Gov.uk drops jQuery from their front end • Hacker News Board

Re: Gov.uk drops jQuery from their front end

#21

Post by muhehe » Thu, May 19, 2022, 2:19 PM UTC

philliphaydon wrote: post #7

spicybright wrote: post #3

Eh. Everyone hates on jQuery, but for most informational sites that's really all you need for basic interaction. Speed really isn't bad, and it's so straightforward that it's hard to mis-use at this point. I seem to have way more issues with newer frameworks/SPA if I'm not using chrome with no extensions. Makes me nervous dealing with important stuff like banking or government sites.

I loved jquery back in the day. It made web development bearable in a time when it was a clusterfuck. I think a lot of people owe a lot of thanks to jquery. But in 2022 vanilla javascript is all you really need.

Web development is still a clusterfuck.

Re: Gov.uk drops jQuery from their front end

#22

Post by Deukhoofd » Thu, May 19, 2022, 2:20 PM UTC

kijin wrote: post #19

jaywalk wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not having to load yet another JS library on your page if you don't really need it is a pretty good argument, I'd say.

Except we've become so used to loading multiple megabytes of JS even on a simple blog post, that a 30KB library probably won't make a noticeable difference. Insofar as file size is concerned, I'd much rather pull in jQuery than some random npm package that depends on god-knows-how-many other random packages. Even GOV.UK, an incredibly lean website by today's standards, only noticed a 10% difference in their benchmark…

A 10% performance gain is quite a big deal, I wouldn't just shove it under the table like that.

Re: Gov.uk drops jQuery from their front end

#23

Post by Cthulhu_ » Thu, May 19, 2022, 2:23 PM UTC

spicybright wrote: post #10

jaywalk wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For basic interaction, you don't need anything but vanilla JS. Browsers have come a long way since the days where jQuery was almost necessary to deal with all of the minor differences/bugs in various browsers.

I'll admit I'm a bit out of practice with the state of vanilla JS, but it seems like you'll be re-inventing the wheel for simple stuff. Like a collapsible section that's lightly animated. I worry too about people not considering accessibility. A lot of my bugs day to day is not being able to tab into things like hover menus or being able to activate buttons because someone forgot to consider correct event callbacks.…

In 2020, a collapsible section is a matter of adding / removing a classname and a CSS animation; there's a few ways to do so, using jQuery is one, but you don't need thousands of lines of a JS library (network bandwidth + JS interpretation) to achieve that.

Re: Gov.uk drops jQuery from their front end

#24

Post by chipsa » Thu, May 19, 2022, 2:23 PM UTC

spicybright wrote: post #10

jaywalk wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For basic interaction, you don't need anything but vanilla JS. Browsers have come a long way since the days where jQuery was almost necessary to deal with all of the minor differences/bugs in various browsers.

I'll admit I'm a bit out of practice with the state of vanilla JS, but it seems like you'll be re-inventing the wheel for simple stuff. Like a collapsible section that's lightly animated. I worry too about people not considering accessibility. A lot of my bugs day to day is not being able to tab into things like hover menus or being able to activate buttons because someone forgot to consider correct event callbacks.…

Collapsible section? https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/de...

There's some CSS transition stuff you can add to that to make it lightly animated: https://css-tricks.com/how-to-animate-the-details-element/

Yeah, jQuery might make some things easier, but when possible, using native HTML elements makes things even easier,

Re: Gov.uk drops jQuery from their front end

#25

Post by andybak » Thu, May 19, 2022, 2:23 PM UTC

jaywalk wrote: post #11

andybak wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a much nicer syntax and has a ton of useful helpers. Vanilla js for similar things just looks like someone has waved the ugly stick at it. There are sound arguments against jQuery but the "you can just use vanilla" is the least convincing.

Not having to load yet another JS library on your page if you don't really need it is a pretty good argument, I'd say.

Yes. You'll note that I already anticipated that in my original point. I was very specific in how I worded it for good reason.

Re: Gov.uk drops jQuery from their front end

#26

Post by fleddr » Thu, May 19, 2022, 2:23 PM UTC

dsego wrote: post #13

philliphaydon wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I loved jquery back in the day. It made web development bearable in a time when it was a clusterfuck. I think a lot of people owe a lot of thanks to jquery. But in 2022 vanilla javascript is all you really need.

jQuery still offers a much nicer experience. The built-in dom apis are neither very elegant nor ergonomic. // jquery $(selector).on('click', fn) // vanilla js document.querySelectorAll(selector).forEach(el => el.addEventListener('click', fn) )

Fully agree, and your example is still relatively simple. Method chaining in jQuery allows for extremely expressive one-liners that would require a huge amount of boilerplate in vanilla JS.

Re: Gov.uk drops jQuery from their front end

#27

Post by jjice » Thu, May 19, 2022, 2:24 PM UTC

Tangential, but sometimes I see people say that jQuery is dead/failed. While it's not as popular anymore, I think that's actually the perfect evolution for it. jQuery was making up for browser API shortcomings, and now many of those shortcomings have been addressed and been incorporated into browser APIs (not everything, but quite a bit).

Re: Gov.uk drops jQuery from their front end

#28

Post by duxup » Thu, May 19, 2022, 2:25 PM UTC

spicybright wrote: post #3

Eh. Everyone hates on jQuery, but for most informational sites that's really all you need for basic interaction. Speed really isn't bad, and it's so straightforward that it's hard to mis-use at this point. I seem to have way more issues with newer frameworks/SPA if I'm not using chrome with no extensions. Makes me nervous dealing with important stuff like banking or government sites.

I will always think fondly of jQuery. It did a great job for what it was intended, saved a lot of time. jQuery's time has passed, and that's ok too.

Re: Gov.uk drops jQuery from their front end

#29

Post by louissan » Thu, May 19, 2022, 2:25 PM UTC

dsego wrote: post #13

philliphaydon wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I loved jquery back in the day. It made web development bearable in a time when it was a clusterfuck. I think a lot of people owe a lot of thanks to jquery. But in 2022 vanilla javascript is all you really need.

jQuery still offers a much nicer experience. The built-in dom apis are neither very elegant nor ergonomic. // jquery $(selector).on('click', fn) // vanilla js document.querySelectorAll(selector).forEach(el => el.addEventListener('click', fn) )

or delegate...?

document.addEventListener('click', function(e){ var t = e.target;

  if(t.closest('.foo') && t.nodeName.toLowerCase() === 'button'){
     e.preventDefault();
     // do stuff here
  }
  else if(t.closest('.bar') && t.nodeName.toLowerCase() === 'a' && t.classList.contains('here')){
     e.preventDefault();
     // do smth else here
  }

}, false);

one listener to rule them all...?

elegant enough and once you get used to it...

.closest can be pollyfilled too..

Re: Gov.uk drops jQuery from their front end

#30

Post by Cthulhu_ » Thu, May 19, 2022, 2:25 PM UTC

dsego wrote: post #13

philliphaydon wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I loved jquery back in the day. It made web development bearable in a time when it was a clusterfuck. I think a lot of people owe a lot of thanks to jquery. But in 2022 vanilla javascript is all you really need.

jQuery still offers a much nicer experience. The built-in dom apis are neither very elegant nor ergonomic. // jquery $(selector).on('click', fn) // vanilla js document.querySelectorAll(selector).forEach(el => el.addEventListener('click', fn) )

Is it worth adding the library (download size + script parsing & execution) for that though?

At the very least there are some jQuery alternatives that are modular, smaller, and have less backwards compatibility like iirc zepto.