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> Good websites use graceful degradation. Well not necessarily, if you are like 1-2 devs it's really hard to manage to make such a web application if it's a co

> Good websites use graceful degradation. Well not necessarily, if you are like 1-2 devs it's really hard to manage to make such a web application if it's a complicated one. And for what reason? So that you can cater to the 0.00001% of the users because they hate javascript for no other reason than that they hate it? > Of course I couldn't do photo editing with that concept in a browser, but that's not what I use a browser for anyway. Maybe not you, but I certainly use my browser for that kind of purpose as one example of several that won't work with javascript disabled. > Having this fallback also has the advantage that it helps disabled users and users on poor network connections. Yeah maybe having an alternative for drag n drop helps disabled users but just removing javascript doesn't help them at all. I would actually argue the reverse. With javascript you can do text to speech for example for people that may have bad eye sight. On poor networks a well written PWA works a lot better than a traditional server side generated page, depending a bit on the application itself of course. I would agree that because SPA apps need to do stuff the browser does for you, people simply don't build resilient enough apps that handles failures well. There are many bad SPA apps out there, but also many good. I was travelling and used Airbnbs web app that was terrific when I had a bad connection. I could still open up cached content and access a lot of stuff even if some things wouldn't load which was very good for me. If you don't want to use javascript but still want a SPA like feel there are alternatives like Phoenix Liveview for example. They still use javascript, but it works without it since it's just server side generated stuff. Unfortunately it doesn't work well on bad connection or at all when offline but I guess most sites would be ok with that trade off.

TonyTrapp 6y ago
> Well not necessarily, if you are like 1-2 devs it's really hard to manage to make such a web application if it's a complicated one. And for what reason? So that you can cater to the 0.00001% of the users because they hate javascript for no other reason than that they hate it? Just like mobile-first doesn't mean (or shouldn't mean) "only mobile" but rather "write with the smallest screen in mind and then add features for bigger screens", you can first write the basics of the site using pure HTML and then put the JavaScript on top. It's not much more effort if done consciously. > Maybe not you, but I certainly use my browser for that kind of purpose as one example of several that won't work with javascript disabled. But that's not really relevant to the argument here. The author of the article doesn't say "all websites including those that mimic native apps should work without CSS and JavaScript" - that would be nonsense of course. Certain web-based apps will simply not work at all without JavaScript, that's fine, and it's fine if that's a reason for some person not to use them. But personally I think that websites (in particular those that are not "apps") should provide as much of their functionality as possible without requiring JS, where it's doable. A photo editing app certainly doesn't fall into that category, I think everyone is aware of that. > Yeah maybe having an alternative for drag n drop helps disabled users but just removing javascript doesn't help them at all. That's also not what I said and it wouldn't be graceful degradation. I'm all for having JavaScript that improves the usability of the site, as long as disabling it (or network failure preventing it from loading) won't break the site as a consequence. That, I think, is the key point here.
- ecmascript 6y ago
  > The author of the article doesn't say "all websites including those that mimic native apps should work without CSS and JavaScript" - that would be nonsense of course. No but he does say and I'll quote "If they can't produce something worthwhile without scripting, it's probably not worthwhile at all." which to me means all sites that require javascript no matter of what the purpose is. Sure, a information site with a few pictures and text doesn't need javascript. But I am not building nor talking about such sites. These kind of sites are built with tools like wordpress today and I think many web devs like me who live on the edge of whats possible on the web try to push the boundaries even more. I write javascript heavy apps because they solve problems that hasn't been solved on the web yet. Apps that previously wasn't possible now are and that is where you can dig gold. I don't want to have to write a native app because I think the web platform is simply the best way of building apps since there is no other way to be in control and user don't have to download anything else than javascript, which are downloaded and runs automatically. The author obviously doesn't like javascript but as always he doesn't provide a good answer to why. If I can write a web based tool that people can link to, use and then don't think about until next time they need it, it will probably get way, way more used than a tool that people need to download and install simply because the installation step is too much work for a lot of people.
  - BlueTemplar 6y ago
    That's fine for "toy" tools, but please don't try to shoehorn real productivity tools (whether they might need an Internet connection or not) in the so limited browser GUI ! EDIT: One recent example in mind : the web-based Big Blue Button video conferencing app : there doesn't seem to be a way to open chat and slide screen in two separate windows ! When your GUI is worse than what we had in Windows freaking 3.11, there's something that went really wrong...
    - ecmascript 6y ago
      So you would seriously suggest that none of these apps are productivity tools: Visual Studio Code Slack / Teams / Skype Fastmail / Gmail / Protonmail etc GSuite / Office365 Figma Conference apps like Google Meet, Discord etc Pixlr Music apps like Spotify, Tidal, Youtube Music, Apple Music etc Trello / Jira etc Seriously, there is only a few apps that I use that are not web apps. Suggesting that these multi million projects would be toy projects is just silly and ignorant. You're the typical HN elitist, good job.
BlueTemplar 6y ago
Text to speech is something that really should be a browser feature, not something for websites to implement! And in fact, Opera had it like a decade ago!

TonyTrapp 6y ago

> Well not necessarily, if you are like 1-2 devs it's really hard to manage to make such a web application if it's a complicated one. And for what reason? So that you can cater to the 0.00001% of the users because they hate javascript for no other reason than that they hate it? Just like mobile-first doesn't mean (or shouldn't mean) "only mobile" but rather "write with the smallest screen in mind and then add features for bigger screens", you can first write the basics of the site using pure HTML and then put the JavaScript on top. It's not much more effort if done consciously. > Maybe not you, but I certainly use my browser for that kind of purpose as one example of several that won't work with javascript disabled. But that's not really relevant to the argument here. The author of the article doesn't say "all websites including those that mimic native apps should work without CSS and JavaScript" - that would be nonsense of course. Certain web-based apps will simply not work at all without JavaScript, that's fine, and it's fine if that's a reason for some person not to use them. But personally I think that websites (in particular those that are not "apps") should provide as much of their functionality as possible without requiring JS, where it's doable. A photo editing app certainly doesn't fall into that category, I think everyone is aware of that. > Yeah maybe having an alternative for drag n drop helps disabled users but just removing javascript doesn't help them at all. That's also not what I said and it wouldn't be graceful degradation. I'm all for having JavaScript that improves the usability of the site, as long as disabling it (or network failure preventing it from loading) won't break the site as a consequence. That, I think, is the key point here.

ecmascript 6y ago
> The author of the article doesn't say "all websites including those that mimic native apps should work without CSS and JavaScript" - that would be nonsense of course. No but he does say and I'll quote "If they can't produce something worthwhile without scripting, it's probably not worthwhile at all." which to me means all sites that require javascript no matter of what the purpose is. Sure, a information site with a few pictures and text doesn't need javascript. But I am not building nor talking about such sites. These kind of sites are built with tools like wordpress today and I think many web devs like me who live on the edge of whats possible on the web try to push the boundaries even more. I write javascript heavy apps because they solve problems that hasn't been solved on the web yet. Apps that previously wasn't possible now are and that is where you can dig gold. I don't want to have to write a native app because I think the web platform is simply the best way of building apps since there is no other way to be in control and user don't have to download anything else than javascript, which are downloaded and runs automatically. The author obviously doesn't like javascript but as always he doesn't provide a good answer to why. If I can write a web based tool that people can link to, use and then don't think about until next time they need it, it will probably get way, way more used than a tool that people need to download and install simply because the installation step is too much work for a lot of people.
- BlueTemplar 6y ago
  That's fine for "toy" tools, but please don't try to shoehorn real productivity tools (whether they might need an Internet connection or not) in the so limited browser GUI ! EDIT: One recent example in mind : the web-based Big Blue Button video conferencing app : there doesn't seem to be a way to open chat and slide screen in two separate windows ! When your GUI is worse than what we had in Windows freaking 3.11, there's something that went really wrong...
  - ecmascript 6y ago
    So you would seriously suggest that none of these apps are productivity tools: Visual Studio Code Slack / Teams / Skype Fastmail / Gmail / Protonmail etc GSuite / Office365 Figma Conference apps like Google Meet, Discord etc Pixlr Music apps like Spotify, Tidal, Youtube Music, Apple Music etc Trello / Jira etc Seriously, there is only a few apps that I use that are not web apps. Suggesting that these multi million projects would be toy projects is just silly and ignorant. You're the typical HN elitist, good job.

BlueTemplar 6y ago

Text to speech is something that really should be a browser feature, not something for websites to implement! And in fact, Opera had it like a decade ago!