Comment on nobody in webdev knows what graceful degradation is anymore

Korne127@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

• cupcakezealot@piefed.blahaj.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  many websites rely on JavaScript,

  which is the problem that most people don't understand the concept of graceful degradation

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• bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Most websites out there could work fine without JavaScript. They rely on it because they can’t be bothered to be better.

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  • rigatti@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    What would they do instead?

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    • ackthxbye@feddit.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      How about serving a proper HTML that contains the data they want to display? Instead of an empty page that tries to load the data via JavaScript.

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      • chunes@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        I miss when JS was just a silly thing you could use to add trails to the mouse cursor to impress anyone who stumbled onto your geocities page

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      • possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        They could just add a text box that says please enable JavaScript.

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    • MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      developer.mozilla.org/…/Graceful_degradation

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      • possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        It is a lot simpler to just require JavaScript. It is widely supported and is default enabled on all platforms and browsers.

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    • SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      When I ask a server for a page, it should give me content, not a shitty script and a note that says “here, you do it.”

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      • possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        That isn’t how it works

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  • possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Have you ever tried building a modern page without JavaScript.

    You can do a lot of things with HTML5 and CSS. It just is very complicated and painful. It isn’t intuitive and the behavior will vary across browser.

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    • bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Yes, that’s my job.

      The point isn’t to emulate the JavaScript functionality somehow. The point is to simply fetch the desired information as a new page load when necessary. The page should work in lynx.

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    • Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      sure, it’s painful and pointless to build a fucking virtual machine without JS, but you can do 95% of normal website things with pretty bog standard HTML+CSS these days. You don’t even have to fiddle about to do pretty complex things, that’s just built-in most of the time.

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• adarza@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  website wouldn’t need to embed any JS code.

  other than the 20 trackers and ad scripts.

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• Azzu@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  There’s a difference between “wouldn’t work” and “wouldn’t work as nicely”. That’s what this post is about :D Most websites would still work in the same basic way without js.

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  • Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    OP really muddled the waters by writing:

    exactly as it does with javascript turned on

    That’s obviously impossible and wouldn’t be degraded.

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    • cupcakezealot@piefed.blahaj.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      exactly as it does aka forms submit, logging on works, you can achieve the same thing

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      • Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        It’s either exactly the same, or it’s gracefully degraded. You’re asking for two opposite things at once.

        For what it’s worth I support the notion that fundamental functionality should be supported without Javascript, with good old form submissions.

        But I also recognise that you can’t get the exact same behaviour without javascript initiated background GETs and POSTs. Easy example: A scrollable map that streams in chunks as you move it.

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      • axEl7fB5@lemmy.cafe ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        form validation is dogshit without js

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  • possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Why would someone spend tons of time on something that isn’t needed? Only a few people even know how to turn off JavaScript and chances are they will just turn it back on since nothing works.

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• MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  so it’s kind of obvious that they don’t work without it.

  Uhm, the web is to share content, not to play JS. That’s what graceful degradation is for: the primary usage should still work.

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  • Korne127@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Uhm, the web is to share content, not to play JS
    The web doesn’t have a single unified purpose. Even if I hate it as a programming language, JavaScript if the basis almost all client-side browser operations build upon.

    Sure, a simple website which just contains information works without it, but if you design a website in which the client does anything interactively and not everything should be processed server-side, it’s not really possible. No matter if you’re talking about a web game, something like Google Earth or an in-browser editor.

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    • MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      All examples that work worse than a native software.

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• veniasilente@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  the website wouldn’t need to embed any JS code.

  That’s the point.

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