4 ms·

That's hilariously clueless. Do you think youtube is just a <video> tag?

pikzen 11y ago
Let's list Youtube's features that could be done with no Javascript * Displaying the video * Controlling the video (although with the browser's default controls) * Being logged in * Listing videos * Voting * Commenting * Suggested videos * Subscribing Actually, I can't see a single thing that can't be done without Javascript. It has no complex notification system aside from annotations (and I'm not sure anyone enjoys annotations), nothing that isn't provided by browsers. But no javascript would require page refreshes, which makes for a worse UX. Eh, we survived refreshes before. Maybe browsers could even agree on a standard to refresh only part of the pages by querying the server themselves. Throw in five lines of JS to save to localStorage the current time on the video and restore it on reload.
- Touche 11y ago
  Of course it can be done with page refreshes, but it would be a worse user experience to do so.
  - ashark 11y ago
    Not saying it's true in the case of Youtube, but I've noticed recently that going back to lame old creaky page-refreshing HTML+(a little)CSS+a few lines of JS sites with no AJAX that they feel unbelievably fast compared to most AJAX-heavy Angular/Backbone/React/Whatever sites. Ajax was better UX than full page refreshes when it was basically just replacing frames and iframes. It's become bad UX now that template rendering systems and a few hundred KB of code are involved. Actually, I just tried this with modern Gmail in one tab and the basic HTML version in another. It's way, way faster to switch folders/categories in the basic HTML version. It wasn't even close, despite modern Gmail "efficiently" loading just the data it needs and basic HTML refreshing the whole page.
- esailija 11y ago
  So you are saying one shouldn't use JS to implement voting and comments but instead voting and comments should interrupt the video and then one uses JavaScript to restore the playback position. You also imply youtube should have waited for 6 years or whatever for video playback to even be possible without client side programming. > Maybe browsers could even agree on a standard to refresh only part of the pages by querying the server themselves. Maybe browsers could also agree on implementing all needed applications in the browser. Then you just make <youtube> tag and you have implemented youtube.
  - donatj 11y ago
    HTTP 204. You send the request, the browser stays where it is. Super simple, and what it was made for. Amazon used to use it quite heavily back in the day.
    - esailija 11y ago
      Is there a spec that the browser must stay where it is? Otherwise I would just use a form targeted to a hidden iframe. Still it's not usable here since you won't see your vote or comment or anything without reloading the entire page.
      - donatj 11y ago
        https://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec10.html https://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec10.html "If the client is a user agent, it SHOULD NOT change its document view" Also, a tiny bit of JS and no ajax can solve that easily.
        esailija 11y ago
        The spec language "SHOULD" is not same as "MUST" at all. > Also, a tiny bit of JS and no ajax can solve that easily. No disagreement from me that JS solves these issues.
        11y ago
- pacomerh 11y ago
  Let's kill UX and get rid of all the smooth JS interactions and replace them with refreshed pages and native browser controls. Geez... are going backwards here?
donatj 11y ago
Actually, the <video> tag is the only important part, the rest is just noise.
- garethadams 11y ago
  I can see where that comes from, the functionality of Youtube is nothing without its videos. But on the other hand, Youtube wouldn't have as many videos – specifically the content creators wouldn't have as much of an incentive to upload them – without the social features being there.
collyw 11y ago
I play youtube videos in VLC. No JS required, and I get higher quality sound as well.
- esailija 11y ago
  So you downloaded 30 MB of client side code instead of 100kb. Don't see how that's a win. By "higher quality" you mean placebo (see foobar2000 faq) or some DSP filters?
  - chriswarbo 11y ago
    > So you downloaded 30 MB of client side code instead of 100kb. Don't see how that's a win. Depends how you're counting. Using that 100kb of code "as intended" essentially requires Firefox (95MB) or Chrome (153MB), or some proprietary alternative. To use VLC instead, we can get by with something like dillo (1MB) and youtube-dl (1MB), which (added to your 30MB estimate for VLC) is much less client-side code. (Size estimates taken from packages.debian.org)
    - esailija 11y ago
      Firefox and Chrome are application platforms, like your OS. It doesn't make sense to count them. They don't only run youtube, unlike VLC which is only a media player. Otherwise VLC counts as 20 GB (or whatever) for the OS as well.
      - kuschku 11y ago
        Then Firefox and Chrome loose again, though. Because then you have the 7GB OS + 95MB Firefox + 100kB YouTube vs. the 7GB OS + 30MB VLC + 2MB youtube-dl And, additionally, the browser is just a document displayer, like a PDF viewer, or an image viewer. 135MB for that is far too much in any case.
  - cellularmitosis 11y ago
    From a performance perspective, it is a win. I've used the VLC trick to smoothly play videos on machines which are too old to play them at full frame rate in the browser.
chriswarbo 11y ago
> That's hilariously clueless. Do you think youtube is just a <video> tag? I wish. Either that, or `youtube-dl` became the official UI.

Let's list Youtube's features that could be done with no Javascript * Displaying the video * Controlling the video (although with the browser's default controls) * Being logged in * Listing videos * Voting * Commenting * Suggested videos * Subscribing Actually, I can't see a single thing that can't be done without Javascript. It has no complex notification system aside from annotations (and I'm not sure anyone enjoys annotations), nothing that isn't provided by browsers. But no javascript would require page refreshes, which makes for a worse UX. Eh, we survived refreshes before. Maybe browsers could even agree on a standard to refresh only part of the pages by querying the server themselves. Throw in five lines of JS to save to localStorage the current time on the video and restore it on reload.

Touche 11y ago
Of course it can be done with page refreshes, but it would be a worse user experience to do so.
- ashark 11y ago
  Not saying it's true in the case of Youtube, but I've noticed recently that going back to lame old creaky page-refreshing HTML+(a little)CSS+a few lines of JS sites with no AJAX that they feel unbelievably fast compared to most AJAX-heavy Angular/Backbone/React/Whatever sites. Ajax was better UX than full page refreshes when it was basically just replacing frames and iframes. It's become bad UX now that template rendering systems and a few hundred KB of code are involved. Actually, I just tried this with modern Gmail in one tab and the basic HTML version in another. It's way, way faster to switch folders/categories in the basic HTML version. It wasn't even close, despite modern Gmail "efficiently" loading just the data it needs and basic HTML refreshing the whole page.
esailija 11y ago
So you are saying one shouldn't use JS to implement voting and comments but instead voting and comments should interrupt the video and then one uses JavaScript to restore the playback position. You also imply youtube should have waited for 6 years or whatever for video playback to even be possible without client side programming. > Maybe browsers could even agree on a standard to refresh only part of the pages by querying the server themselves. Maybe browsers could also agree on implementing all needed applications in the browser. Then you just make <youtube> tag and you have implemented youtube.
- donatj 11y ago
  HTTP 204. You send the request, the browser stays where it is. Super simple, and what it was made for. Amazon used to use it quite heavily back in the day.
  - esailija 11y ago
    Is there a spec that the browser must stay where it is? Otherwise I would just use a form targeted to a hidden iframe. Still it's not usable here since you won't see your vote or comment or anything without reloading the entire page.
    - donatj 11y ago
      https://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec10.html https://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec10.html "If the client is a user agent, it SHOULD NOT change its document view" Also, a tiny bit of JS and no ajax can solve that easily.
      - esailija 11y ago
        The spec language "SHOULD" is not same as "MUST" at all. > Also, a tiny bit of JS and no ajax can solve that easily. No disagreement from me that JS solves these issues.
        11y ago
pacomerh 11y ago
Let's kill UX and get rid of all the smooth JS interactions and replace them with refreshed pages and native browser controls. Geez... are going backwards here?

donatj 11y ago

Actually, the <video> tag is the only important part, the rest is just noise.

garethadams 11y ago
I can see where that comes from, the functionality of Youtube is nothing without its videos. But on the other hand, Youtube wouldn't have as many videos – specifically the content creators wouldn't have as much of an incentive to upload them – without the social features being there.

collyw 11y ago

I play youtube videos in VLC. No JS required, and I get higher quality sound as well.

esailija 11y ago
So you downloaded 30 MB of client side code instead of 100kb. Don't see how that's a win. By "higher quality" you mean placebo (see foobar2000 faq) or some DSP filters?
- chriswarbo 11y ago
  > So you downloaded 30 MB of client side code instead of 100kb. Don't see how that's a win. Depends how you're counting. Using that 100kb of code "as intended" essentially requires Firefox (95MB) or Chrome (153MB), or some proprietary alternative. To use VLC instead, we can get by with something like dillo (1MB) and youtube-dl (1MB), which (added to your 30MB estimate for VLC) is much less client-side code. (Size estimates taken from packages.debian.org)
  - esailija 11y ago
    Firefox and Chrome are application platforms, like your OS. It doesn't make sense to count them. They don't only run youtube, unlike VLC which is only a media player. Otherwise VLC counts as 20 GB (or whatever) for the OS as well.
    - kuschku 11y ago
      Then Firefox and Chrome loose again, though. Because then you have the 7GB OS + 95MB Firefox + 100kB YouTube vs. the 7GB OS + 30MB VLC + 2MB youtube-dl And, additionally, the browser is just a document displayer, like a PDF viewer, or an image viewer. 135MB for that is far too much in any case.
- cellularmitosis 11y ago
  From a performance perspective, it is a win. I've used the VLC trick to smoothly play videos on machines which are too old to play them at full frame rate in the browser.

chriswarbo 11y ago

> That's hilariously clueless. Do you think youtube is just a <video> tag? I wish. Either that, or `youtube-dl` became the official UI.