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This reasoning i.e. "supporting" people who are not using Javascript make little sense. It is the Javascript and website complexity, the embellishment of data

by 801699 9y ago

This reasoning i.e. "supporting" people who are not using Javascript make little sense. It is the Javascript and website complexity, the embellishment of data with needless garbage, that necessitates "support" i.e. work for developers. It creates more work. Serving text without embellishment requires less work, not more. At some time or place in every website development project, data exists in plain text or some other raw form. Some users might just want that data as it is, without embellishment, before web developers even start working. This requires little if any "web development" work. Basic HTML can be autogenerated with ease. <a href=http://example.com/data>Data</a><br> <pre> Description: blah, blah, blah </pre> Or the user can just use a link to json file and generate the text/html themselves. # usage: $0 section # sections: world, etc. curl -4o .$0 https://static01.nyt.com/services/json/sectionfronts/$1/index.jsonp exec sed '/\"guid\" :/!d;s/\",//;s/.*\"//' .$0 For those who "want" and "demand" it (the 99.9% as you would have us believe), web developers can also create a whiz bang version of the site that encapsulates this data in a cutting edge "web app". Meanwhile we are having this discussion on a web site that does more or less exactly what I am suggesting. It can be easily autogenerated. The HTML could have been written in the 1990's. It is trivial to remove the tags and have plain text. I guess we are the 0.1% that would ever access a website that did not need Javascript? The fact that the popular browsers run all manner of javascripts and process all sorts of tags does not obligate anyone to use them. Whether it is web developers or users.

kabes 9y ago
That argument only makes sense for informational websites with heavy focus on textual data. But the article looks at web apps like google maps. Good luck creating a static version of that. + I'm not saying 99.99% WANTS javascript, I'm saying 99.99% HAS javascript. And the economics of supporting the other 0.01% often don't add up. So people can arrogantly claim here: 'If your site requires javascript, I don't want to use it'. But it's much more the website owner saying: 'If your browser doesn't support javascript, I don't want you as a user'. Since it probably costs more to have you as a customer then I will make out of it.
- 801699 9y ago
  I download static maps. I prefer maps as images or images in a PDF. But I understand your comment. Indeed it is the textual data that is at issue with respect to gratuitous javascript use. A large amount of data maybe even the majority is already textual. For this data, from a user's persective there is no valid argument that "supporting" users who want to read text requires additonal work. Serving textual data certainly does not require javascript. The "arrogance" if any is displyed by a website owner who for some unexplained reason does not want to let any users (e.g. 0.1%) read text without runing javascript. As if any user who does not care about whether the website makes use of the latest popular browser features is a user they do not want. But maybe that is not really the reason. It is the last sentence in your comment that is the interesting one. Perhaps the use of javascript is designed to take something from the customer e.g. personal data via some discreet mechanism that requires running code on the user's computer. If this is true, then one might argue it becomes clear why website owners do not want users who do not use javascript. Because the website cannot take something from the user where the mechanism of extraction is powered by javascript. If that is the case, it may inform the user about the website e.g. any website that tries to force users to use javascript may be one that is trying to extract something from the user. And as such may be a wesbite that the user should avoid. As a sidenote, websites routinely serve content as text without the use of javascript because that is how they are most efficiently indexed by Google. Thus the website must "support" Googlebot. Some users may be quite satisified with the "Googlebot version" of the website.

by 801699 9y ago

kabes 9y ago

That argument only makes sense for informational websites with heavy focus on textual data. But the article looks at web apps like google maps. Good luck creating a static version of that. + I'm not saying 99.99% WANTS javascript, I'm saying 99.99% HAS javascript. And the economics of supporting the other 0.01% often don't add up. So people can arrogantly claim here: 'If your site requires javascript, I don't want to use it'. But it's much more the website owner saying: 'If your browser doesn't support javascript, I don't want you as a user'. Since it probably costs more to have you as a customer then I will make out of it.

801699 9y ago
I download static maps. I prefer maps as images or images in a PDF. But I understand your comment. Indeed it is the textual data that is at issue with respect to gratuitous javascript use. A large amount of data maybe even the majority is already textual. For this data, from a user's persective there is no valid argument that "supporting" users who want to read text requires additonal work. Serving textual data certainly does not require javascript. The "arrogance" if any is displyed by a website owner who for some unexplained reason does not want to let any users (e.g. 0.1%) read text without runing javascript. As if any user who does not care about whether the website makes use of the latest popular browser features is a user they do not want. But maybe that is not really the reason. It is the last sentence in your comment that is the interesting one. Perhaps the use of javascript is designed to take something from the customer e.g. personal data via some discreet mechanism that requires running code on the user's computer. If this is true, then one might argue it becomes clear why website owners do not want users who do not use javascript. Because the website cannot take something from the user where the mechanism of extraction is powered by javascript. If that is the case, it may inform the user about the website e.g. any website that tries to force users to use javascript may be one that is trying to extract something from the user. And as such may be a wesbite that the user should avoid. As a sidenote, websites routinely serve content as text without the use of javascript because that is how they are most efficiently indexed by Google. Thus the website must "support" Googlebot. Some users may be quite satisified with the "Googlebot version" of the website.