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> but JS improves the user experience a lot, both in terms of interaction and speed, Except for autocomplete, do you have any examples where user experience i

> but JS improves the user experience a lot, both in terms of interaction and speed, Except for autocomplete, do you have any examples where user experience is increased a lot?

jenscow 5y ago
ajax/async requests. On this site, for example, if up vote your comment.. the status will just be updated. Without JS, it causes the page to reload, and I will briefly lose my place.
tshaddox 5y ago
The big one is seeing the results of data modifications instantly without a full page refresh.
MaxBarraclough 5y ago
How about rich text editors in webmail?
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  HTML mail is a mess that's impossible to get right; better to avoid it. Misleading users with a rich-text editor that looks like a word processor is bad because it'll pretty much never look as intended in anything but the same HTML editor that created it originally.
  - seepel 5y ago
    My experience has been the opposite at least for things like font size, bold/italic. I’m curious to hear what problems you’ve encountered.
- cuu508 5y ago
  Annoying when pasting formatted text. Annoying when you try to delete a newline but it deletes an inline image. Sometimes tricky to add unformatted text after a formatted section (the editor assumes I want to continue the formatted section). Inline images and hyperlinks are neat though.
vbo 5y ago
Since you mention autocomplete, dealing with forms is a lot better from both a development perspective and UX, ie complex forms being validated client side (as well as server side, of course) and getting instant feedback. Modals. Having slower things being loaded after the intial page load resulting in the page loading faster (moreso with session info being loaded less often in SPAs). Infinite scroll for search pages (not the Instagram variety). Basically all "modern" web UI.
- tarboreus 5y ago
  Maybe it's a niche perspective, but as a blind person the obsession with JS forms is what makes the web borderline unusable for us. While it's not impossible to make an accessible experience with JS, people mess it up so often that it may as well be. I honestly think the problem with JS reimplementations is that develoeprs assume that they are their audience, or that people like them are the only people that matter.
  - martpie 5y ago
    While I understand the concern, I'm not really sure I buy the argument "JS makes accessibility bad". It is for sure easier to do things wrong, but if you check at most of the major libraries for front-end (drag-and-drop, routing, dropdowns...), accessibility is built-in, and a critical selling point (e.g react-router, downshift...). I think the proportion of front-end developers knowing about accessibility is just low, and the result is more visible for JS-heavy websites/webapps, but this is imho an education problem, not an ecosystem issue. Having worked in agencies, accessibility was always treated as a second-class citizen (by clients or managers, not by developers, trying to push for it), and clients would often say "let's go live without it", then would come back to us asking to finish the job once they saw their competitors got sued for having an inaccessible website. So JS may be a catalyst, but not the root of the problem. It's our job to push for the importance of it, as we pushed for responsive websites a while ago.
    - torstenvl 5y ago
      Did you really just tell a blind person they're wrong about the effect JavaScript has on web accessibility for the blind? Holy crap man.
jakub_g 5y ago
Side note: basic autocomplete can be done fully without JS using <datalist> https://blog.teamtreehouse.com/creating-autocomplete-dropdowns-datalist-element https://blog.teamtreehouse.com/creating-autocomplete-dropdow...
- eitland 5y ago
  Emphasis on basic I think: once you go past what could easily be done earlier you still have to use JS to configure a datasource to load from?

> but JS improves the user experience a lot, both in terms of interaction and speed, Except for autocomplete, do you have any examples where user experience is increased a lot?

jenscow 5y ago

ajax/async requests. On this site, for example, if up vote your comment.. the status will just be updated. Without JS, it causes the page to reload, and I will briefly lose my place.

tshaddox 5y ago

The big one is seeing the results of data modifications instantly without a full page refresh.

MaxBarraclough 5y ago

How about rich text editors in webmail?

Nextgrid 5y ago
HTML mail is a mess that's impossible to get right; better to avoid it. Misleading users with a rich-text editor that looks like a word processor is bad because it'll pretty much never look as intended in anything but the same HTML editor that created it originally.
- seepel 5y ago
  My experience has been the opposite at least for things like font size, bold/italic. I’m curious to hear what problems you’ve encountered.
cuu508 5y ago
Annoying when pasting formatted text. Annoying when you try to delete a newline but it deletes an inline image. Sometimes tricky to add unformatted text after a formatted section (the editor assumes I want to continue the formatted section). Inline images and hyperlinks are neat though.

vbo 5y ago

Since you mention autocomplete, dealing with forms is a lot better from both a development perspective and UX, ie complex forms being validated client side (as well as server side, of course) and getting instant feedback. Modals. Having slower things being loaded after the intial page load resulting in the page loading faster (moreso with session info being loaded less often in SPAs). Infinite scroll for search pages (not the Instagram variety). Basically all "modern" web UI.

tarboreus 5y ago
Maybe it's a niche perspective, but as a blind person the obsession with JS forms is what makes the web borderline unusable for us. While it's not impossible to make an accessible experience with JS, people mess it up so often that it may as well be. I honestly think the problem with JS reimplementations is that develoeprs assume that they are their audience, or that people like them are the only people that matter.
- martpie 5y ago
  While I understand the concern, I'm not really sure I buy the argument "JS makes accessibility bad". It is for sure easier to do things wrong, but if you check at most of the major libraries for front-end (drag-and-drop, routing, dropdowns...), accessibility is built-in, and a critical selling point (e.g react-router, downshift...). I think the proportion of front-end developers knowing about accessibility is just low, and the result is more visible for JS-heavy websites/webapps, but this is imho an education problem, not an ecosystem issue. Having worked in agencies, accessibility was always treated as a second-class citizen (by clients or managers, not by developers, trying to push for it), and clients would often say "let's go live without it", then would come back to us asking to finish the job once they saw their competitors got sued for having an inaccessible website. So JS may be a catalyst, but not the root of the problem. It's our job to push for the importance of it, as we pushed for responsive websites a while ago.
  - torstenvl 5y ago
    Did you really just tell a blind person they're wrong about the effect JavaScript has on web accessibility for the blind? Holy crap man.

jakub_g 5y ago

Side note: basic autocomplete can be done fully without JS using <datalist> https://blog.teamtreehouse.com/creating-autocomplete-dropdowns-datalist-element https://blog.teamtreehouse.com/creating-autocomplete-dropdow...

eitland 5y ago
Emphasis on basic I think: once you go past what could easily be done earlier you still have to use JS to configure a datasource to load from?