Hmmm... Nah.
Create No-JavaScript friendly sites
71–80 of 129 posts
Re: Create No-JavaScript friendly sites
#72Similar to the general negative experience with many Electron apps, I hate the JavaScript based rendering experience on some sites. I get very frustrated with reddit (the new UI) and Facebook, both flashing an animation or empty rectangles for a long time and me realizing that the content isn’t going to load at all and hitting the reload button to coax it to render the best time. The experience I get on these sites a…
You're probably aware, but just in case: old.reddit.com gives the old (js-free) interface.
If you have an account, there's also a preference to make www.reddit.com use old reddit.
Re: Create No-JavaScript friendly sites
#73I built a side project a couple of months ago[1] that’s a PWA-installable interactive experience, but also degrades down to styled information in the absence of JS, and back to raw HTML if CSS fails. It’s surprisingly fun to build in this way. (On another note, choosing to avoid a framework and just use some vanilla JS led to an extremely fast loading site.) [1] https://www.designcritiquecards.com/
congratulations, but how many people have the time to do that? Is it really feasible on big projects?
Depends what you’re doing. The majority of the site I work on for my day job is statically rendered and theoretically works without JS, but large parts (including any ecom functionality and profiles) fail. Would it be worth making them more reliable by falling back if JS fails? Possibly, but that’s difficult sometimes to argue for in today’s environment of features-first from product, and developer-experience-first from engineering. Still worth the effort.
By the way, we are talking about reliability-in-depth here rather than user choice. I wrote a blog post about this a few years ago: https://www.robinwhittleton.com/2016/09/19/why-we-use-progre...
Re: Create No-JavaScript friendly sites
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
What percentage of city bus riders or public restaurant visitors do you think use the wheelchair ramp?
Screenreaders (including free and built in ones) have had JS support for quite a while. Using JS is very far from being the limiting factor for robust accessibility.
I wonder who bothers to test their wonderful experience product on a screenreader. Regardless of this and regardless of the security threat JS execution poses, I find it hard to use the internet with JS disabled.
However, when it comes to SPAs, I find that I like the older version of the website way more and also find it a whole lot more intuitive and usable.
Re: Create No-JavaScript friendly sites
#75I absolutely agree that JS is over-used, but for anything other than very static content I generally am not interested in kowtowing to the strict "no JS" folks. Javascript has become a fundamental part of the web, and for the same reason I won't put in extra work to make my sites work in IE, I also will not put in extra work to make my sites work for (a vanishingly small number of) people who pre-emptively block one…
Public sector work makes these things a requirement, it doesn't have to work on IE, but it helps a lot if it does because lots of law firms have only got IE. JS is the same, we don't add in JS unless it's necessary, but there has to be a no-JS fallback option, which can be less pretty but still needs to be functional.
Re: Create No-JavaScript friendly sites
#76I wrote about a generalized way to use React, Redux and SSR to make sites that work without JS a short while ago[0] and I’m currently employing that strategy for a side project I’m working on. So far the biggest drawback is not being able to do a payment flow with Stripe Checkout without requiring JS on _my_ service, because Stripe.js is required to redirect a user to the checkout session. [0] https://news.ycombinato…
And my response was a big thank you but some serious doubts. I'm asking for no JS when it is reasonable, and what you are trying to do is accommodate my unreasonable requirements. If I may repost past of what I said there: "I should clarify, I'm only moaning about JS used where it need not be, in the display of text and pictures. Essentially, stativc web pages. There are guys on this thread who are trying to make app…
I get what you're saying, and for many use-cases fully static websites is all you need. What might have been a better title for my post is "(Coincidentally) accommodating [..]", as the main target audience still remains users _with_ JS. By following some guidelines, using a couple of helpers, and avoiding certain interactions for _required_ interactions - ie. you can have sparkles on mousemove all you want, but don't gate important app functionality behind it - you will _also_ support users without JS. If the implementation cost is low, the potential gain of you and other users who might enjoy a JS-less experience might well be worth it.
For my part, I'm developing a service targeting privacy-minded people, and the ~1.75m NoScript users/installs are then among my main target audience.
Re: Create No-JavaScript friendly sites
#77The OMG JavaScript, parade of articles is tiresome / endless and IMO is trending towards the absurd, and it kinda irks me. I could really go without ever hearing someone bemoan how they rewrote an internal react site in 10 seconds with two lines of JavaScript, or whatever old wives tale they've got going on. If it was that easy then maybe it also wasn't the end times? Yeah there's a lot of pages that maybe could get…
> The browser now effectively runs apps, so it's not just going to read HTML The problem is that browsers are running apps when most users just want to read relatively static content. Our ever decreasing, day-one battery lives and swelling landfills are clear evidence this isn't sustainable.
> most users just want to read relatively static content
The most oft-complained about sites (news sites, "blogs") don't really care what you want. They care about engagement, monetizing, and/or conversions. That's much more difficult without JavaScript. If you have it disabled you've limited your value to them anyways.
Aside from the small number of altruistic orgs like WikiMedia your complaints about JS will fall on deaf ears.
Re: Create No-JavaScript friendly sites
#78Similar to the general negative experience with many Electron apps, I hate the JavaScript based rendering experience on some sites. I get very frustrated with reddit (the new UI) and Facebook, both flashing an animation or empty rectangles for a long time and me realizing that the content isn’t going to load at all and hitting the reload button to coax it to render the best time. The experience I get on these sites a…
You're probably aware, but just in case: old.reddit.com gives the old (js-free) interface.
That until the old reddit is deprecated. They want people to go ahead use the new interface because it makes it much easier to insert ads, track and do who knows what kind of other shenanigans..
The thing is for us who've known a better and more usable internet, we have something to compare it to and simply say no. The newer generation of users accept it for what it is, they don't know better.
Something else irks me quite a bit as well, and that is when you can't copy a link from the page or when the history is messed up when going back. It seems utterly broken, and most of the time the design is as well (but that is somewhat subjective)
Re: Create No-JavaScript friendly sites
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
Disabling Javascript makes video game wikis, recipe webpages and news articles far more usable for me. The primary content of these pages is text written in HTML, and leaving Javascript on means that the ads will make the webpage clunky, scroll badly and occasionally consume enough memory to crash the tab.
But the sites need revenue too, so the way to make ads go away is coming up with a ubiquitous micropayment system which can compensate the site editors if no ad is shown.
That's fine. If someone builds that, I'll sign up.
In the meantime, their need for revenue is not my problem. I do not feel bad about preventing their ads, trackers, and malware from consuming my battery and bandwidth.
Re: Create No-JavaScript friendly sites
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've spent most of my career as a front end developer. We have three tools in our toolbox: HTML, CSS, and Javascript. We need them all and will push each to the extreme to create better experiences for our users and reimagine what the web can become. I also work in the healthcare space with heavy HIPAA security requirements. Like any language/framework/platform there are best practices to follow for solid security an…
> and will push each to the extreme to create better experiences for our users and reimagine what the web can become. OMG. For this 'better experience' and 'reimagining what the web can become' did you bother to ask the users you pretend to cater for? No? Listen carefully: the only experience I want from any website is to get to it, get the info I want, then I fuck off sharpish. I do not want 'experience' or any bloo…
Seconded. 99% of the crap on websites is not the information I need and it's wasting my limited resources:
- battery - monthly bandwidth cap - RAM - attention (pop ups, things that blink, things that scroll) - patience for privacy breaches
Pure text is the "better experience" most people want.