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Building an HTML-first site doubled our users overnight

mohkohn.co.uk

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Re: Building an HTML-first site doubled our users overnight

#181

What do people like for form validation? In this article he recommends the “validation-enhancer” library: https://www.npmjs.com/package/validation-enhancer I’ve also seen one called “formisch” that the author of valibot is working on: https://github.com/open-circle/formisch They’re both pretty new. Has anyone tried them?

My biggest tip to reduce complexity of data validation if you are using React is to stop using React controlled components and switch to React uncontrolled components. They are an underused part of React. You usually don’t need React to handle every single keypress and every single character being entered by the user. In fact before React popularized it, it was unusual for form components to update on each key press; traditional desktop apps tend to validate when a field loses focus only, not on each key press. This has at least three benefits: (a) good for performance, (b) reduces unnecessary error UI when the user is in the middle of entering data, and (c) simplifies your own code by not having to deal with prefixes of valid input that’s not itself valid.

Re: Building an HTML-first site doubled our users overnight

#182
post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 60 year people can't user your fancy site because then don't have an internal model of how a computer works. I think this is a bit outdated. I'll be 60 in a month, and have been practicing and writing about machine learning, for money, for a straight 10 years now; and I was a young man (and a full stack developer) during the digital revolution. If anything, GenX had to work harder to get into these brittle emerging…

GP clearly isn’t talking about 60 year olds who were full stack devs and get on Hacker News.

60 year olds have been using computers most of their working life. Word processors and spreadsheets having been ubiquitous for office workers from at least the early 90s.

Re: Building an HTML-first site doubled our users overnight

#183
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if they dont, where is the disrespect? They dont know what a megabyte is, they dont feel a slow page load. Where is the disrespect? React is too heavy weight for a lot of things. But it's ridiculous to call it disrespectful.

If Rick Rubin could take a tape to his car to listen to his mixes, your product people can try their websites on £20 phones from Tesco. They can ask to sit in on user tests with minority groups. Extending your knowledge like this is trivial, but rarely done.

Yeah but for those not using £20 phones from Tesco, where is the disrespect?

Re: Building an HTML-first site doubled our users overnight

#184
I like JavaScript-light websites just as much as anyone (my own website works on the same principle). However, I do wonder how much of the increased traffic has to do with AI agents that now have an easier time working with the more standard web forms. My own contact form had a bunch of bots quoting Scorpion lyrics before I added a rate limiter.

Re: Building an HTML-first site doubled our users overnight

#185
post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chase works with ad blockers, though. It doesn't work if you disable JavaScript...but it wasn't always this way! They had a mobile version of their online banking service at https://m.chase.com that was EXTREMELY FAST and did 85% of what you need to do in an online banking portal (check balances, transfer funds). They scrapped it when they moved to their current bloated monstrosity of the portal that they have today.…

i am unclear on if it's because of the adblocker (specifically i use ad nauseam which does block some JS. some.) or because of firefox. I can load it on edge every time it fails on firefox. last week, chase.com worked fine on firefox. the previous 15 months where i needed to log in, it did not. Someone at chase isn't checking their work on firefox.

FWIW I use Firefox with uBlock Origin and Enhanced Tracking Protection, and use Chase's website almost weekly. No issues that I've noticed on MacOS or Windows

Re: Building an HTML-first site doubled our users overnight

#186
post #40

Having been building websites since the mid 90's, I laugh at terms like "HTML-first website"

It's like chai tea.

The Sahara desert. It's not only repetitive but it repeats itself too as well.

These gems are brought to you by the department of redundancy department.

Re: Building an HTML-first site doubled our users overnight

#187

Excellent article but I am always torn when I read inspirational articles like this - it makes perfect sense to me and I love the idea of simple, non-nonsense sites that work well, load quickly and don't rely on the latest browsers to function. Then I start to wonder if that's just because I'm not smart enough to understand React or whatever the fancy technology of the day is. Feels like I have a hard understanding t…

I love the web. I hate what the React cretins have done to it.

Embrace Extend Extinguish is real, and the people going along with it deserve to be replaced by a LLM that lies and spits out garbage code just like they do but faster.

Re: Building an HTML-first site doubled our users overnight

#189
post #165

As a non-web dev, I have a question about this part: > There was a sad coda; as is the way of contract work, I moved on. I explained what I had built to my replacement, that it always worked even without javascript. He was appalled and said, “but that’s a lot more work for us.” Why is it more work? The approach described in the article seems honestly reasonably simple: just write the standard components for the form,…

Simpler doesn't mean easier. Consider a chef who at their previous job started using a wood-burning stove. This is an objectively simpler tool than a gas or electric stove, yet it would be very difficult (even impossible, depending on local architecture and regulations) for a new kitchen to add one.

I don't understand how having to pay 20 different vendors so hackers can run commands on your server barely impeded is somehow simpler.

Re: Building an HTML-first site doubled our users overnight

#190
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Chai" means "tea", so "Chai Tea" is "Tea Tea". "ATM" means "Automatic Teller Machine", so "ATM Machine" is "Automatic Teller Machine Machine". Both are mentioned in the animated movie "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse".

Actually, in English, Chai does not mean tea, it means a specific flavor of tea. If you don't believe me, try ordering some Earl Grey Chai, see what happens.

If your server is Indian, they'll likely react positively, and get you what you want.
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