MB of JS, but it does require scripting to function, I don't see the problem. Just because I could spend the effort to be progressive doesn't constrain me to have to do it. It doesn't make me a lazy programmer either: just pragmatic. 99.99% of the people visiting my site have JS enabled and I'm happy to su…

The "issue" is that you can just put the simple content in a noscript tag and then your simple content site does not require JS. The content cannot be simple if JS is required.

Re: Progressive Enhancement Is Dead

#104

Post by ris »

tomdale wrote: post #24
shawnz wrote: post #20

This author is making an assumption that progressive enhancement exists only so that people who are browsing without Javascript can have a better experience. Of course, this isn't true. Progressive enhancement is a good thing because it encourages you to be as descriptive as possible at every layer of your technology stack. Why does it matter in practice? Well, there's more than one reason, but consider that not ever…

First, the accessibility argument is a red herring that I'm getting frustrated people continue to try to throw around. Screen readers support JS, okay? Let's put this argument to bed. http://words.steveklabnik.com/emberjs-and-accessibility Okay, thank you for letting me get that off my chest. Second, one nice thing about "embracing 100% JavaScript" that I talk about in the post is that it requires you to implement a…

Also, I've very rarely (if ever) seen something I'd describe as a "solid JSON API".

Re: Progressive Enhancement Is Dead

#105

Post by CurtMonash »

thecoffman wrote: post #18

This post does nothing to address the biggest reason people might have Javascript disabled: security. If I'm browsing through Tor (or whatever), I'm not going to turn on Javascript to use your site. If your site doesn't work without it, you've lost a customer. Granted, people who disable javascript are obviously vastly outnumbered, but just saying "fuck you" to security conscious (and most likely tech-savvy) users se…

I browse with NoScript on. When I seem to need Javascript, I may:

1. Turn it on for that site. (But this can be problematic if there are 15 different domains to turn it on for, only 12 of which are about showing me ads.)

2. Use IEtab in Firefox (not working as well recently).

3. Paste the URL into a different browser. I use IE mainly for my several least favorite sites and services -- Facebook, WebEx, etc. So I'm unlike to mess things up too badly by viewing some JavaScript-heavy page in there.

4. Live without the site that demands all the JavaScript.

Now, one might hypothesize that a security-conscious, ad-hating web surfer as myself isn't a bit loss for most consumer websites. So perhaps it all works out in the end. But there also are a few companies that would pay a lot of money to have me look at their websites -- a fact that I infer from them paying PR people to attempt to get my attention -- and miss out solely because it's too hard to beat the Javascript requirement.

Re: Progressive Enhancement Is Dead

#106

Post by sgdesign »

mynameisme wrote: post #14
leokun wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check out meteor.js for why JavaScript would be needed for "static only content". Real time updates. That's why. Everything is an app.

Is this something people even want in content driven sites though? Imagine reddit in real time, it would be a mess and impossible to keep track of what you last read.

You can try out for yourself :)

http://telesc.pe

Re: Progressive Enhancement Is Dead

#107

Post by ris »

trafficlight wrote: post #101
ris wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody's saying you should. But designing things in a progressive-enhancement-type way will mean that you have no need to worry about all these "minorities" as most things will generally more or less work. Besides we're all minorities in one way or another. I'm sure I could find some dimension by which you're a minority and you'd be pretty cheesed off if you weren't catered for for some trivial reason.

Not everything in this world has to cater to me. I'd prefer it if everyone stopped trying to be all things.

You'd be fine if half the web didn't work for you?

How about we say it's fine replacing text with images? We could always use alt tags for accessibility. The number of people who ever actually select/copy text from your website will be <1%, so why not just do away with it and get the text in any font we like, with any rendering style & layout we like?

Re: Progressive Enhancement Is Dead

#108

Post by lbotos »

jenius wrote: post #78
glesica wrote: post #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" i…

I think that issue, while valid, is entirely different from what OP is talking about. That is the question of client to server side rendering tradeoff, and it looks something like this in my view: - If you have a website that people will come to then spend a bit of time in different views (like gmail, facebook, or an analytics dashboard), it will usually pay off to dock the initial load time a bit in exchange for muc…

I think your edit is spot on. Cache a single page render in the event that someone is hitting it from search or a direct link and if they hit the home page, give them the dynamic single page app treatment. Sounds like a happy medium with a little overhead. (JS apps who want to be indexed would want the static pages for crawlers anyway.)

Re: Progressive Enhancement Is Dead

#110

Post by discostrings »

ebiester wrote: post #23
__alexs wrote: post #4

"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

I've thought about this. If I have a blog or similar media site, and require javascript, I might offer a 15/month option to allow access to a text only interface and an RSS feed. No graphics, no pictures, a very simple link and text interface. And the moment I start seeing subscriptions coming in, I'll believe in progressive enhancement again. (Progressive enhancement doesn't affect me as an application developer in…

Interesting, but I think there's probably a large intersection between users who want a text-only interface and users who don't want their browsing habits on your site attached to their name in your database.
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