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I wrote JavaScript to avoid JavaScript

markentier.tech

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Re: I wrote JavaScript to avoid JavaScript

#11

Post by tweetle_beetle »

gbrindisi wrote: post #9

Wonderful! I am so irritated with JavaScript bloat... completely unnecessary cruft 99% of the time. I built my blog with the goal to have zero js but I had to capitulate for google analytics. The blog is a static website deployed on a CDN and I have no access to access.log - I honestly couldn’t find any analytics solution that won’t require js.

Out of curiosity, what decision do you anticipate taking for your personal site that would be informed by data from Google Analytics? In a commercial setting, it would be for things like adjusting marketing budgets (presumably not applicable), reviewing hosting infrastructure (you seem to have that taken care of), adjusting content strategy (not an issue if you're publishing on your own terms?) etc.

Re: I wrote JavaScript to avoid JavaScript

#12

Post by gbrindisi »

tweetle_beetle wrote: post #11
gbrindisi wrote: post #9

Wonderful! I am so irritated with JavaScript bloat... completely unnecessary cruft 99% of the time. I built my blog with the goal to have zero js but I had to capitulate for google analytics. The blog is a static website deployed on a CDN and I have no access to access.log - I honestly couldn’t find any analytics solution that won’t require js.

Out of curiosity, what decision do you anticipate taking for your personal site that would be informed by data from Google Analytics? In a commercial setting, it would be for things like adjusting marketing budgets (presumably not applicable), reviewing hosting infrastructure (you seem to have that taken care of), adjusting content strategy (not an issue if you're publishing on your own terms?) etc.

Simply put: I want to know if what I am writing is being read and how is propagated.

Re: I wrote JavaScript to avoid JavaScript

#13

Post by ssss11 »

tweetle_beetle wrote: post #11
gbrindisi wrote: post #9

Wonderful! I am so irritated with JavaScript bloat... completely unnecessary cruft 99% of the time. I built my blog with the goal to have zero js but I had to capitulate for google analytics. The blog is a static website deployed on a CDN and I have no access to access.log - I honestly couldn’t find any analytics solution that won’t require js.

Out of curiosity, what decision do you anticipate taking for your personal site that would be informed by data from Google Analytics? In a commercial setting, it would be for things like adjusting marketing budgets (presumably not applicable), reviewing hosting infrastructure (you seem to have that taken care of), adjusting content strategy (not an issue if you're publishing on your own terms?) etc.

Perhaps its a professional blog and they’d like to know about their audience.

Re: I wrote JavaScript to avoid JavaScript

#14

Post by gbrindisi »

chrismorgan wrote: post #10
gbrindisi wrote: post #9

Wonderful! I am so irritated with JavaScript bloat... completely unnecessary cruft 99% of the time. I built my blog with the goal to have zero js but I had to capitulate for google analytics. The blog is a static website deployed on a CDN and I have no access to access.log - I honestly couldn’t find any analytics solution that won’t require js.

> I had to capitulate for google analytics. Ask yourself how much you actually need analytics. I found I seldom looked at it. I myself replaced Google Analytics with self-hosted Matomo for a while, but then I just dropped it altogether because I simply don’t need it. Now I do have server logs that I can look at, and from time to time I do (and they reveal things like Atom feeds consume the substantial majority of the…

I just want to know if what I write is being read and how is propagated/shared

Re: I wrote JavaScript to avoid JavaScript

#15

Post by chrismorgan »

I strongly advise against this style of justification:

  text-align: justify;
  text-justify: inter-character;
Justification is typically only particularly suitable for fairly narrow columns, combined with hyphenation. And inter-character justification is… hazardous, only to be entered into with substantial caution.

Sometimes layouts and what occurs to the inline-end [right] of the layout can also justify justification

But unless one of these conditions is true, I recommend against any form of justification, especially inter-character.

Another bit of CSS that I would like removed is the `html { cursor: default; }`. Apps can do that so that chrome uses the default cursor (and restore it to auto in content areas), but content websites shouldn’t do that. I want to see the usual I-beam when I’m hovering over text.

Re: I wrote JavaScript to avoid JavaScript

#16

Post by chrismorgan »

gbrindisi wrote: post #12
tweetle_beetle wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, what decision do you anticipate taking for your personal site that would be informed by data from Google Analytics? In a commercial setting, it would be for things like adjusting marketing budgets (presumably not applicable), reviewing hosting infrastructure (you seem to have that taken care of), adjusting content strategy (not an issue if you're publishing on your own terms?) etc.

Simply put: I want to know if what I am writing is being read and how is propagated.

Yeah, but what will you change based on what you discover? That’s the essence of what tweetle_beetle is asking and why many end up deciding that they don’t actually need analytics—because they’re not going to change anything based on what they observe.

Re: I wrote JavaScript to avoid JavaScript

#17

Post by joseluisq »

At first glance, the title is a bit misleading I think a more accurate one could have been "I don't write Javascript to avoid it" or "I just avoid to write Javascript", etc. Anyway great that the author remarks the idea to avoid Javascript bloat but honestly that's not something new.

Re: I wrote JavaScript to avoid JavaScript

#18

Post by muspimerol »

Dionakra wrote: post #7

I did almost the same last weekend. I wanted to start a blog[1] but all options seemed too much for a simple purpose that is a blog. After researching about VuePress, Sapper, Next.js, Gatsby and so on, I finally decided that it wouldn't have any kind of JavaScript. I was tempted to create yet another static site generator, but I am sticking to the old HTML + CSS duo (and, regarding CSS, classless CSS) for my blog. Ye…

For ease of maintenance and portability I think markdown is really the king of formats for blog content. Are you writing the posts in HTML? Why are you intermittently using for paragraphs and to wrap other elements?

Re: I wrote JavaScript to avoid JavaScript

#19

Post by jakub_g »

chrismorgan wrote: post #15

I strongly advise against this style of justification: text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-character; Justification is typically only particularly suitable for fairly narrow columns, combined with hyphenation. And inter-character justification is… hazardous, only to be entered into with substantial caution. Sometimes layouts and what occurs to the inline-end [right] of the layout can also justify justification B…

+1. Justification is something that you feel like you should do to have "nice layout" but it hinders readability according to many studies.

Check BBC, NYTimes, The Guardian, Reuters, AP News, Wikipedia, HN - none of them uses text justification.

Re: I wrote JavaScript to avoid JavaScript

#20

Post by zelphirkalt »

Someone must have gotten the a hold of the credentials of the device, where I put my brain dumps and made it into a blog post.

I wish more people did approach web development in this kind of minimalist most accessible and responsive way, that does not require me to trust all their scripts and simply lets me access a hypertext document to get the information I seek.

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