How to write a JavaScript-free todo app using just HTML and CSS | Hacker News Reader

How to write a JavaScript-free todo app using just HTML and CSS

mattzeunert.com

149 pointsmostlystatic46 comments

I made something very similar for fun a few years ago[0] and added it to a repository called You-Dont-Need-JavaScript[1].

CSS-only for this sort if thing is totally contrived, but making it still proved to be a fun little exercise.

[0]: https://codepen.io/scryptonite/pen/oLGzdj

[1]: https://github.com/you-dont-need/You-Dont-Need-JavaScript

So you can but... looking at the code... you don't want to.

Right, but I find these demos interesting nonetheless - in that they reveal capabilities of HTML + CSS that, as a casual frontend developer, you wouldn't normally think of them as having.

I think this is the best way to look at projects like these.

It's not an exercise in efficiency, or even attempting to prove that HTML + CSS is somehow better than a JS version. I think it's about getting as much as you can out of CSS and HTML. As a viewer, looking at these projects usually give me 2-3 tricks to add to my collection and is worth the read.

I honestly don't think I'll ever NEED to implement a CSS+HTML calculator sans JS, but it's nice to know that it's possible and it could be something I look at if I want to implement a piece of it for something similar.

Exactly, but it's an example as to similarly, it bugs me to no end when I see styled radio/checkboxes that rely on JS at all. I'm still wrapping my head around flexbox though... The naming conventions and rules are just weird and alien to me, and been at it for over a year now off and on.

These exercises will be a lot more fruitful to read through if the author can acknowledge the contrived nature of these attempts and provide a real-world advantageous use case of the techniques outlined

I don't think he needs to acknowledge how contrived his solution might be or provide a real-world use case. The article very well could be taken as inspiration to approach problems from different angles.

Oh like pure academic exercises..

Javascript-free golf.

How complex of a web app can you make without using javascript.

That sounds like a lot of fun and good exercise! The css would be terrifying though.

Indeed. It's clearly not meant to be a realistic or recommended approach. It's a practice of lateral thinking, an experiment to see how much of a problem you can solve with limited set of tools. It's easy to throw in every library, framework, technology at a problem, and they might not be necessary. Sometimes approaching a problem from this unusual perspective can yield good solutions. Often times, it's messy and hacky, but in either case you learn a lot along the way.

Yes. Folks with an "enabling attitude" (as Martin Fowler puts it so well - https://martinfowler.com/bliki/SoftwareDevelopmentAttitude.h...) would probably tend to appreciate exploratory exercises that expand horizons or demonstrate new ways of using old tools, while folks with a "directing attitude" might tend to dislike them.

I guess it’s similar to code golfing. It can be interesting to try to get as far as possible with an extreme restriction.

Using inputs and pure css imo is a superior method to deliver content tabs and other similar UI. Minimal markup for a fully functional non js bound interface

That's super cool! The `:checked` and `:valid` and `:invalid` selectors are really powerful tools when it comes to CSS. This is a real fun use of clever CSS selectors.

I was doing something similar the other day with toying around trying to come up with an HTML/CSS only game. I ended up with this: https://codepen.io/billnreed/full/boXrVr

In doing this, you break HTML semantic relationships. Each to-do is a child of the previous to-do. That hurts.

I applaud the work in making something sans JS for the kicks of it, but if your going to do it, at least don't break HTML.

The semantic Web is, unfortunately, quite dead. Hopefully a JavaScript-free Web can still happen.

"Hopefully a JavaScript-free Web can still happen."

The phone you're reading this post on has nearly as many CPU cycles available to run code as the web server that generated the html. Why on earth would you not want to distribute the overall application load.

> Why on earth would you not want to distribute the overall application load.

Maybe because I want my phone battery to last a long time, but I don't care how much electricity the web server uses. Maybe also because the JavaScript is probably proprietary software [0], which I don't want to run on my computer.

[0] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.html

FWIW, the HTML + CSS approach of the author is just as copyrightable and potentially non-free as the JS in question. There's really no difference. Sure his 'code' is practically pointless, but that's no obstacle to being non-free.

Uglified/minified HTML+CSS is almost as difficult to parse by humans as JS.

I'm all for free software and very supportive of the arguments, but the pro-HTML, anti-JS rhetoric never made a lot of sense to me, consistency-wise, at least in these days of CSS3.

Blocking js was one of the best decisions I have made. The web is so much more usable and pleasant without it.

1. Because having the web server render html doesn't use appreciably more CPU cycles than encoding the raw data in json anyway.

2. The web server has much more efficient languages available meaning that it's probably far fewer total CPU cycles than rendering on the client.

3. The web server can also cache the results and only render it once for a thousand users, can't do that with client side rendering, so your using far more CPU cycles there.

4. The server knows when the content changes, it can even render the page ahead of time, the client can't.

I am doing that by downloading, parsing, rendering and evaluating the HTML and CSS. I'm not giving you arbitrary code execution. Do you want to fold proteins too?

I also think this is something Web people overlook. Our phones are _insanely_ powerful, yet almost all Web sites are slow-loading garbage: because of JavaScript.

It won’t, and it shouldn’t

These kinds of tricks are nice for progressive enhancement - you can have a navigation section in your server-side-rendered SPA that outputs a fully usable nav like this, and if a user has JS disabled, they'll still be able to navigate around your site, albeit with hard page reloads instead of more instant transitions. It's funny that people are using js frameworks to render js-free snippets that are then progressively enhanced with more js, but that's web development today.

> What doesn’t work: > Persistence after page reload

That's not an app.

TL;DR: Use styled checkboxes in a form.

Yeah, that would be a pretty basic feature. I get that he is just showing of some ´out-of-the-box' thinking. But really, it is not something practical.

In the end, he made a TODO-Layout, not a TODO-App. Interesting experiment I suppose, if you are into frontend stuff

A common misconception is that adding JS to HTML (e.g. in forms) _hurts_ accessibility. In fact, foregoing JS in favour of "pure" CSS+HTML can actually be much worse.

Yes, you can create certain interactions with CSS alone but doing so purely for the sake of not using JS is pointless and at worst harmful.

Doesn't take much to add html local storage natively to run this as a web app. Still js free.

localStorage is a JavaScript API.

I know a lot of people hate JavaScript, but is HTML+CSS really a more pleasant programming approach? The "solution" seems worse than the problem.

My guess it's just a hack to show HTML+CSS are enough to do it without a real programming language.

It's just a proof of concept to show what's possible

Now we just need someone to write a frontend framework that compiles down to CSS.

So what happens when I create my 51st todo?

The form stops working, deleting a todo also leaves it in use so you'll run out constantly, but it's like a pure css app bro - it's pretty sweet I think.

You could also make more than 50 in his js renderer file on github if you needed more

you break the internet. lol

I look forward to a day when it will be doable to mine bitcoins by using CSS!

I made something just like this for my introduction class in computer science

this is really nice. need a break from javascript.

CSS is so much better.

css is styling, it's not a programming language

Swoosh

why the downvote? Obvi sarcasm.

Is this a joke?

No, not exactly. Read some of the other comments. Like this one:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15589943

Reply on news.ycombinator.com