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Comment by Asooka | Hacker News Reader

It's sad that the site doesn't work without javascript. We had this exact navigation working with iframes 20 years ago. And I could resize the TOC on the left back then.

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Hey, javascript is fundamental to web today, unlike 20 years ago. Even if a site like this definitely wouldn't need javascript since it's so simple, there really isn't much of a trade-of since less than one percent of all visitors are likely to have javascript disabled.

I disagree JavaScript is fundamental to the web - I'm a huge JavaScript fan (top 1% I'd say), and write it for my job... I've written a few books on it even... but I always use noscript when browsing the web: hackernews, reddit, twitter - can all operate fine without JavaScript. Dodgy third-party ad scripts/malware do need it, but I don't really want them running anyway.

Yes, 20% of sites I load are either a blank page or "You need to enable JavaScript to run this app" (it's the new "An error has occurred"). If it's a friend's site, or something that obviously needs it - like a game, or art project - then I'll temporarily whitelist it. But if not, then hey, I just got a 20% productivity boost by saving some time on whatever it is that thinks it needs JavaScript!

Most if not all ads can be blocked with an ad blocker like uBlock origin.

I used uMatrix myself in the past (I also used NoScript a much longer while ago), but it requires too much time to cherry pick the remote hosts (usually CDNs) and files to allow.

Hacker News works great without javascript.

I browse with no javascript a large proportion of the time.

The web is so refreshingly fast without all the scripts.

Authors own user-agent doesn't do javascript.

I was able to access all the content as either html or md. I could also download PDF and other formats. I am not using a javascript-enabled browser.

There is a way to make an iframe in the body of the page change by clicking the navigation bar in the main page without reloading the main page/navigation bar?

yea you put a target on the anchor tag with the name of the iframe

exactly, same as with a frame... I haven't done much with resizable iframes in a while, but I do remember that at least in the v5-v6 browser era that iframes wouldn't resize properly to match their containers without JS to handle the event, I'm unsure if this is still true, as I haven't really done anything with iframes in nearly a decade now.

aside: used to use/implement something like ajax callbacks with hidden frames and dynamic form posts.

Man, I love JS/Browsers today over pre-2016.

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