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Why should a lot of the web be accessible without JS? You're basing your view of the industry on some very rare exceptions, and most of them voluntary, not due

Why should a lot of the web be accessible without JS? You're basing your view of the industry on some very rare exceptions, and most of them voluntary, not due to the limitations of their software or hardware. Why should I cater to luddites? > HN is working perfectly fine without js I guess we have different definitions of fine.

Delk 4y ago
> Why should I cater to luddites? Why should a particular way of doing things be automatically considered better just because it's new, to the point of calling people names if they don't agree? Why should superfluous or more complex tooling be advocated for cases where simpler ones would do? SPAs and large amounts of interactivity are completely fine for applications or highly interactive pages. But when I check my local weather website, most of the time I just want to see the weather forecast or perhaps the latest observation. I don't need an application. Yet the site insists on first loading the page and then loading the forecast with a script, and then lazy-loading the observation data only if I scroll down to it. Getting the forecast takes a second or two from starting to load the page, and getting the observation data visible takes several, even on a fast connection. If it were a simple web page, with some scripting to replace content if I click for a different day's forecast, the entire data would probably be visible in less than a second. There are other examples I've seen where the contents are entirely static but which are nevertheless implemented as literal SPAs despite there being little benefit from interactivity. Some of those sites aren't heavyweight or slow, but some of them require you to click through to information that you used to be able to access directly with a bookmark or link because what used to be a separate static page is now dynamically loaded when you click yourself through to the information in the "application" instead. (A sports club I go to does that for its training schedule.) Those are design or implementation issues that can be solved, of course. It's possible to make script-heavy pages non-glacial. It's possible to make specific content in a SPA linkable. It's possible to not have browser history behave in some kind of a weird way. But those can take some effort to implement whereas simple static pages would have those mostly as a given. I don't disable js but I see little point in using complex or tools for cases where simple ones would do. There are clear benefits from heavy use of javascript for application-style sites, of course, but not all sites are like that.
robertlagrant 4y ago
> Why should I cater to luddites? People are using a computer to access it. No website user is a luddite. Also, neither are people with accessibility needs who would love a simple site made with well-structured HTML that didn't dynamically update constantly.

Delk 4y ago

> Why should I cater to luddites? Why should a particular way of doing things be automatically considered better just because it's new, to the point of calling people names if they don't agree? Why should superfluous or more complex tooling be advocated for cases where simpler ones would do? SPAs and large amounts of interactivity are completely fine for applications or highly interactive pages. But when I check my local weather website, most of the time I just want to see the weather forecast or perhaps the latest observation. I don't need an application. Yet the site insists on first loading the page and then loading the forecast with a script, and then lazy-loading the observation data only if I scroll down to it. Getting the forecast takes a second or two from starting to load the page, and getting the observation data visible takes several, even on a fast connection. If it were a simple web page, with some scripting to replace content if I click for a different day's forecast, the entire data would probably be visible in less than a second. There are other examples I've seen where the contents are entirely static but which are nevertheless implemented as literal SPAs despite there being little benefit from interactivity. Some of those sites aren't heavyweight or slow, but some of them require you to click through to information that you used to be able to access directly with a bookmark or link because what used to be a separate static page is now dynamically loaded when you click yourself through to the information in the "application" instead. (A sports club I go to does that for its training schedule.) Those are design or implementation issues that can be solved, of course. It's possible to make script-heavy pages non-glacial. It's possible to make specific content in a SPA linkable. It's possible to not have browser history behave in some kind of a weird way. But those can take some effort to implement whereas simple static pages would have those mostly as a given. I don't disable js but I see little point in using complex or tools for cases where simple ones would do. There are clear benefits from heavy use of javascript for application-style sites, of course, but not all sites are like that.

robertlagrant 4y ago

> Why should I cater to luddites? People are using a computer to access it. No website user is a luddite. Also, neither are people with accessibility needs who would love a simple site made with well-structured HTML that didn't dynamically update constantly.