TIL: GitHub was readable w/o JavaScript prior to a few weeks ago.
Tell HN: GitHub no longer readable without JavaScript
11–20 of 79 posts
Re: Tell HN: GitHub no longer readable without JavaScript
#12The problem is that there is an annoying delay in loading the filelist which is very disruptive, the ux uat team probably fell asleep at the wheel
Re: Tell HN: GitHub no longer readable without JavaScript
#13Honest question and no pun intended: I don't understand people's desire to prevent JavaScript from being a language that runs in the browser. Could someone shed some light on this?
People have the ability to decide what does and does not run on their machine. I'm sure a major motivation is to stop annoyances (e.g. ads, sounds, video players, etc).
That being said: There is a certain entitlement that comes along with it, while they're absolutely entitled to decide what runs on their machine, they have this expectation that sites should dedicate engineering/QA/time/etc to this niche. In essence give a sub-3% user base a disproportionate amount of attention. IE11 has a higher usage, and you likely shouldn't support that either.
Sites should both morally and legally support ADA users. But screen readers and other accessible technologies have had full JavaScript support for going on 20-years now. If you're spending energy/money on this no-JS cause, you're doing it for a small handful of contrarians who won't thank you.
Re: Tell HN: GitHub no longer readable without JavaScript
#14enshittification just hit another website. expected.
Re: Tell HN: GitHub no longer readable without JavaScript
#15that is totally unsurprising, i would use javascript to build github too. why is this on the front page?
Re: Tell HN: GitHub no longer readable without JavaScript
#16Honest question and no pun intended: I don't understand people's desire to prevent JavaScript from being a language that runs in the browser. Could someone shed some light on this?
> Could someone shed some light on this?
I usually just want a text from a webpage, and everything else is worthless to me. Or more than worthless, annoying, dangerous.
It would be great if I could somehow just get a text from a server.
Re: Tell HN: GitHub no longer readable without JavaScript
#17I think GitHub being an SPA is largely fine, it has good reasons to be in many situations, what I object to is when a shopping site or, even worse, a content site requires JS to work. This seems terrible when serving HTML is a much better experience for most users.
i liked seeing README immediately. I don't care that much for files list, source code. But README is the essence of what I'm looking for usually
Re: Tell HN: GitHub no longer readable without JavaScript
#18Honest question and no pun intended: I don't understand people's desire to prevent JavaScript from being a language that runs in the browser. Could someone shed some light on this?
JavaScript itself is not usually the problem (aside from certain fundemental issues). The computational gap between a developer on a M3 Macbook and a person on a used Dell from 2008 is already quite large, meaning what feels "snappy" and "responsive" to the former can feel "sluggish" and "annoying" to the latter.
The other factor between the two people can be network speed, many areas of the world have access to extremely limited bandwidth, very slow bandwidth, or a mixture of both!
Combining both the computational gap and the bandwidth gap means the issue of large JavaScript files blocking access to information on a global website is an accessibility concern. People who block JS are pushing for a more accessible web, either directly or indirectly.
I won't fight tooth and nail for all websites to _not_ have JavaScript, but I wish they would be progressively enhanced by that JS and still (at least in the core sense) usable without it.
Re: Tell HN: GitHub no longer readable without JavaScript
#19Honest question and no pun intended: I don't understand people's desire to prevent JavaScript from being a language that runs in the browser. Could someone shed some light on this?
Quite a lot of annoyance is delivered with JS.
Assuming a website functions without it, disabling JS is almost always an improvement in my experience/preference
I want plain html, not whizbang documents that behave like nothing else
Re: Tell HN: GitHub no longer readable without JavaScript
#20Honest question and no pun intended: I don't understand people's desire to prevent JavaScript from being a language that runs in the browser. Could someone shed some light on this?
I think the general consensus is that people would like it if anything that doesn't need javascript wouldn't use it.
There are a few who just won't engage with the utility of it, but for most people I've talked to, it's just a matter of oversaturation. Case in point with github - why should I need you to use a script to handle documents? The web was built for documents. Browsers are made to interpret documents. Putting javascript in the middle of that should require a good reason. And, unfortunately, for a lot of applications - and even static websites - devs tend to just use javascript because it's easier than reasoning about how to handle static content differently than any actually dynamic content that the dev is working with.
But, like others have said, Github does have some pretty compelling reasons to be an SPA. So there's a little bit of reasonable understanding here. The problem, in this instance, is a compound: first, github WAS document-first and has only been made to require an unnecessary technology layer, which is pretty galling and, second, Microsoft is not some 5-dev operation that is prioritizing tasks for their first app. They are one of the most well-established companies in the world, whom are famous for their backward compatibility. If ANYONE should be able to produce a competent update to a product (github) that threads a needle between implementing more functionality while preserving best-practices for content delivery, it's Microsoft. And yet, they've chosen to roll out an undeniable degradation in service to the production site. It's just kind of baffling.