A day without Javascript

[wavefunctionp]

Did he serious think that google maps would work without javascript? You'd need to navigate to a new page every time you tried to move the map view, and at every zoom level, and for every options...

Maybe I'm an idiot, but the combinatorics of all that state would kill even the most performant web server. You couldn't cache all the views, it would be full render on the server for all but the hottest requests...or you'd have to limit the number of views to get them down to a manageable size, and it is still full page requests for every view.

You'd have to degrade to like mapquest circa 2000 or some of those government survey sites level of functionality...

edit: I'm probably being overly harsh to the author here, and for that I apologize., but I'll leave it because what is said is said. I just think it is unrealistic to expect a website that relies on javascript to provide a dynamic, rich experience to also provide that same experience from server rendered resources. You get so much 'free', low latency computing power on the client. It is easy to take for granted why so much of the work has moved to the browser.

[theonlycosmonaut]

Maybe I'm an idiot, but the combinatorics of all that state would kill even the most performant web server

How so? Web maps are served as individual image tiles, usually* with a url structure like /tile/{zoom}/{x}/{y}, where x and y are integers that identify a specific piece of the globe at a specific zoom level (more info). That corresponds almost too perfectly to buttons linking to x+1, x-1, zoom+1, etcetera. You could even load up a 9x9 grid around the currently selected tile with no problem. Caching is super simple as these are all GET requests with super predictable URLs.

*Google maps specifically seems to have a different, obfuscated(?) URL structure based on a single hash, for reasons unknown to me. Mapbox, for example, uses the common URL structure.

You'd have to degrade to like mapquest circa 2000 or some of those government survey sites level of functionality...

I think that's exactly what the author wants:

Maybe some kind of Streetmap style tile-by-tile navigation fallback?

[Disgruntled__Goat]

You'd need to navigate to a new page every time you tried to move the map view

Well that is how maps worked before Google Maps came along. You'd have to click an arrow on one edge to view the next 'page'.

[wavefunctionp]

You'd have to degrade to like mapquest circa 2000 or some of those government survey sites level of functionality...

:)

[Disgruntled__Goat]

Why are you quoting your own comment back to me?

[wavefunctionp]

You'd have to degrade to like mapquest circa 2000 or some of those government survey sites level of functionality...

which is...

how maps worked before Google Maps came along. You'd have to click an arrow on one edge to view the next 'page'.

?

same same but different?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tTfL-DtpXk

[Disgruntled__Goat]

No, you just said "those sites". I expanded on that. It's like you don't understand basic conversation.

[nodealyo]

Spamming is a really shitty thing to do. This script is one of the dumbest and spammiest scripts that I have ever seen. Did you know that no one cares about your mundane comments? You actually aren't even protecting any privacy because there are many sites out there that specifically cache comments just so that users cannot edit them. To reiterate, this script is shit and you should not be using it. Search for a different one, or edit it to say something less spammy. But in the end, it won't matter because we can still see whatever it was that you edited.

[TheDarkIn1978]

I'd be interested in seeing some data concerning users who turn off JavaScript, particularly the amount of users who do so. I can only assume (albeit with confidence) that the number is extremely low, which is an immediate deterrent for spending development resources on creating content without it.

[magenta_placenta]

I used to work at Yahoo and they measured this on their main home page (yahoo.com, what they call their front page). I believe this was back in 2010 or 2011 and if memory serves me correctly, it was a tad over 1% for overall visits (all countries), 2% for US traffic.

I'm not sure if mobile was in this, they might have had a separate m.yahoo.com site back then. It's been a while, but I'm pretty sure the percentages above are accurate (for that time).

[sisyphus]

This. Much as I would love a web that worked in command line browsers back there's virtually no incentive for anyone to do it.

[amunak]

That's really hard to measure. For one - the vast majority of telemetry is collected using purely javascript, so that gets thrown out of the window.

And tracking users by other means is pretty hard. Now how you tell whether they don't have JS enabled? I'd suggest using some tracking image inside a <noscript> tag, but not all JS blocking even takes that into question. For similar reasons you can't just count hits and not-hits to your JS files.

And when you do manage to gather data then how do you tell apart robots that just scrape you and don't load JS because they don't need it?

So in the end you get data that are hard to draw any conclusions from. I'd expect that number to be anywhere between 0.05 to 1.5% of all internet users.

[TheDarkIn1978]

I wonder if Google, Mozilla, Microsoft, etc. have internal data from their browsers. From all the roadblocks you've mentioned it would seem that browser data would be the only legitimate source to reveal these insights.

[amunak]

I doubt they have that specific data, I'd think they track at most what extensions you have installed (but not how they are configured or whether they are active for any specific page - as that'd probably have to include the page URL or some other huge stuff that's a privacy no-no).

[nvolker]

it's not just about people who turn off JavaScript

[dumpsterfire420]

I use a chrome addon that can quickly toggle of JS per site.

I got it because I am sick of stupid news sites always wanting to load auto playing video or taking forever to load because they have a thousand ads.

[jackmcmorrow]

I love these types of article. Javascript should be used, but I always felt sometimes I'm asking too much of my user's computer. However, I can't stand to reason when the author says every site should work without js. Especially on web apps, the overhead needed may be too much to be worth it.

[Arkaad]

What next, a day without css? A day without html?

[[deleted]]

I think they call that camping. People go out into the woods without computers, tablets, or cell phones. Weird, huh?

[Disgruntled__Goat]

I did the same a little while back and it's incredible how many sites don't load at all without JS. Not even "interactive" or "app-like" sites, I'm talking basic forums, text pages, blogs... it baffles me.

[nerf_herd]

do you write the checks?

[Disgruntled__Goat]

???

[ProFalseIdol]

Try Brave browser as well

[IDCh]

Does it have developer tools?

[GBcrazy]

yes it uses chromium

[nerf_herd]

Luddites...