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Honestly, let's all of us web developers make an agreement together that we'll focus on plain text and intelligently-compressed images rather than JavaScript an

Honestly, let's all of us web developers make an agreement together that we'll focus on plain text and intelligently-compressed images rather than JavaScript and auto-playing videos in our projects moving forward and recommend that we do the same where we work. People are trusting us to help them with technical decisions and we have a responsibility to make sure the web is accessible to as many people as possible. Our opinions have tremendous sway, even though it might not feel like it. The web really started to go sideways when we followed the trend away from Progressive Enhancement. Let's get back to basics, pure and simple.

bigblind 9y ago
When thinking about progressive enhancement, it's debatable what your baseline should be. I'm not sure I agree we should take plain text as the baseline. There's a development cost to everything. I genuinely believe you can create a better experience with a JavaScript-powered app/site, where the server doesn't have to re-render the entire page when someone interacts withit to show new content, and developing server-side rendering so that the same page can be rendered by the server, as well as constructed by JavaScript on the client, with content from an API, takes a lot of time. Even though it'd make it more accessible to clients who have JavaScript disabled, or where rendering the page client-side takes longer than rendering it on the server and sending it as a whole. I completely agree about unnecessary annoyances such as auto-playing video, or load-blocking ads. #perfmatters.
- rocky1138 9y ago
  A close baseline is Hacker News. The site works perfectly without JavaScript but is a bit faster (don't have to wait for page refreshes on upvote) if you enable it. If Hacker News had a more responsive stylesheet, it would definitely be something we could hold up as an example.

bigblind 9y ago

When thinking about progressive enhancement, it's debatable what your baseline should be. I'm not sure I agree we should take plain text as the baseline. There's a development cost to everything. I genuinely believe you can create a better experience with a JavaScript-powered app/site, where the server doesn't have to re-render the entire page when someone interacts withit to show new content, and developing server-side rendering so that the same page can be rendered by the server, as well as constructed by JavaScript on the client, with content from an API, takes a lot of time. Even though it'd make it more accessible to clients who have JavaScript disabled, or where rendering the page client-side takes longer than rendering it on the server and sending it as a whole. I completely agree about unnecessary annoyances such as auto-playing video, or load-blocking ads. #perfmatters.

rocky1138 9y ago
A close baseline is Hacker News. The site works perfectly without JavaScript but is a bit faster (don't have to wait for page refreshes on upvote) if you enable it. If Hacker News had a more responsive stylesheet, it would definitely be something we could hold up as an example.