What exactly is it with javascript that these people don't like? Does it offend them that the web becomes a more dynamic and colorful experience? I don't get it.
When I am on the web to consume information, JS is not required. It can be useful for some data visualization but that's it. This is, of course, not the approach taken by almost all web pages. (Even if you insist on collapsible navigation which is dubious at best, you still don't need JS, CSS is enough. https://codepen.io/raubaca/pen/PZzpVe )
In general, it is a mighty odd notion every random person who can throw up a web page gets to run code on my machine. This shouldn't be a casual thing, sandbox or not.
I have not written much JavaScript in my life, but from a user perspective I absolutely hate all the fancy animations and slow transitions. They are super annoying and tiring for me. Just give me the damn website as fast as possible.
And to achieve these cool animations websites have to load a shitton of javascript which makes them even slower.
Some may even be just CSS. I'm still waiting for a way to toggle the CSS ones off for all websites, without breaking them.
These often even look sluggish, but maybe it is a relative thing and some see the prompt movement of UI elements as unpleasant and call the animations "smooth". Or maybe it really takes a very powerful GPU on the right hardware to fully experience animations without feeling annoyed? Or both?
Sure, and if you want to define it as such you are free to only include documents in that definition. The rest of us will keep using the same protocols for accessing other things too and have another definition of www.
JS is okay to write these days. I enjoy the fact that maps (objects), arrays, and functions are its native data language. But it's still weakly typed, which leads to all sorts of insane confusion during development. Above all, almost all of its libraries and frameworks are highly opinionated, try to monopolize the application architecture, lead to poor performance, and teach completely nontransferable skills that are useful almost nowhere else.
In general, minimizing the amount of JS you write improves all of these issues across the board. A minimum of JS is easy to debug and ridiculously fast.
Personally I don't think that the problem is that JS makes the web a more colourful and dynamic experience, but that the vast majority of that colourfulness and dynamism is just not good.
Hijacking the user's scroll, rendering the entire website content on JS at client-side (although the emergence of SSR has made this less of an issue. Who knew that not rendering all the things on the client device makes things better, I'm shocked…) and SPAs more generally (GitHub for example is so jank and annoyingly slow nowadays, it's just irritating), doing things like buttons and links with a `<div>` with an `onClick` instead of using the appropriate markup, et cetera.
Of course, many of these things are exactly opposite to the actual best web development practices. But why, then, is this shite so prevalent‽ It's also bad for things like accessibility, with screen-reader users and such sometimes struggling majorly because of myriads of badly developed web applications. Meanwhile a standard HTML document, with some CSS and maybe some JS for progressive enhancement just works. Of course, I know that many use cases require far more interactivity and dynamism than that, but is it such a big burden to not make the user experience worse with bollocks like reinventing browser scrolling?
A sad thing about the Github situation is that, until some months ago, it was perfectly fine for browsing directory tres and clicking to view files on the web, all that worked without javascript. Now it doesn't, except perhaps for the top-level and its README.
That's a shame, I used that a lot for quick browsing, checking and/or comparison of code in repositories hosted by Github.
At one point, Javascript was awful to write, and to this day is often the cause of awful performance or anti-features on websites. It's not hard to find some way to be mad at it, if you're looking.
It's gotten so much better to write, and most websites manage not to screw things up. But it only takes a few of them to put a bad taste in your mouth.
But don't worry, if there were any alternatives, people would screw them up, too. When WASM really takes off, it's going to be quite fun to watch. Everyone that hates JS will hate WASM even more.
The biggest offense to me (as a web developer, even) is the jank of js-rendered websites. This commonly means a blank, or (in slightly better cases) a skeleton page, which then often makes more network calls to get page content, which then *eventually* renders.
The 'build' tooling is terrible too, with layers of build-steps (due to incompatible code module types) that result in excessive script sizes. Due to the nature of Javascript, each byte is more computationally expensive than HTML or CSS.
TLDR: Websites are slower, and the fanciness doesn't add much.
The donation popup on Wikipedia is not a color I like. "Login to continue reading" and other fake paywalls don't create a more dynamic user experience...and fucking cookie consent forms, don't get me started.
I don't dislike JavaScript. I dislike JavaScript being used to make the web suck. So I have NoScript for when it sucks too much.
chx|1 year ago
In general, it is a mighty odd notion every random person who can throw up a web page gets to run code on my machine. This shouldn't be a casual thing, sandbox or not.
dailykoder|1 year ago
And to achieve these cool animations websites have to load a shitton of javascript which makes them even slower.
njsg|1 year ago
These often even look sluggish, but maybe it is a relative thing and some see the prompt movement of UI elements as unpleasant and call the animations "smooth". Or maybe it really takes a very powerful GPU on the right hardware to fully experience animations without feeling annoyed? Or both?
eadmund|1 year ago
It offends me that in order to read a document I also have to grant the author of that document execution privileges on my machine.
It offends me when a page’s images are all blurry, low-resolution images (which would be redownloaded by the Javascript I have disabled).
The World Wide Web is a web of documents. It offends me that is has instead become a consortium of walled gardens.
SahAssar|1 year ago
Sure, and if you want to define it as such you are free to only include documents in that definition. The rest of us will keep using the same protocols for accessing other things too and have another definition of www.
Linkd|1 year ago
netbioserror|1 year ago
In general, minimizing the amount of JS you write improves all of these issues across the board. A minimum of JS is easy to debug and ridiculously fast.
sham1|1 year ago
Hijacking the user's scroll, rendering the entire website content on JS at client-side (although the emergence of SSR has made this less of an issue. Who knew that not rendering all the things on the client device makes things better, I'm shocked…) and SPAs more generally (GitHub for example is so jank and annoyingly slow nowadays, it's just irritating), doing things like buttons and links with a `<div>` with an `onClick` instead of using the appropriate markup, et cetera.
Of course, many of these things are exactly opposite to the actual best web development practices. But why, then, is this shite so prevalent‽ It's also bad for things like accessibility, with screen-reader users and such sometimes struggling majorly because of myriads of badly developed web applications. Meanwhile a standard HTML document, with some CSS and maybe some JS for progressive enhancement just works. Of course, I know that many use cases require far more interactivity and dynamism than that, but is it such a big burden to not make the user experience worse with bollocks like reinventing browser scrolling?
njsg|1 year ago
That's a shame, I used that a lot for quick browsing, checking and/or comparison of code in repositories hosted by Github.
wccrawford|1 year ago
It's gotten so much better to write, and most websites manage not to screw things up. But it only takes a few of them to put a bad taste in your mouth.
But don't worry, if there were any alternatives, people would screw them up, too. When WASM really takes off, it's going to be quite fun to watch. Everyone that hates JS will hate WASM even more.
dynamite-ready|1 year ago
timw4mail|1 year ago
The 'build' tooling is terrible too, with layers of build-steps (due to incompatible code module types) that result in excessive script sizes. Due to the nature of Javascript, each byte is more computationally expensive than HTML or CSS.
TLDR: Websites are slower, and the fanciness doesn't add much.
brudgers|1 year ago
I don't dislike JavaScript. I dislike JavaScript being used to make the web suck. So I have NoScript for when it sucks too much.
macguyvermectin|1 year ago
[deleted]