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> The problem with that approach is that you have to define all your possible use-cases up front. If the web had stayed as a simple document format, it wouldn't

by ashark 9y ago

> The problem with that approach is that you have to define all your possible use-cases up front. If the web had stayed as a simple document format, it wouldn't even be worth talking about now. Everything but web apps and spy-vertising would be better (for the user) without Javascript, overall. I submit that those can live on some other platform (the current Web could keep going) while most of the rest could switch to the low-footprint client that cannot spy on you or do user-hostile crap with its interface (popups, hilariously bad layouts/styling [see: Medium] that "look cool", and so on). Keeping low-trust scumbag code strictly separate from safe sites that don't try to screw with me because they cannot would be very useful. Ecommerce, Facebook, webmail, all that stuff would be fine without Javascript, if anyone cared to do that on this hypothetical Web alternative that treats the user with respect. Tried basic-HTML Gmail lately? It's faster, with its full-page loads on every interaction, than Ajax gmail and way faster than Inbox, and many of the most useful features it lacks from those could be added server-side with no more, or even less, difficulty than adding them client side (Inbox's categories, for example). Its worse layout issues, especially on mobile, would disappear entirely if we had sensible defaults (user overridable) for each platform's browser to which pages were forced to defer.

wvenable 9y ago
> Ecommerce, Facebook, webmail, all that stuff would be fine without Javascript... But something as simple as voting on reddit would be tedious.
- ashark 9y ago
  Why?
  - wvenable 9y ago
    Every upvote would refresh the whole page.
    - ashark 9y ago
      See discussion in this thread about the "204 No Content" response code. Not all successful HTTP requests trigger a page load. And that's without having to change anything about current HTTP/HTML—except maybe giving hyperlinks and/or forms access to more HTTP methods, though for god's sake we ought to already have that in HTML and if you'd told me in 2007 that in 2017 we still wouldn't be able to PUT or DELETE on a web page without Javascript I'd have laughed at how implausible that was, so that's a long-overdue change anyway.
      - wvenable 9y ago
        You'd have way no indicate that your upvote succeeded with a 204 status code. Going back to my original point, and what you're arguing for me here, is that do this properly you'd have to imagine and implement every possible use case. In 1993, nobody envisioned web pages like Reddit. And yes, without JavaScript the web would be much faster and much safer but also much less interesting and powerful. It's hard to imagine websites without simple upvote/downvote mechanisms but that's what you're asking us to do. And that's just one tiny feature that barely scratches the surface of what is possible.
        ashark 9y ago
        We had working voting systems before AJAX (source: I have a high-but-now-considered-lowish Slashdot ID) so we can do it. Besides, visited link state seems like it'd resolve the problem, and it's been in HTML approximately forever. I still don't see the problem. The rest of what's possible can go on the current web, which would hopefully optimize (even more) for delivering apps if that happened. I want a content reader that won't, in practice, often run malicious code when I point it at the wrong document. That means it must not be able to run scripts, or at least not scripts that can communicate with the outside world in any way, at which point you may as well save the disk, memory, and complexity by leaving scripting out. There's no reason the thing I browse Craigslist, Wikipedia, IMDB, and Facebook and Twitter for that matter on must also be able to run ports of Wolfenstein or Excel clones or whatever. Or chat clients. The loss of trust and predictability in ordinary web browsing that scripting and complex layout systems bring aren't worth it. Put them somewhere else (including right where they are now—that'd be fine. Move the web to something more suited to it and leave the apps on the current "web")

by ashark 9y ago

wvenable 9y ago

> Ecommerce, Facebook, webmail, all that stuff would be fine without Javascript... But something as simple as voting on reddit would be tedious.

ashark 9y ago
Why?
- wvenable 9y ago
  Every upvote would refresh the whole page.
  - ashark 9y ago
    See discussion in this thread about the "204 No Content" response code. Not all successful HTTP requests trigger a page load. And that's without having to change anything about current HTTP/HTML—except maybe giving hyperlinks and/or forms access to more HTTP methods, though for god's sake we ought to already have that in HTML and if you'd told me in 2007 that in 2017 we still wouldn't be able to PUT or DELETE on a web page without Javascript I'd have laughed at how implausible that was, so that's a long-overdue change anyway.
    - wvenable 9y ago
      You'd have way no indicate that your upvote succeeded with a 204 status code. Going back to my original point, and what you're arguing for me here, is that do this properly you'd have to imagine and implement every possible use case. In 1993, nobody envisioned web pages like Reddit. And yes, without JavaScript the web would be much faster and much safer but also much less interesting and powerful. It's hard to imagine websites without simple upvote/downvote mechanisms but that's what you're asking us to do. And that's just one tiny feature that barely scratches the surface of what is possible.
      - ashark 9y ago
        We had working voting systems before AJAX (source: I have a high-but-now-considered-lowish Slashdot ID) so we can do it. Besides, visited link state seems like it'd resolve the problem, and it's been in HTML approximately forever. I still don't see the problem. The rest of what's possible can go on the current web, which would hopefully optimize (even more) for delivering apps if that happened. I want a content reader that won't, in practice, often run malicious code when I point it at the wrong document. That means it must not be able to run scripts, or at least not scripts that can communicate with the outside world in any way, at which point you may as well save the disk, memory, and complexity by leaving scripting out. There's no reason the thing I browse Craigslist, Wikipedia, IMDB, and Facebook and Twitter for that matter on must also be able to run ports of Wolfenstein or Excel clones or whatever. Or chat clients. The loss of trust and predictability in ordinary web browsing that scripting and complex layout systems bring aren't worth it. Put them somewhere else (including right where they are now—that'd be fine. Move the web to something more suited to it and leave the apps on the current "web")