5 ms·

CSS has come a long way, I would expect that these things would be ease to achieve with just CSS and HTML, for instance: media viewer -> dialog (I remember this

CSS has come a long way, I would expect that these things would be ease to achieve with just CSS and HTML, for instance: media viewer -> dialog (I remember this being a HTML thing), collapsing sections -> details/summary (?) But I guess it's not there yet.

ajkjk 3y ago
There is always going to be a user interaction that is sufficiently complex as to require JS. Arbitrarily limiting to just CSS severely limits what you can do.
- uoaei 3y ago
  Fairly certain that's literally the point of simplifying interfaces. Do what you need with what you have. Don't try to shove a racehorse into a VW Beetle.
  - blowski 3y ago
    As the old saying goes “simple as possible but no simpler”. There are likely some uses of JavaScript that make the UI simpler.
- onion2k 3y ago
  It's not arbitrary though. It's a choice to save bandwidth shipping unnecessary javascript rather than making it easier to develop the website. At the scale of Wikipedia that isn't unreasonable.
  - ajkjk 3y ago
    It's not unnecessary if the feature is something you want? There's this pattern on HN: people value a feature as having 0 utility and then become annoyed that someone has paid time/performance/money for them. Well duh, if you discount the value of something to 0, it will always be a bad idea. But you're never going to understand why people are paying for it if you write off their values. At my last job there were countless pieces of UX to make things smoother, more responsive, better controlled by keyboard or voice reader, etc.. that required JS. It was not possible to make our site as good as possible with CSS, and it certainly wasn't worth the tradeoffs of loading a big faster (not that it couldn't have had it's loading time improved--just, cutting JS was a nonstarter).
    - onion2k 3y ago
      It's not unnecessary if the feature is something you want? The js is unnecessary if you can achieve the same result with plain css.
      - ajkjk 3y ago
        And you often can't.
        spartanatreyu 3y ago
        In my experience, most people just aren't aware of what CSS is capable of. But to play devil's advocate: just because you can, doesn't mean you should.
  - TheAngush 3y ago
    If you replace JavaScript with CSS you aren't saving bandwidth; you're trading it. In many scenarios I'd argue CSS would require more bandwidth. It can get quite verbose.
znpy 3y ago
My guess is that it’s going to be a tradeoff between functionality and compatibility. Wikipedia is consulted every day by a lot of people, i guess that a large number of those people are running older browsers.
- starkparker 3y ago
  Mediawiki itself is built to support 10-year old phones (which is why the Moto G makes an appearance in the post - it's the official low-end Android benchmark) and older desktop operating systems. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Compatibility#Browsers https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Compatibility#Browsers
  - tommy_axle 3y ago
    Makes sense since the Moto G is also what Lighthouse and a lot of tools driven by it use. So PageSpeed Insights (pagespeed.web.dev), the Lighthouse developer in Chrome tab and even external services like https://totalwebtool.com https://totalwebtool.com all generally evaluate mobile performance using it to simulate a slower experience.
pier25 3y ago
> media viewer -> dialog <dialog> has only been available in Safari for about a year. https://caniuse.com/dialog https://caniuse.com/dialog Wikpedia is one of the most popular sites on the internet. It needs to be as compatible as possible so that means using JS.
- manquer 3y ago
  You should be able to detect user agent and determine capability and send the poly-fills for backward compatibility ?
  - pier25 3y ago
    Sure, there are many different ways to tackle this.
  - ryan_lane 3y ago
    Then you'd need to shard your cache on user agent, which would lead to considerably worse performance for everyone.
    - manquer 3y ago
      Surely at the scale of Wikipedia that wouldn’t be a factor ? considering the dominance of few browsers (chrome , safari on iOS) will most users notice any difference? The first one (with that UA) to the site with a new build will have they cache key warmed up ?
      - ryan_lane 3y ago
        User-agent is way more granular than chrome, safari, firefox, etc. It's not a great shard key.
  - paulddraper 3y ago
    And hurt your caching.... All to get rid of a tiny bit of JS.

ajkjk 3y ago

There is always going to be a user interaction that is sufficiently complex as to require JS. Arbitrarily limiting to just CSS severely limits what you can do.

uoaei 3y ago
Fairly certain that's literally the point of simplifying interfaces. Do what you need with what you have. Don't try to shove a racehorse into a VW Beetle.
- blowski 3y ago
  As the old saying goes “simple as possible but no simpler”. There are likely some uses of JavaScript that make the UI simpler.
onion2k 3y ago
It's not arbitrary though. It's a choice to save bandwidth shipping unnecessary javascript rather than making it easier to develop the website. At the scale of Wikipedia that isn't unreasonable.
- ajkjk 3y ago
  It's not unnecessary if the feature is something you want? There's this pattern on HN: people value a feature as having 0 utility and then become annoyed that someone has paid time/performance/money for them. Well duh, if you discount the value of something to 0, it will always be a bad idea. But you're never going to understand why people are paying for it if you write off their values. At my last job there were countless pieces of UX to make things smoother, more responsive, better controlled by keyboard or voice reader, etc.. that required JS. It was not possible to make our site as good as possible with CSS, and it certainly wasn't worth the tradeoffs of loading a big faster (not that it couldn't have had it's loading time improved--just, cutting JS was a nonstarter).
  - onion2k 3y ago
    It's not unnecessary if the feature is something you want? The js is unnecessary if you can achieve the same result with plain css.
    - ajkjk 3y ago
      And you often can't.
      - spartanatreyu 3y ago
        In my experience, most people just aren't aware of what CSS is capable of. But to play devil's advocate: just because you can, doesn't mean you should.
- TheAngush 3y ago
  If you replace JavaScript with CSS you aren't saving bandwidth; you're trading it. In many scenarios I'd argue CSS would require more bandwidth. It can get quite verbose.

znpy 3y ago

My guess is that it’s going to be a tradeoff between functionality and compatibility. Wikipedia is consulted every day by a lot of people, i guess that a large number of those people are running older browsers.

starkparker 3y ago
Mediawiki itself is built to support 10-year old phones (which is why the Moto G makes an appearance in the post - it's the official low-end Android benchmark) and older desktop operating systems. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Compatibility#Browsers https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Compatibility#Browsers
- tommy_axle 3y ago
  Makes sense since the Moto G is also what Lighthouse and a lot of tools driven by it use. So PageSpeed Insights (pagespeed.web.dev), the Lighthouse developer in Chrome tab and even external services like https://totalwebtool.com https://totalwebtool.com all generally evaluate mobile performance using it to simulate a slower experience.

pier25 3y ago

> media viewer -> dialog <dialog> has only been available in Safari for about a year. https://caniuse.com/dialog https://caniuse.com/dialog Wikpedia is one of the most popular sites on the internet. It needs to be as compatible as possible so that means using JS.

manquer 3y ago
You should be able to detect user agent and determine capability and send the poly-fills for backward compatibility ?
- pier25 3y ago
  Sure, there are many different ways to tackle this.
- ryan_lane 3y ago
  Then you'd need to shard your cache on user agent, which would lead to considerably worse performance for everyone.
  - manquer 3y ago
    Surely at the scale of Wikipedia that wouldn’t be a factor ? considering the dominance of few browsers (chrome , safari on iOS) will most users notice any difference? The first one (with that UA) to the site with a new build will have they cache key warmed up ?
    - ryan_lane 3y ago
      User-agent is way more granular than chrome, safari, firefox, etc. It's not a great shard key.
- paulddraper 3y ago
  And hurt your caching.... All to get rid of a tiny bit of JS.