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> 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
by 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 agoThat'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 agoSo 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 agoThat's not what I said ? A lot of them are doing their best, but they are worse off being run in a browser ! For instance the Electron apps not only are generally slower than native programs, but if they are designed to also work in parallel in-browser (or god forbid, mobile), they are likely to be crippled in their keyboard shortcuts, or, as I already mentioned, multi-windows, both of those being foreign to web design. - The new Skype is much worse than the old one. - Gmail and Protonmail are much slower than Thunderbird. Protonmail also has less features. - Gsuite is slower and has less features than Libre Office… with the exception of real-time collaborative editing, pushing it into a category of its own. - Discord is perhaps the only program in this list that I've used that I would classify as "good", though it can sometimes be a bit heavy…