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Comment by vedantroy | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand this hatred of Javascript. The only websites I've felt were actually bloated are news sites with a lot of ads, but that's not a problem with Javascript as much as it is a problem with excessive ads.

What counts as information-centric? A lot of basic things (commenting, searching, liking a post) require Javascript. If you want to use pretty animations, there's a high probability you need Javascript.

Making information-centric sites only use HTML/CSS would significantly decrease the capabsilities and attractiveness of the sites.

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> The only websites I've felt were actually bloated are news sites with a lot of ads, but that's not a problem with Javascript as much as it is a problem with excessive ads.

The problem is JS has too much power in the browser, and too little consideration for security. It can effectively take control away from the user, there's virtually no way to know what it's doing without source code audits, which are prohibitive, and the security vulnerabilities are legion.

> What counts as information-centric? A lot of basic things (commenting, searching, liking a post) require Javascript.

None of these actually require JS.

> > What counts as information-centric? A lot of basic things (commenting, searching, liking a post) require Javascript.

> None of these actually require JS.

Can you imagine a facebook doing a page reload/refresh every time you click to like a post? Or without loading more content on demand every time you scroll the page?

Yes. Forums worked this way for years. It was fine.

> Can you imagine a facebook doing a page reload/refresh every time you click to like a post?

You're stuck thinking about Facebook as if it still had long lists of posts with infinite scroll. The UX would be completely different when the design constraints are different.

For instance, instead of infinite scrolling, you might show one post at a time with clickable previews of the last and next posts. A like doing a full postback isn't a big deal with this approach, particularly with judicious use of anchors. Certainly not as slick, but perfectly usable.

Usable, with a worse user experience, to what end? It would be nice to have more non-js built-in browser behavior, though.

A slightly worse user experience on Facebook, for a significantly better and more secure user experience on the web overall. I'm not sure that's such a terrible tradeoff.

Agreed on built-in browser behaviour though. Chrome pushing more input types a few years ago was a great thing.

Put me in the group of users who despise infinite scrolling --- I would much prefer a paged interface (like the way it was before IS became popular) because it gives you a sense of where you are, and more importantly, an O(1) way to resume where you left off.

(I suppose the companies like IS because it has an addictive property, but I suspect me and others who see through that don't like it at all. Relatedly, the other popular concept of a "feed" also conjures up images of farm animals munching away at a trough; perhaps that is the real intent...)

Making information-centric sites only use HTML/CSS would significantly decrease the capabsilities and attractiveness of the sites.

For me, and probably many others, the "attractiveness" of sites that don't use JS is far higher. Searching the Web for information with JS enabled is like visiting a library full of books that will randomly turn their pages, jump around, and scream at you like those in the Harry Potter world.

Intrusive ads are a problem, but not the only problem.

My basic issue with JavaScript is when it's used to move stuff around after the page is done loading, or when it significantly delays when loading finishes.

Voting on posts, and well done search autocomplete can be nicely done with JavaScript, commenting itself works fine without (I don't think there's anything JavaScript where I'm writing this?)

Somedays it feels like I spend as much time waiting for pages to load in 2018 as I did in 2000, and pages certainly look prettier, but don't impart any more information.

I've come across just straightforward documents that require JavaScript to display.

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