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Comment by humblebee | Hacker News Reader

> What about web apps?

I think it's important to make this distinction. A lot of websites don't need the JavaScript they ship with to present the material the users want. I agree those websites should work without JavaScript.

However, you can't expect actual web applications to do this.

Examples

- https://www.draw.io/

- https://www.audiotool.com/app/ (sign in required; demo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvIu_R8bmdA)

- https://human.biodigital.com/signin.html (sign in required; demo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dW4JSMlBhWQ)

- https://pixlr.com/x/

Other more commonly know examples

- Most of Google Drive offerings

- Google Analytics control panel

- Twitch

I see this confusion a lot when this topic is discussed on HackerNews.

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Webapps can be implemented just fine without Javascript; I’ve been doing it for years. React is a luxury, not a requirement, and progressive enhancement is a thing in all but the most demanding apps.

The point is, I currently exist in a world where I randomly shut off all javascript on websites, and it’s a happy world. Personally, I’d be tickled pink if it was a built-in browser feature (and if it forced web devs to be more responsible? Bonus!)

Curious how to implement https://github.com/jgraph/drawio without JS?

No, not in every case can they be built without JavaScript. That's an insane statement to make.

Example: Build a usable decent image editor that allows you to preview your changes without the page refreshing or redownload an entirely new image (therefore using even more data).

Example 2: Make a playable 3D game

Example 3: Make a spreadsheet web app

The list goes on. Some things can of course be done without JavaScript but tons of ideas would not only be infeasible to develop, they'd be a usability nightmare.

Why do you want any of those things to run inside a browser? Those all sound like great candidates for being actual installed software. Do we even remember how to write that?

This everything-is-a-website mentality is a disaster for privacy, security, and the future of decentralized general-purpose computing.

> Why do you want any of those things to run inside a browser? Those all sound like great candidates for being actual installed software.

The point is to remove the need to install things.

> security

An image editor that runs entirely in the browser and only has sandboxed access to open and save dialogs is more secure by miles than running a random .msi installer.

Many reasons why:

- Convenience of just going to a site and not installing anything.

- Cross platform, if you have a browser most web apps will work.

- Being relatively certain that by just visiting a web app you're not going to end up with malware or other unwanted software

- Being able to access your app from other locations without admin access.

- Updates are ready and available instantly

There are of course many many more benefits.

I get that not everything has to be a web app but it's disingenuous to imply that they have no use cases.

Both Java and C# tried to break the web (silverlight and Java FX) and both ended up being considerable failures.

We still don't have a reasonably easy way to write cross-platform applications (Mac/Win/Lin/Phone) in a native-first language. The reason JS has taken off is because it filled a rather HUGE hole.

If there is a chance that is changing, let us know, but right now, the hole isn't being filled with anything else.

JavaFX is a GUI toolkit. It does allow the use of CSS for design, but is nothing like silver light, flash, etc. It's not mean to run in a browser at all. You probably meant Java applets?

Nobody said anything about “every case”, but I’m here to tell you that most webapps can be written without it. How do you think webapps were written before React came along?

I do it every day, and there’s absolutely no reason that progressive enhancement should be ignored today, except that fromt-end devs have forgotten how.

You implied "every case" when not addressing the list of web apps, while also rejecting my premise that there is a distinction between "websites" and "web apps" by stating:

> Webapps can be implemented just fine without Javascript; I’ve been doing it for years.

You never addressed any of the examples, so I don't see why it's wrong to assume you believe that the listed applications can be implemented, in the browser, without JavaScript.

You flat out rejected the idea.

> How do you think webapps were written before React came along?

Jquery / Prototype / ExtJS, and others where written in Flash or Java.

I think it's fine to want parts of the internet to work without JavaScript or having any programming language involved. I highly suggest you checkout IPLD[0]. I've always thought that having a graph browser, much like the original intent of www may of been when Tim Berners-Lee wrote the original web browser.

It would be fascinating if the entire internet functioned as workers extending the graph that is the internet. Web applications adding to the graph, while web browser, walked through it. There is a lot to be imagined. I think there is room for both applications and data to exists together.

[0] https://ipld.io/

> I’ve been doing it for years.

Who is asking you do to this? I have not had a single request -- ever -- in 15 years of web development. Hey more power to you if you want to disable JS, but the world will be leaving you behind.

Things that work without JS are typically much faster, more responsive and more consistent in terms of user experience. A competitive advantage over what young frontend developers produce these days.

I’m one of the people requesting this kind of thing. Just because your helpdesk or sales is not forwarding my requests to you doesn’t mean I haven’t made them.

I also ask my ISP to support ipv6, but I imagine the same thing happens there. Engineers never get the memo because it’s deemed unimportant by people who make decisions.

1) The applications you develop/design (I infer) have a very limited kind of interaction, or have no need to support offline conditions and/or real-time data. This is not the case for the rest of the world.

2) what you propose is completely different from the proposal in the link. I’d be ok with a JS-off-by-default world (or a cookie-off-by-default too!!) but having a limit on file size is just… miopic.

You’re right on the second point: I think it’s somewhat silly to set an arbitrary size limit (an easy javascript off button would be fantastic, however.)

Your first point misses the argument. It’s not that you should support everything with JS disabled; you should, however, support a subset of your interaction as a fallback. Yeah, users don’t get offline mode or whizzy ajax updates, but you can absolutely find a way to work, in nearly all apps. And it isn’t that hard.

The fact that so many people believe this is impossible is an indication of how low the front-end development bar has fallen. This is why we have webpages that take 10MB of JS to render 300k of text.

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