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Maybe we could tone down the JavaScript (2016)

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Re: Maybe we could tone down the JavaScript (2016)

#161

Post by wackget »

Devasta wrote: post #124

No one asks if Excel or Hearthstone or Git or other desktop applications have progressive enhancement, it's unfortunate but these days no one should be asking it about web pages either. The web is an application platform, it stopped being about documents years ago. Whatever you may feel about Xforms, its spec was published nearly 20 years ago and even now HTML forms still cannot do something as basic as a PUT request…

> No one asks if Excel or Hearthstone or Git or other desktop applications have progressive enhancement

I do. I stopped "upgrading" most applications years ago because they only became worse with each version. Excel probably peaked in 2003, arguably 2010. Anything beyond that is frustrating ribbon-UI garbage IMO.

Re: Maybe we could tone down the JavaScript (2016)

#162

Post by wackget »

Finally. I am so happy someone else noticed how much of a garbage fire Twitter is when you limit (not even block) JavaScript.

I use uMatrix and a hardened Firefox profile so I notice pretty quickly if websites are poorly made. Spoiler: the vast majority are, and the big players like Twitter, Facebook, Google, etc. are absolutely the worst offenders.

But Twitter is so frustrating because of exactly what the article's author says: they re-invent everything, including the text in the Tweet box. As soon as you start typing a tweet it gets converted into some horrific swamp of HTML elements which starts to break really fast if you limit JS as I do.

At some point the concept of "graceful degradation", which used to be taught as an essential part of high-quality web development, was totally abandoned.

I feel like I'm transitioning into "old man yells at cloud" more and more every day, but the web's going down the shitter real fast.

Re: Maybe we could tone down the JavaScript (2016)

#163

Post by smolder »

vbo wrote: post #17

I know this is likely to be controversial, but JS improves the user experience a lot, both in terms of interaction and speed, as well as making development more manageable (if used correctly), alas at the expense of annoying purists who would prefer to enagage in all sorts of CSS/HTML gymnastics just to avoid using JS (and other kinds that would prefer vanilla JS to frameworks). Do that in a large project and you'll…

Saying JS improves the experience in terms of speed is too general. Doing async requests can result in faster interactions than whole page reloads, but big JS blobs that offload work to the client can make initial page load take forever on small pipes and can make weak CPUs struggle under the weight. More CPU utilization also drains battery, which does harm UX. Ignoring low bandwidth and underpowered hardware is fine for some products, but a common mistake with many others. People with slow internet and cheap devices are people too, ya know?

Re: Maybe we could tone down the JavaScript (2016)

#164

Post by zild3d »

cookiengineer wrote: post #131

I recently started to fork webkit to make it a Webview with a reduced attack surface. [2] The most interesting part was the Quirks.cpp file [1] that contains literally randomized css classnames inside the web browser code because a major website was so shitty and spec violating in their implementations. I mean, fixing a website in a browser source code...this shit got out of hand real quick yo. The problem with all t…

this looks like a bug? [0]

    || domain.endsWith("hulu.com");
should be ".hulu.com", since anyone can register a hulu.com

[0] https://github.com/WebKit/WebKit/blob/ce237483d034e41eff8cc5...

Re: Maybe we could tone down the JavaScript (2016)

#165

Post by mekkkkkk »

timeon wrote: post #85
scelerat wrote: post #7

It's been thus, nigh on two decades now. Product Designer: "No system controls; we want our users to have the Full Brand Experience, therefore, custom controls." Also Product Designer: "Why don't our custom controls work as well as system controls?"

"a good rule of thumb to follow when designing your own controls: Don't." -- https://web.archive.org/web/20021009021738/http://www.iarchi...

Wow, that's a sobering read, thanks! It's funny to see how some of the common gripes with modern "flat" design was so obvious even before it became mainstream. Even though it (in my opinion) looks better today, the skeumorphic, brutal, beveled Windows 95 UI was probably the most obvious and clear interface I've ever used.

Re: Maybe we could tone down the JavaScript (2016)

#166

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

wackget wrote: post #162

Finally. I am so happy someone else noticed how much of a garbage fire Twitter is when you limit (not even block ) JavaScript. I use uMatrix and a hardened Firefox profile so I notice pretty quickly if websites are poorly made. Spoiler: the vast majority are, and the big players like Twitter, Facebook, Google, etc. are absolutely the worst offenders. But Twitter is so frustrating because of exactly what the article's…

The new YouTube redesign is the best. It now randomly decides you're offline and doesn't bother fetching anything when you click on links.

Re: Maybe we could tone down the JavaScript (2016)

#167

Post by root_axis »

kolinko wrote: post #134
root_axis wrote: post #79

This blog loads 2mb of scripts, and if you disable JS you can't leave a comment or even read any comments. Personally, I don't have a problem with this, but I'd have expected a blog hosting an anti-js essay to be less dependent on JS. The author notes in the noscript block that using disqus is part of hosting a static blog, but that definition of "static" is an implementation detail - i.e. a convenience for the devel…

The comments on the blog are managed by Disqus. If he wanted to do them without JS, he'd need to build a commenting system all by himself - and that's almost impossible nowadays because of the spam issues. Everything else on the site seems to uphold to his principles.

Impossible? Hardly. Comment screening, rate limits, captchas, and email verification are all great spam mitigation options. Besides, you can still get spammed using something like disqus, I see it all the time on high traffic news and entertainment sites that use disqus.

Re: Maybe we could tone down the JavaScript (2016)

#168

Post by bigjimmyjohnson »

nicbou wrote: post #113
philistine wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. I say down with comments on websites! Let the big boys of websites like this one take care of comments.

Removing comments on my website was a great idea. Instead, people email me and I don't have to moderate anything.

Indeed. I get a few emails a month from my site and I'm happy to read every one. Whereas I'm sure if I had an open comment section eventually adbots would discover it.

Re: Maybe we could tone down the JavaScript (2016)

#169

Post by CSSer »

zild3d wrote: post #164
cookiengineer wrote: post #131

I recently started to fork webkit to make it a Webview with a reduced attack surface. [2] The most interesting part was the Quirks.cpp file [1] that contains literally randomized css classnames inside the web browser code because a major website was so shitty and spec violating in their implementations. I mean, fixing a website in a browser source code...this shit got out of hand real quick yo. The problem with all t…

this looks like a bug? [0] || domain.endsWith("hulu.com"); should be ".hulu.com", since anyone can register a hulu.com [0] https://github.com/WebKit/WebKit/blob/ce237483d034e41eff8cc5...

That is odd. Yet a strict check against “hulu.com” is also included, and YouTube is checked for “.youtube.com” and “youtube.com”. Perhaps this fix was to prevent malicious behavior, so they included anyone who might be phishing or abusing the API in some way? I think someone would have to dig into the quirk itself to find out more.

Re: Maybe we could tone down the JavaScript (2016)

#170

Post by iratewizard »

wackget wrote: post #162

Finally. I am so happy someone else noticed how much of a garbage fire Twitter is when you limit (not even block ) JavaScript. I use uMatrix and a hardened Firefox profile so I notice pretty quickly if websites are poorly made. Spoiler: the vast majority are, and the big players like Twitter, Facebook, Google, etc. are absolutely the worst offenders. But Twitter is so frustrating because of exactly what the article's…

Imagine going into a board meeting with the senior leadership of any one of these companies and saying "we need a major initiative to make our site more accessible to 20 people who block all Javascript and probably have contempt for us." Then tell them how much it will cost.
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