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JS isn't there to replace hypermedia. It's there to give you a better user experience by augmenting what plain hypermedia can do. You can argue that many author
by mbitca 13y ago
JS isn't there to replace hypermedia. It's there to give you a better user experience by augmenting what plain hypermedia can do. You can argue that many authors are doing a bad job of it, but that's a different discussion. Baby, bathwater, etc.
To take a trivial example: If HN didn't use js, an upvote would mean a server roundtrip and a payload of 50k or more for popular discussions. So mobile users get shafted. Crappy hotel wifi users get shafted. You are forced to update all discussion threads, even one you might be in the middle of, just to upvote. Basically, your experience is made worse.
And this is about the simplest use of JS I can think of. For other sites there are great opportunities to make your user experience better.
- betterunix 13y ago"If HN didn't use js, an upvote would mean a server roundtrip and a payload of 50k or more for popular discussions" I am able to upvote posts and articles without Javascript enabled on HN...
- mbitca 13y agoAnd you got a full page reload for your troubles. That was the point. Had you enabled js, you'd get the better user experience, by not having to do that roundtrip. You might not care if you're at your desktop on a fat pipe, but performance and user experience matters. Speed matters.
- betterunix 13y agoYeah, but people should not be cut off just because you need to do something slower for them. A worse user experience is better than nothing at all.
- sergeykish 13y agoHN is example of proper enhancement. Now back in reality: my 1GB RAM netbook can afford about 15 pages, much less my 400MB smartphone. Such incredible hardware spoiled by feature misuse. Web fonts, animations, components and tracking can go to hell. If people disable a feature there is a reason. If there are not many of them and they are highly educated, other just don't know how to remove all that crap. In the end only text meters.