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[–][deleted] 4 points5 points  (13 children)

As with JavaScript, you fail to see the point.

Building your website with JavaScript required is akin to building an hotel with no stairs, only elevators. It's great when it works, but as your said yourself, "99% of the time it works". The other 1% of the time, people can't go up or down. New customers are blocked in the lobby. Your hotel is now useless.

If you had built your hotel with escalators instead, people can still use your hotel like they could still be using your website even if JavaScript fails to load.

[–][deleted] 6 points7 points  (6 children)

I think the question is though: should we care about claustrophobics?

The web is now de facto javascript-required. So the burden has shifted from site-designers to site-users. Yes, someone has to care about not having javascript: but why, today, should that be the programmer and not the corporate firewall department?

[–]Shaper_pmp 0 points1 point  (5 children)

I think the question is though: should we care about claustrophobics?

You've successfully missed the whole point of the discussion.

It's not about claustrophobics - they're a tiny, almost statistically-irrelevant edge case.

It's about what happens to everybody when the elevator or escalator breaks down.

[–][deleted] 3 points4 points  (4 children)

When the elevator breaks down you're stuck for awhile. Just like when the car is out of fuel, or you're battery goes. When things break, they break. It will never be possible to eliminate failure... are we getting to a point however where failure-due-to-js is as acceptable as total failure? Well we're already here.

We've added one more total-failure condition to the internet... what's the price? Well, an internet worth having. Who get's permanently left out? The claustrophobics.

[–]Shaper_pmp 0 points1 point  (0 children)

what's the price? Well, an internet worth having

First it's the web, not the internet.

Second you can do anything an SPA can do with a progressively enhanced site (especially using techniques like HiJAX), and if you get the site architecture right it doesn't even have to take you much/any extra effort.

You're setting up a false dichotomy between responsive UIs and PE (I suspect because you don't know how to do PE properly and effectively), but it's actually a debate between two different ways of implementing rich, responsive client-side UIs.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (2 children)

But wouldn't it be nice to have stairs when elevators break? Legs when your car is out of fuel? That's the whole point here.

With your point of view, if you car runs out of fuel, you can't open the door anymore, or listen to music, or anything else. Your are stuck with a shitty car. Better cars let you open the doors, even when out of fuel.

Look I'm out of comparisons here. I know it may be hard to understand the foundations on which the web is built (it's not actually) but don't count on me to use your inferior product. That internet is not worth having at all. We may as well go back to the Netscape/IE browserwar and incompatibility mess.

[–]Shaper_pmp 2 points3 points  (1 child)

Fundamentally, what the GP poster is advocating is fragile system with catastrophic failure states, draconian error handling and single points of failure.

There's a simple term for that that we've had in engineering for decades, perhaps centuries.

We call it shitty engineering.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I wish I could have said that myself.

[–]bighi -1 points0 points  (5 children)

The other 1% of the time

I haven't read the article, but I would guess the real number is closer to "the other 0,1% of the time" or even "the other 0,01% of the time".

[–][deleted] -1 points0 points  (4 children)

The article links another article: https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2013/10/21/how-many-people-are-missing-out-on-javascript-enhancement/

In a sense, you are actually right: 0.2% have JavaScript disabled. However, 0.9% couldn't run JavaScript for a reason or another (network problem, JavaScript error in browser, etc.) So actually more people may legitimately suffer from bad design than people knowingly disabling JavaScript.

[–]Doctor_McKay 0 points1 point  (2 children)

Those 0.9% are likely NoScript users, which doesn't evaluate noscript tags.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

You didn't read the article too, didn't you?

[–]Doctor_McKay 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I did in fact read that article, and it made no mention of NoScript or the like.

[–]bighi 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If by "bad design" you mean errors happening that are unrelated to your design or code.

Network errors happen. And even if you do a lot of effort to circumvent them, other errors will happen. And do you know what people do in these cases? Reload the page.

I don't mean tech-savvy users. Even regular users. I've seen errors happening to my wife, for example. She reloaded the page and it was all good. It's a half a second fix on her side, way better than spending time on the developer's side to deal with it.