Submitted 6 hours ago by cupcakezealot@piefed.blahaj.zone to mildlyinfuriating@lemmy.world
i absolutely hate how the modern web just fails to load if one has javascript turned off. i, as a user, should be able to switch off javascript and have the site work exactly as it does with javascript turned on. it's not a hard concept, people.
but you ask candidates to explain "graceful degradation" and they'll sit and look at you with a blank stare.
If it’s a standard webpage that only displays some static content, then sure.
But everything that needs to be interactive (and I’m talking about actual interactivity here, not just navigation) requires Javascript and it’s really not worth the effort of implementing fallbacks for everything just so you can tell your two users who actually get to appreciate this effort that the site still won’t work because the actual functionallity requires JavaScript.
It all comes down to what the customer is ready to pay for and usually they’re not ready to pay for anything besides core functionallity. Heck, I’m having a hard enough time getting budget for all the legally required accessibility. And sure, some of that no script stuff pays into that as well, but by far not everything.
Stuff like file uploads, validated forms and drag and drop are just not worth the effort of providing them without JS.
Fucking Reddit and their shite navigation controller that shits the bed when you zoom in.
Most don’t even know @media (prefers-color-scheme: dark/light), rather cobble something with JS that works half of the time and needs buttons to toggle.
A button to toggle is good design, it should just default to your system preferences.
Blame the ui frameworks like react for this. It’s normalized a large cross-section of devs not learning anything about how a server works. They’ve essentially grown up with a calculator without ever having to learn long division.
They also continually forget that you can’t do frontend only validation for things.
I wrote my CV site in React and Next.js configured for SSG (Static Site Generation) which means that the whole site loads perfectly without JavaScript, but if you do have JS enabled you’ll get a theme switching and print button.
requiring JS makes sense on some sites, namely those that act more like web apps that let you do stuff (like WhatsApp
I mean yes, but Whatsapp is a bad example. It could easily use no JavaScript. In the end it’s the same as Lemmy or any other forum, you post a message, get a new page with the message. Switching chats is loading a new site. Of course JavaScript enhances the experience, makes it more fluid, etc, but messengers would work perfectly fine without JavaScript.
Maybe I’m out of the loop because I do mostly backend, but how do you update the chat window when new chats come in, without JavaScript?
How would a page fetch new messages for you without JS?
Funny, from my standpoint, more functional JavaScript almost always feels like service degradation - as in, the more I block, the better and the faster the website runs.
personally I think this is mostly due to for some reason people tend to give up on visiting a website if it takes more than a second or two to load, so instead they load a mostly blank page (which gives the sign that its loading) and then use javascript to load the rest of the content in.
that and fucking ads galore
To balance it out, I made it so that my web page fails to load if JavaScript is turned on. Yes, really.
I’m sure your 12 users really appreciate how edgy that is
I don’t have any users, just readers, and all seven of them use cli browsers to read it, lol.
I, as a user, should be able to switch off javascript and have the site work exactly as it does with javascript turned on.
I mean… many websites rely on JavaScript, so it’s kind of obvious that they don’t work without it. If it would work without JS in the first place, the website wouldn’t need to embed any JS code.
many websites rely on JavaScript,
which is the problem that most people don't understand the concept of graceful degradation
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.
website wouldn’t need to embed any JS code.
other than the 20 trackers and ad scripts.
Most websites out there could work fine without JavaScript. They rely on it because they can’t be bothered to be better.
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.
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.
Fair, some websites do need JavaScript though. Such as webapps. Could they be server-side rendered?
Depending on the web app, the real solution would be a much more simplified JavaScript free version
Yes. Web apps existed before JavaScript.
SSR is a thing and could be used to render most content remotely without pissing off readers.
They know ssr is a thing which is why they used that term. But ssr produces a static page or static component, where webapps often require some level of interactivity for their basic functionality, such as reacting to server events. They’re asking if that can be achieved with ssr
Not even possible to reply to this post using the Lemmy Web UI without having Javascript enabled; the reply button doesn’t function without Javascript.
a lot doesn't work on piefed but thankfully replying does (just tested it)
i run with scripts disabled by default. it gets annoying at times, but most sites and pages i go to work fine. a few are true ‘apps’ and are whitelisted. random sites that don’t work i just search for an alternative source if i really want to read it. i have separate browser installs with fewer restrictions that i use specifically for certain things (like webmail or the little online shopping i do).
Supervisor194@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
It’s worse than this even. I have an old Raspberry Pi 3B+ (1G) that I got in 2018. I hooked it up the other day to mess around with it, it’s been maybe 2 years since I did anything with it, ever since I got a Pi 4 (4G). 1 gigabyte of RAM is now insufficient to browse the web. The machine freezes when loading any type of interactive site. Web dev is now frameworks piled on frameworks with zero consideration for overhead and it’s pure shit. Outrageous.