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I feel like this is trying to convince me to support clients without javascript. The answer is no. Absolutely not. If you do not have javascript then I don’t

I feel like this is trying to convince me to support clients without javascript. The answer is no. Absolutely not. If you do not have javascript then I don’t want you as a user. I don’t care why. Javascript or no service.

sccxy 3y ago
I have some pretty popular personal web app and I still get angry e-mails from people using Windows XP that my site is broken and I am terrible developer for making broken websites. I wonder how they even manage to browse web daily. Or they have to send daily hate mail for developers...
- andrewstuart 3y ago
  I'll support latest version minus one of major browsers. That's all I'll support - if any user has a problem because they are on an old version, they should use some other website instead of mine. Lack of JavaScript or latest web browser is a user problem.
  - dgan 3y ago
    that's just aggressive and lazy.
    - sccxy 3y ago
      why?
      - extra88 3y ago
        Only supporting the very latest browsers is basically a "works on my machine" attitude. That's lazy. It means not supporting 11% of iPhone users and 18% of iPad users [0]. That's aggressive. Adoption of evergreen browsers is also slower than that. Chrome 124 was released this week and even though 123 has been out for a month, the majority of desktop users are still on 122. [0] https://developer.apple.com/support/app-store/ https://developer.apple.com/support/app-store/
    - asadotzler 3y ago
      also, even the fastest updating browsers, Firefox and Chrome, take several months to move most users to a new version. There's a spread across a few versions tapering at about 3 or 4 back but current minus 1 is gonna cut off double digit percentages of users. Minus 2 or 3 would be reasonable for someone being aggressive and lazy, but 1 is kind of obscene (or bullshit.)
agile-gift0262 3y ago
I don't understand. Why not build most of the functionality in HTML + CSS and use JavaScript only for interactivity and "real time"? Hacker News is a very good example of that done right. I have JavaScript disabled and I can use the site just fine. The only thing I can't do is collapse comment threads.
- TheCleric 3y ago
  Because this closes you off from being able to use a whole suite of development options (such as front end JS frameworks).
kstrauser 3y ago
I’m with you. On the Internet today, a web browser is a thing that runs JS. Clients without it are HTTP browsers. Given that no browser maker has shipped that as a default config in what, like 20 years?, that ship has sailed. JS came out a year before CSS for Pete’s sake. It just turned 28. It’s finishing its residency and can rent cars. I get why people didn’t like it nearly 30 years ago. I didn’t because it didn’t run well on the Amiga I had back then. But complaining about it today makes me imagine someone complaining about “why don’t these so-called ‘web’ sites gracefully fall back to table layout for those of us who can’t or won’t use CSS?” I understand the fundamental difference. I just don’t think it matters anymore.
- eviks 3y ago
  If you understand the fundamental difference, why are you using CSS as a comparison?
  - kstrauser 3y ago
    Because sometimes analogies are convenient, although imperfect. Close up, sure, JS is running random code on your computer and CSS is a non-executable description of a page’s appearance. Those are very different. Farther away, they’re both fundamental technologies of the modern web that most new things are built on, and disabling them breaks a huge portion of the web.
    - eviks 3y ago
      And sometimes analogies lead you astray like in this case of comparing the age of some tech to biological age or random code (which btw also breaks plenty of the web) and styling
panny 3y ago
I make these talking points because I hate javascript as a developer. I won't ever bother listing all the reasons why, because they are so well known. I'll actively repeat these points ad nauseum in every meeting if you have this attitude with me on the team. To me, JS is a terrible language to work with, but I will make it about the user. You will lose this argument with the boss, because he doesn't care about languages, he cares about more users. So you can fold your arms and pout about it like this, and I will still win. Most of my apps work without JS and when someone tries to introduce a JS only feature, I make their lives miserable with the boss until they give up or quit their job.
- em-bee 3y ago
  so what are these arguments in favor of the user? as a user i like websites that are interactive and fast to respond. from my experience that works better if the site is done in a frontend framework and built to reduce roundtrips to the server. i am on a slow connection, and when on hackernews for example on a slow day half the time the pages don't even load. so i sit there wanting to reply to a comment and i can't because first the reply link fails, and when it finally loads, submit fails. had hackernews been written with a frontend framework, then i could click reply and submit without internet access, and the page could store my comment until internet is back and send it without me having to babysit it. even just plain reading would would be better. with js new comments could be loaded in the background and they could be added to the page and marked as new without reloading the whole page. a much smoother experience than having to wait for a reload. i don't know what kind of sites you are building. maybe in your domain this kind of example doesn't apply, but claiming that javascript is bad for users across the board is just plain nonsense. most users do not care whether something is done in js or not. they care that it functions well, and there are cases where javascript provides the better functionality. (submitting this comment took 1.3 seconds + another 300ms to load the updated page. and that's fast. with js it could happen in the background.)
  - eviks 3y ago
    Which popular examples are engineered with these JS niceties in comment submissions ?

sccxy 3y ago

I have some pretty popular personal web app and I still get angry e-mails from people using Windows XP that my site is broken and I am terrible developer for making broken websites. I wonder how they even manage to browse web daily. Or they have to send daily hate mail for developers...

andrewstuart 3y ago
I'll support latest version minus one of major browsers. That's all I'll support - if any user has a problem because they are on an old version, they should use some other website instead of mine. Lack of JavaScript or latest web browser is a user problem.
- dgan 3y ago
  that's just aggressive and lazy.
  - sccxy 3y ago
    why?
    - extra88 3y ago
      Only supporting the very latest browsers is basically a "works on my machine" attitude. That's lazy. It means not supporting 11% of iPhone users and 18% of iPad users [0]. That's aggressive. Adoption of evergreen browsers is also slower than that. Chrome 124 was released this week and even though 123 has been out for a month, the majority of desktop users are still on 122. [0] https://developer.apple.com/support/app-store/ https://developer.apple.com/support/app-store/
  - asadotzler 3y ago
    also, even the fastest updating browsers, Firefox and Chrome, take several months to move most users to a new version. There's a spread across a few versions tapering at about 3 or 4 back but current minus 1 is gonna cut off double digit percentages of users. Minus 2 or 3 would be reasonable for someone being aggressive and lazy, but 1 is kind of obscene (or bullshit.)

agile-gift0262 3y ago

I don't understand. Why not build most of the functionality in HTML + CSS and use JavaScript only for interactivity and "real time"? Hacker News is a very good example of that done right. I have JavaScript disabled and I can use the site just fine. The only thing I can't do is collapse comment threads.

TheCleric 3y ago
Because this closes you off from being able to use a whole suite of development options (such as front end JS frameworks).

kstrauser 3y ago

I’m with you. On the Internet today, a web browser is a thing that runs JS. Clients without it are HTTP browsers. Given that no browser maker has shipped that as a default config in what, like 20 years?, that ship has sailed. JS came out a year before CSS for Pete’s sake. It just turned 28. It’s finishing its residency and can rent cars. I get why people didn’t like it nearly 30 years ago. I didn’t because it didn’t run well on the Amiga I had back then. But complaining about it today makes me imagine someone complaining about “why don’t these so-called ‘web’ sites gracefully fall back to table layout for those of us who can’t or won’t use CSS?” I understand the fundamental difference. I just don’t think it matters anymore.

eviks 3y ago
If you understand the fundamental difference, why are you using CSS as a comparison?
- kstrauser 3y ago
  Because sometimes analogies are convenient, although imperfect. Close up, sure, JS is running random code on your computer and CSS is a non-executable description of a page’s appearance. Those are very different. Farther away, they’re both fundamental technologies of the modern web that most new things are built on, and disabling them breaks a huge portion of the web.
  - eviks 3y ago
    And sometimes analogies lead you astray like in this case of comparing the age of some tech to biological age or random code (which btw also breaks plenty of the web) and styling

panny 3y ago

I make these talking points because I hate javascript as a developer. I won't ever bother listing all the reasons why, because they are so well known. I'll actively repeat these points ad nauseum in every meeting if you have this attitude with me on the team. To me, JS is a terrible language to work with, but I will make it about the user. You will lose this argument with the boss, because he doesn't care about languages, he cares about more users. So you can fold your arms and pout about it like this, and I will still win. Most of my apps work without JS and when someone tries to introduce a JS only feature, I make their lives miserable with the boss until they give up or quit their job.

em-bee 3y ago
so what are these arguments in favor of the user? as a user i like websites that are interactive and fast to respond. from my experience that works better if the site is done in a frontend framework and built to reduce roundtrips to the server. i am on a slow connection, and when on hackernews for example on a slow day half the time the pages don't even load. so i sit there wanting to reply to a comment and i can't because first the reply link fails, and when it finally loads, submit fails. had hackernews been written with a frontend framework, then i could click reply and submit without internet access, and the page could store my comment until internet is back and send it without me having to babysit it. even just plain reading would would be better. with js new comments could be loaded in the background and they could be added to the page and marked as new without reloading the whole page. a much smoother experience than having to wait for a reload. i don't know what kind of sites you are building. maybe in your domain this kind of example doesn't apply, but claiming that javascript is bad for users across the board is just plain nonsense. most users do not care whether something is done in js or not. they care that it functions well, and there are cases where javascript provides the better functionality. (submitting this comment took 1.3 seconds + another 300ms to load the updated page. and that's fast. with js it could happen in the background.)
- eviks 3y ago
  Which popular examples are engineered with these JS niceties in comment submissions ?