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And that is how it should be. All parties need to align on how the future of the Web will look. If most users want a site with fancy features, that's what devel

And that is how it should be. All parties need to align on how the future of the Web will look. If most users want a site with fancy features, that's what developers will make, and that is what businesses will prioritize

JohnFen 7y ago
> And that is how it should be. Well, I don't think that's how it should be, but that's certainly how it's turning out. How it should be is that websites degrade gracefully, and remain usable (if more limited in terms of geewhizzery) without client-side scripting.
- imtringued 7y ago
  And how do you expect that to happen? HTML hasn't been designed for that at all. Nowadays even extremely minor features require usage of JavaScript. For example a simple auto complete field that loads things from the database as you type. There is no way "graceful" way to implement this without JavaScript. There are some ugly ways that offer an extremely poor user experience (drop downs with 100000 elements) but those require additional developer resources on top of whatever basic feature you're building. You will also have to add a huge amount of forms and intermediate pages because of the limitations of HTML that will only be used by 1% of your user base and they will hate the experience no matter how much effort you put into it. No, the ship has sailed. Just activate JavaScript and block ads/trackers.
  - JohnFen 7y ago
    > HTML hasn't been designed for that at all. It absolutely has. That's a fundamental design goal for HTML. > For example a simple auto complete field that loads things from the database as you type. There is no way "graceful" way to implement this without JavaScript. True, so if the user doesn't have JS enabled, you don't do that. Omitting that functionality doesn't remove the ability to make use of the website. You're arguing that making proper websites is too expensive to justify. That's your call, of course, but that's a different argument than "it can't be done". > Just activate JavaScript and block ads/trackers. No, that's too risky. What I'll do instead is not use the website.

JohnFen 7y ago

> And that is how it should be. Well, I don't think that's how it should be, but that's certainly how it's turning out. How it should be is that websites degrade gracefully, and remain usable (if more limited in terms of geewhizzery) without client-side scripting.

imtringued 7y ago
And how do you expect that to happen? HTML hasn't been designed for that at all. Nowadays even extremely minor features require usage of JavaScript. For example a simple auto complete field that loads things from the database as you type. There is no way "graceful" way to implement this without JavaScript. There are some ugly ways that offer an extremely poor user experience (drop downs with 100000 elements) but those require additional developer resources on top of whatever basic feature you're building. You will also have to add a huge amount of forms and intermediate pages because of the limitations of HTML that will only be used by 1% of your user base and they will hate the experience no matter how much effort you put into it. No, the ship has sailed. Just activate JavaScript and block ads/trackers.
- JohnFen 7y ago
  > HTML hasn't been designed for that at all. It absolutely has. That's a fundamental design goal for HTML. > For example a simple auto complete field that loads things from the database as you type. There is no way "graceful" way to implement this without JavaScript. True, so if the user doesn't have JS enabled, you don't do that. Omitting that functionality doesn't remove the ability to make use of the website. You're arguing that making proper websites is too expensive to justify. That's your call, of course, but that's a different argument than "it can't be done". > Just activate JavaScript and block ads/trackers. No, that's too risky. What I'll do instead is not use the website.