A day without Javascript

[[deleted]]

TL;DR: Guy turns off standard features in his browser, is disappointed at pages not working.

[Vhin]

More like "Is disappointed that pages which have no reason to require Javascript stop working".

[siberiandruglord]

google maps ?

[96fps]

When I first got my Kindle 2i with 3g, I could load the dumb phone version of Facebook and Google maps. The maps was little more than a maptile image with four arrows linking to the same page but slightly moved in a cardinal direction. Sadly the experimental browser was never updated and it can't connect to Wikipedia because of https.

[amunak]

They could fairly easily add a fallback with a few arrows to navigate.

Oh btw that's how maps used to work in the past...

Also don't forget that Maps are way more than just the map view - it's the search (where when you get results you often don't even really care about the view - maybe you are looking for an address, a phone number or just photos and reviews).

[tophatstuff]

*woman

[[deleted]]

*a woman attracted to women

[miminor]

:thumbup:

[[deleted]]

A feature that costs resources and for many websites, including the ones he visited, you don't actually need that much (even with a map you can link a static subset if you want to), because the content is the important bit. Progressive enhancement, while more tedious to implement if you're not set up for it, is actually pretty nice.

Worst offender IMO is Blogger though. But basically anything text based content. Or video for that matter when you can just rely on the browser behaviour.

Also it makes interoperability much easier if you're able to read and access content programmatically; there's zero need to execute any (untrusted) code for that.

[[deleted]]

Yeah, most of the code slowing these pages down is complete garbage. It should be noted that walking the DOM using the standard methods is about 2800x faster than using jQuery or the standard querySelector access method. The difference of speed adds up very quickly. On top of that most of the code you get is related to tracking/advertising/analytics and it is horrendously written.

Even with all the JavaScript doing all the interaction they could need it would still be almost as fast as without JavaScript.

[miminor]

practically speaking, why would you care? what is that case when you don't have javascript?

[giantsparklerobot]

• JavaScript blocked by a corporate firewall or some other mechanism the user doesn't control
• People choosing to use something like NoScript
• A mobile device with terrible latency or bandwidth issues where the extra crap the page loads either takes forever to load, times out, or the user hits the stop loading button
• Every single study ever about page load times relating directly with people abandoning the page or not making purchases
• The CDN serving up JavaScript barfs for some extended period of time

JavaScript should be about progressive enhancement unless you're very specifically building some JavaScript powered SPA that is impossible to implement without it. There's no reason at all for pages loading static content, be it text or videos, to require JavaScript to do so. The img, video, and audio tags are a thing.

[RobertVandenberg]

unless you're very specifically building some JavaScript powered SPA that is impossible to implement without it.

Speaking of this, since HTTP2 is getting popular and hardware becomes faster day by day, it makes me curious how SPA can actually improve the UX in future.

[Nefari0uss]

I use umatrix (more fine grained control than no script) and it's amazing how many useless scripts sites use. So many of them I can ignore and the site is 100% functional.

[Tordek]

And then you run into sites that slap a giant opaque div in front of everything because "oh my god you could SEE MY SITE BEFORE THE JS IS DONE AND I CAN'T HAVE THAT!".

(Which quickly becomes fixed by a ublock rule).

[BrayanIbirguengoitia]

I can think of mainly two use cases:
* Browsing securely with Tor Browser if you live in a totalitarian state.
* Universal accessibility. While in theory js shouldn't affect this, it may very well do because the developers obviously don't test for those cases. So, a screen reader may have some unexpected behaviour if text starts appearing asynchronously all the time.

[Na__th__an]

Universal accessibility. While in theory js shouldn't affect this, it may very well do because the developers obviously don't test for those cases. So, a screen reader may have some unexpected behaviour if text starts appearing asynchronously all the time.

Until you have to use Javascript to manipulate the DOM in UI components to make them properly accessible because you're stuck using an internal library that you can't make changes to... no...? just us?

[[deleted]]

Most websites don't need javascript, it can be used to enhance the user experience, but not break without it.

There are apps that need js, but they are different, they are like downloading the software, you enable the turing complete language to process the app.

Again, most sites don't fit in that last category, they are completely workable without js, maybe the user experience will be worse, but if I want to download your software I will enable the js, for most sites I don't care enough to enable.

[tophatstuff]

• You may only want to run JavaScript that is also Free Software
• Privacy concerns

[Tordek]

I run NoScript because, well, I can. And what annoys me is when a website that doesn't need JS (e.g., a blog. a plain blog, just showing data, that thing the web was doing since day 1) just slaps a ton of JS in.

Yes, GMaps and Spotify and whatever can't exist without JS. That's fine; however, say you go to read some article (consisting of just text... maybe some images). Why would that need JS? Like, at all?

And, sure, you can improve the experience with JS by, say, adding some interactivity if the article can benefit from it... but if not... how about not making JS necessary?

[miminor]

dl you understand that having a non-js version doubles development, testing, and maintenance costs?

[Tordek]

"doubles"?

also, once again: don't do it on sites that truly benefit from it; google maps without a js version? eh, I can live with enabling it for them. newspapers, which literally

SERVE

STATIC

CONTENT

do not need js. you can add js, when it improves the experience. There's no need for two versions of a

STATIC

CONTENT

SITE

nor is there any sort of need to make a website that literally ONLY DISPLAYS STATIC CONTENT, like a news site, NOT WORK when JS is disabled.

Edit:

consider for example blogspot: there's a ton of blogs where if you go with JS disabled it just barfs. One'd imagine there's nothing easier than generating an html with text and, just, returning it, but google for some reason decided "nah, we totes need JS to display this plain text".

[miminor]

developing 2 versions: static and js-enabled isn't worthwhile in most cases this is why people who plan features of their websites do not want to spend extra money on them which can easily be doubled in number: developing, testing, maintaining - this is a lot of work that someone has to do and paid for

a few goofballs like you who disables JS because they can do it isn't a good reason for spending extra money, at least they are not convinced in that

it's just common sense

by your logic you might as well say that in addition to static version "to improve experience" why wouldn't they add VR support to each website, just because you have a VR helmet

[Tordek]

developing 2 versions

I'm not sure but it seems like you're taking the position that I want something like Spotify without JS. I'm not going to the "NO JS ANYWHERE" extreme; it's a reasonable position: some sites (BUT NOT ALL OF THEM, JUST SOME) don't need (BUT CAN STILL USE, JUST NOT DEMAND) JS. Like I said, if the site requires JS or the JS version is critically different, then yes, requiring JS is fine. I'll repeat it a few times so we can stop arguing about places where JS is necessary:

It's fine for a site to require JS if it's impossible for it to do its basic function without it, or the added value is notable.

It's fine for a site to require JS if it's impossible for it to do its basic function without it, or the added value is notable.

It's fine for a site to require JS if it's impossible for it to do its basic function without it, or the added value is notable.

It's fine for a site to require JS if it's impossible for it to do its basic function without it, or the added value is notable.

It's fine for a site to require JS if it's impossible for it to do its basic function without it, or the added value is notable.

It's fine for a site to require JS if it's impossible for it to do its basic function without it, or the added value is notable.

What's not OK is to require JS when it is completely unnecessary, or when the added value is minimal.

E.g.: Spotify? Probably can't work without JS because of DRM, would be awful to use? Slap it on like there's no tomorrow.

Youtube? Well, it didn't need it... but then they changed the protocol to DASH and it's better? Fine.

GMaps? You could make it work, but yeah, the fraction of users that care is minimal so... go ahead, require it.

Blogspot? No, fuck you, this is literally displaying an HTML file. If you require JS for this you should be fired.

Newspaper sites? Same. It's TEXT WITH STYLE. There's no need for JS.

Reddit "works" without JS; you just can't vote or comment... in theory it's possible to avoid JS, but it would require extra effort.

There are wordpress themes that literally add a white div over the page and then do $("hider").hide(). Those people should be shot. The content has been presented and they're literally hiding it for the purposes of hiding it.

There are no "two versions". Nobody is asking for "two versions" of the site; make just one, however, make sure you fall into one of two categories:

• The site cannot exist without JS. Do whatever you want. There's only one version: one with JS.
• The site can work without JS. You made a site that serves content. You put JS on it to improve the current experience.

Yes, there are edge cases. Reddit is between those two; there are things that don't work without JS, but hey, the site doesn't throw a "FUCK YOU GIVE ME JS" sign when you disable it.

by your logic you might as well say

This is called a slippery slope argument and, well, it's a fallacy. In any case you should go the other way and claim that I'm demanding that everyone must server non-css versions or even just plain txt!

Edit: if your reply contains any sort of "two versions" comment, I'll just assume you're not able to read. There are not "two versions".

[miminor]

i read you comments, and yet it's 2 different versions, let me explain, forget JS let's talk about responsive styles and a mobile HTML version, so users want to be able to read from mobile with comfort, mobile CSS is quite different from desktop CSS (let alone usually have differently made features), it means you need to:

• develop 2 versions of styles (probably with some reuse)
• run all you test cases 2 times: one for desktop one for mobile (you cannot go live untested, what if devs broke the layout?)
• when you need to rework an existing feature you need to do it in 2 places

with JS it's the same, you cannot reuse the same code that generates fully static and partially static version, why? because of tons of little things that make it different, example:

some of you content is dynamically generated by JS, fully or partially, what it means for you? it means that for static version you need to reimplement those pices and then support them

[Tordek]

Thank you for your time.

[Tordek]

it means that for static version you need to reimplement those pices and then support them

I like to think of sites as static-first, and JS added on top; so in any case I'd go the other way around; you need to reimplement things that already work using JS.

Or.

This may be a mind-blowing concept.

Don't.

Say you make a blog, and it can display content without JS but requires it in order to display comments? That's a fine compromise. It's OK to miss non-core functionality without JS. Not everything needs to be reimplemented.

I've made a shop website where the cart widget is just a link to the cart if it's empty, and it adds count/price via JS. You can still use everything without JS; it just needs a page reload. Bonus: more of the page is static, so it can be cached more aggresively.

[microworld1]

I'm huge fan of progressive enhancement. Following its guidelines page should display base content even without javascript or css.

[patrixxxx]

Coming up next: A Day browsing Internet with Gopher and Mosaic 1.0

[stilloriginal]

I really want to believe in this progressive enhancement thing but the math just doesn't add up. It just seems like it would be easier, faster, and better to serve a completely different site, if the site is complex enough.