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My challenge to the web developer community: Can you write something which works in any browser, regardless of device age, browser version, connection speed,

My challenge to the web developer community: Can you write something which works in any browser, regardless of device age, browser version, connection speed, with progressive enhancement for more modern features?

alserio 5y ago
Sure, if you don't want what the ux guys have designed or if you are prepared to give me more people and time
WJW 5y ago
Why not a challenge to the sysadmins of this world: Can you make sure all machines under your care have a browser not older than (say) 5 years?
- goodpoint 5y ago
  3 billion people on this planet cannot afford a new phone or a new desktop every 5 years (to put it mildly).
  - gherkinnn 5y ago
    None of those 3 billion people were ever the target of the products I happened to work on. But 10% of our user bases were limited by their IT departments. It depends so much on what you're building.
- forgotmypw17 5y ago
  I don't agree. I think while I have a device that's working, it has the right to exist and I have the right to keep using it for 20 years if I want to. Not everyone agrees, certainly not the majors, but I'm OK with just my little comfortable corner of the Web, which also happens to have no ads, trackers, bloat.js, and so on.
dotancohen 5y ago
In 2014 or so a client with whom I hadn't spoken to a few years contacted me. He told me that he originally wanted to contact me about updating the web app he uses to run his business to support his new iPad. But upon trying it, he was surprised to find that everything just worked! That's because I wrote his control panel in simple HTML with almost no CSS, just clean markup and barely a whiff of Javascript. It even works well enough on his Android phone to not require an update, provided he rotates the screen to landscape. That, on a page that was designed before the terms "mobile first" or "responsive" ever existed. Because good clean markup was, and remains, good clean markup.
- forgotmypw17 5y ago
  Great work!
robin_reala 5y ago
To a certain extent, yes. But there’s a hard stop, if you want to provide a secure experience, when it comes to broken security protocols. And remember that security isn’t just for ecommerce sites, but for privacy at a network level.
- forgotmypw17 5y ago
  Sure, but security isn't everything, there is also accessibility, and I balance them by allowing even plaintext HTTP traffic on non-sensitive websites, because to me it is more important to allow access than to provide so-called "privacy", which IMO means very little with HTTPS anyway.
  - robin_reala 5y ago
    It depends what you’re hosting. As a basic example, Wikipedia might be a non-sensitive website to most people, but if you’re a teen with questions about your sexual identity, living with homophobic parents, then HTTPS will ensure that they just see wikipedia.org at the router level. The same when I worked at GOV.UK: we were just as likely to offer information on paying your council tax as services for spouses suffering domestic abuse.
    - forgotmypw17 5y ago
      If you're an abuse victim desperate for information, and all you have is a device which you found at the bottom of the closet which is five years old and has the clock set wrong, what do you think is better? Option 1: Being able to connect to a public WiFi network and browse Wikipedia over HTTP. Option 2: Being "secure" in not being able to access the information at all due to HTTPS limitations?
goodpoint 5y ago
The fact that you are being downvoted to hell for asking this says a lot about the sad state of the HN community.
lelandfe 5y ago
This is generally as simple as writing clean HTML and then using `type="module"` and `nomodule` scripts to differentiate between legacy and modern browsers.
gherkinnn 5y ago
No. There has to be a cutoff. "any device age" includes my old HTC Desire HD. And it's downright stupid to optimise for it unless you have a very good reason. Some features are too practical not to use. And some features are next to impossible to enhance progressively without introducing more bloat. There's not really a gradient between "no wheel" and "wheel". If that Desire HD is not part of your target audience then there's no reason to pay the price to optimise for it.
- forgotmypw17 5y ago
  You call it stupid... I call it lazy, insensitive, careless, and perhaps a smidgen of incompetent. :) I don't know my target audience ahead of time, and I want to be prepared for them, known AND unknown. Your HTC Desire HD is welcome and supported on all my websites, and the fact that you have one is reason enough for me to support it. I think it is a really shitty and rude thing to tell the user that their browser, device, configuration, etc. is "not good enough", because most of the time they have no control over it, and you're denying access to the people who need it the most. When you've got a fast desktop to develop on and a decent salary to switch out your phone every year or two, it may be difficult to relate, but there are millions of people out there using five-year-old devices and struggling extra unnecessarily, and I refuse to add to the problem. It has the nice benefit most untested devices and platforms also working, as well as nice accommodations for retro-computing enthusiasts.
  - gherkinnn 5y ago
    Works for me. By going one way or the other, we select our own customers.
    - forgotmypw17 5y ago
      To me, they're not customers, but readers and humans.

alserio 5y ago

Sure, if you don't want what the ux guys have designed or if you are prepared to give me more people and time

WJW 5y ago

Why not a challenge to the sysadmins of this world: Can you make sure all machines under your care have a browser not older than (say) 5 years?

goodpoint 5y ago
3 billion people on this planet cannot afford a new phone or a new desktop every 5 years (to put it mildly).
- gherkinnn 5y ago
  None of those 3 billion people were ever the target of the products I happened to work on. But 10% of our user bases were limited by their IT departments. It depends so much on what you're building.
forgotmypw17 5y ago
I don't agree. I think while I have a device that's working, it has the right to exist and I have the right to keep using it for 20 years if I want to. Not everyone agrees, certainly not the majors, but I'm OK with just my little comfortable corner of the Web, which also happens to have no ads, trackers, bloat.js, and so on.

dotancohen 5y ago

In 2014 or so a client with whom I hadn't spoken to a few years contacted me. He told me that he originally wanted to contact me about updating the web app he uses to run his business to support his new iPad. But upon trying it, he was surprised to find that everything just worked! That's because I wrote his control panel in simple HTML with almost no CSS, just clean markup and barely a whiff of Javascript. It even works well enough on his Android phone to not require an update, provided he rotates the screen to landscape. That, on a page that was designed before the terms "mobile first" or "responsive" ever existed. Because good clean markup was, and remains, good clean markup.

forgotmypw17 5y ago
Great work!

robin_reala 5y ago

To a certain extent, yes. But there’s a hard stop, if you want to provide a secure experience, when it comes to broken security protocols. And remember that security isn’t just for ecommerce sites, but for privacy at a network level.

forgotmypw17 5y ago
Sure, but security isn't everything, there is also accessibility, and I balance them by allowing even plaintext HTTP traffic on non-sensitive websites, because to me it is more important to allow access than to provide so-called "privacy", which IMO means very little with HTTPS anyway.
- robin_reala 5y ago
  It depends what you’re hosting. As a basic example, Wikipedia might be a non-sensitive website to most people, but if you’re a teen with questions about your sexual identity, living with homophobic parents, then HTTPS will ensure that they just see wikipedia.org at the router level. The same when I worked at GOV.UK: we were just as likely to offer information on paying your council tax as services for spouses suffering domestic abuse.
  - forgotmypw17 5y ago
    If you're an abuse victim desperate for information, and all you have is a device which you found at the bottom of the closet which is five years old and has the clock set wrong, what do you think is better? Option 1: Being able to connect to a public WiFi network and browse Wikipedia over HTTP. Option 2: Being "secure" in not being able to access the information at all due to HTTPS limitations?

goodpoint 5y ago

The fact that you are being downvoted to hell for asking this says a lot about the sad state of the HN community.

lelandfe 5y ago

This is generally as simple as writing clean HTML and then using `type="module"` and `nomodule` scripts to differentiate between legacy and modern browsers.

gherkinnn 5y ago

No. There has to be a cutoff. "any device age" includes my old HTC Desire HD. And it's downright stupid to optimise for it unless you have a very good reason. Some features are too practical not to use. And some features are next to impossible to enhance progressively without introducing more bloat. There's not really a gradient between "no wheel" and "wheel". If that Desire HD is not part of your target audience then there's no reason to pay the price to optimise for it.

forgotmypw17 5y ago
You call it stupid... I call it lazy, insensitive, careless, and perhaps a smidgen of incompetent. :) I don't know my target audience ahead of time, and I want to be prepared for them, known AND unknown. Your HTC Desire HD is welcome and supported on all my websites, and the fact that you have one is reason enough for me to support it. I think it is a really shitty and rude thing to tell the user that their browser, device, configuration, etc. is "not good enough", because most of the time they have no control over it, and you're denying access to the people who need it the most. When you've got a fast desktop to develop on and a decent salary to switch out your phone every year or two, it may be difficult to relate, but there are millions of people out there using five-year-old devices and struggling extra unnecessarily, and I refuse to add to the problem. It has the nice benefit most untested devices and platforms also working, as well as nice accommodations for retro-computing enthusiasts.
- gherkinnn 5y ago
  Works for me. By going one way or the other, we select our own customers.
  - forgotmypw17 5y ago
    To me, they're not customers, but readers and humans.