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What were the arguments in favour of SPAs in the first place? I'm finding it interesting that most of the top HN submissions (by popularity) matching "single p

What were the arguments in favour of SPAs in the first place? I'm finding it interesting that most of the top HN submissions (by popularity) matching "single page app" are critical, not positive. First 15 follow, all but 5 are negative: - You probably don't need a single-page app (https://journal.plausible.io/you-probably-dont-need-a-single-page-app https://journal.plausible.io/you-probably-dont-need-a-single...) 816 points | 6 years ago | 499 comments - A single-page app is almost always worse than a multi-page app (https://www.gregnavis.com/articles/the-architecture-no-one-needs.html https://www.gregnavis.com/articles/the-architecture-no-one-n...) 289 points | 6 years ago | 145 comments - The myth that you can’t build interactive web apps except as single page app (https://htmx.org/essays/you-cant/ https://htmx.org/essays/you-cant/) 262 points | 4 months ago | 143 comments - Building a single-page app with Htmx (https://jakelazaroff.com/words/building-a-single-page-app-with-htmx/ https://jakelazaroff.com/words/building-a-single-page-app-wi...) 252 points | 5 months ago | 143 comments - AWS Lambda as a back end for a single-page app (http://lg.io/2015/05/16/the-future-is-now-and-its-using-aws-lambda.html http://lg.io/2015/05/16/the-future-is-now-and-its-using-aws-...) 229 points | 10 years ago | 73 comments - Create your own dysfunctional single-page app (https://tinnedfruit.com/articles/create-your-own-dysfunctional-single-page-app.html https://tinnedfruit.com/articles/create-your-own-dysfunction...) 208 points | 6 years ago | 138 comments - The Single-Page-App Morality Play (https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2021/single-page-app-morality-play/ https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2021/single-page-app-moralit...) 207 points | 3 years ago | 131 comments - Todos: a Backbone.js example Single-Page-App (with LocalStorage)(http://documentcloud.github.com/backbone/examples/todos/index.html http://documentcloud.github.com/backbone/examples/todos/inde...) 169 points | 14 years ago | 28 comments - Your single-page app is now a polyfill (https://itnext.io/your-single-page-app-is-now-a-polyfill-7881fb01694e https://itnext.io/your-single-page-app-is-now-a-polyfill-788...) 164 points | 4 years ago | 158 comments - Why I hate your Single Page App (https://medium.freecodecamp.org/why-i-hate-your-single-page-app-f08bb4ff9134 https://medium.freecodecamp.org/why-i-hate-your-single-page-...) 107 points | 8 years ago | 120 comments - Building a single page app with Backbone.js, underscore.js and jQuery (http://andyet.net/blog/2010/oct/29/building-a-single-page-app-with-backbonejs-undersc/ http://andyet.net/blog/2010/oct/29/building-a-single-page-ap...) 103 points | 14 years ago | 19 comments - Why I hate your Single Page App (2016)(https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/why-i-hate-your-single-page-app-f08bb4ff9134/ https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/why-i-hate-your-single-pag...) 37 points | 11 months ago | 34 comments - Sonny – Fast single page app engine (https://github.com/felixmaier/sonnyJS https://github.com/felixmaier/sonnyJS) 36 points | 10 years ago | 25 comments - You probably don't need a single page app (https://plausible.io/blog/you-probably-dont-need-a-single-page-app https://plausible.io/blog/you-probably-dont-need-a-single-pa...) 31 points | 6 years ago | 24 comments - Ask HN: What are the common pitfalls/problems of Single Page App's? 13 points | 9 years ago | 18 comments

pavlov 2y ago
That’s also because they were not called SPAs for the first 15 years of the web. The very first technology for building “SPAs” was Java Applets. Corel released a web-based office suite already in 1997, and it was practically an applet for each app. This was replaced by Flash because Macromedia did an incredible job of getting Flash Player preinstalled on every desktop computer. If you wanted to deliver a rich and seamless app-like web experience in 1999-2004, you used Flash. (It was mostly very primitive as a dev environment, but did a great job at vector motion graphics and video.) The original progenitors of present-day SPAs are Microsoft Outlook for Web and Google Maps. Outlook invented the ubiquitous XmlHttpRequest object, and Google Maps became so popular that it coined “AJAX.” Following these examples, people started building DOM-based JavaScript apps that loaded data asynchronously and built up views entirely in code. And that’s when they became modern SPAs. (There was also Silverlight and some other technologies that vied for the rich web app crown, but JS/DOM carried the day especially when iPhone happened and wouldn’t support anything else.)
- jslakro 2y ago
  Macromedia's Rich Internet Application (RIA) concept aimed beyond mere navigation, delivering purposeful, desktop-like experiences.
- dredmorbius 2y ago
  Appreciate the history lesson. And yes, I was there for all of that (though not engaged in Web-app development). One of the first AJAX apps I recall was the original Gmail. That was a revolution in what the browser could do, followed fairly shortly by others (notably Google Earth which launched about the same time). SPAs simply to deliver relatively static content however seem ... a poor fit. I'll note that HN itself is LLML. Which leaves my original question: what specifically was the selling point of SPAs, or Flash, or early AJAX? Because despite having live through that the emergence was both sufficiently diverse (a number of different approaches) and gradual that I don't have a sharp recollection of what that was.

pavlov 2y ago

That’s also because they were not called SPAs for the first 15 years of the web. The very first technology for building “SPAs” was Java Applets. Corel released a web-based office suite already in 1997, and it was practically an applet for each app. This was replaced by Flash because Macromedia did an incredible job of getting Flash Player preinstalled on every desktop computer. If you wanted to deliver a rich and seamless app-like web experience in 1999-2004, you used Flash. (It was mostly very primitive as a dev environment, but did a great job at vector motion graphics and video.) The original progenitors of present-day SPAs are Microsoft Outlook for Web and Google Maps. Outlook invented the ubiquitous XmlHttpRequest object, and Google Maps became so popular that it coined “AJAX.” Following these examples, people started building DOM-based JavaScript apps that loaded data asynchronously and built up views entirely in code. And that’s when they became modern SPAs. (There was also Silverlight and some other technologies that vied for the rich web app crown, but JS/DOM carried the day especially when iPhone happened and wouldn’t support anything else.)

jslakro 2y ago
Macromedia's Rich Internet Application (RIA) concept aimed beyond mere navigation, delivering purposeful, desktop-like experiences.
dredmorbius 2y ago
Appreciate the history lesson. And yes, I was there for all of that (though not engaged in Web-app development). One of the first AJAX apps I recall was the original Gmail. That was a revolution in what the browser could do, followed fairly shortly by others (notably Google Earth which launched about the same time). SPAs simply to deliver relatively static content however seem ... a poor fit. I'll note that HN itself is LLML. Which leaves my original question: what specifically was the selling point of SPAs, or Flash, or early AJAX? Because despite having live through that the emergence was both sufficiently diverse (a number of different approaches) and gradual that I don't have a sharp recollection of what that was.