Hacker News Reader

Comment by smt88 | Hacker News Reader

This likely doesn't mean what you think.

His full thread contradicts the headline[1]. They heavily use several JS libraries, including Turbolinks.

As far as I can tell, they actually mean that pages are fully server-rendered, rather than having presentation and data served separately and assembled in the browser (i.e. what people now call Jamstack).

1. https://mobile.twitter.com/sstephenson/status/12726081176043...

View on HN

Yes - the headline here is missing the important part:

"HEY’s UI is 100% HTML over the wire"

And specifically instead of using a JSON API to get the data, and render it on the client. JS and CSS is still used, but for other things.

If there's Javascript on the site, then surely the JS code goes over the wire too?

I don't have an invite and can't check, but whenever the UI changes, it looks like the only possible effect is swapping the <body> tag out for a new one.

Obviously if JS is disabled, this will just navigate to a new URL and load an entirely new page.

But if JS is enabled and the new <body> tag does not contain any <script> tags, then the only thing going over the wire is HTML after the page loads the first time.

How can you replace just the body tag without some javascript to set the html and ajax to get the html?

What is the big advantage of replacing the body and updating the header compared to just refreshing the complete page?

JS and CSS don't have to be re-parsed and computed, and images don't have to be reloaded into memory.

You also get more control over what the browser looks like while the next page is loading (e.g. loading animation instead of blank white interstitial screen).

But does it also mean you can't start a new thread/reply if your link to the server is down?

Your question seems to be, "Does this UI model support offline mode?" This is pertinent because Gmail notably does.

My assumption is that Hey can support offline mode using some clever pre-fetching, but it may not yet in v1.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com