Hacker News Reader

Comment by 1vuio0pswjnm7 | Hacker News Reader

"You need to enable Javascript to run this app."

No doubt. But do I need an app to read the information delivered by the website. I use the web as an information service.

   curl -s -A "" https://jremissing.com/api/episodes|(tr \{ '\12';echo)

Sorry but I see no need to enable Javascript for reading text.

Of course, the Ads by Google component of the page does require Javascript. For ads/tracking, one does need to enable Javascript.

View on HN

Yup. Yet another shitty 2022 website that displays content for a second on my phone and immediately clears the page afterwards. How hard is it to create a https://motherfuckingwebsite.com/?

Speaking for myself, it's much easier to make a website that requires JS than to build one that works without.

This is a site that does not require Javascript but uses an "app" that does. As demonstrated above.

I don't like the entitlement oozing from this comment. The site was made by one person as a side project.

Simple sites are easier to make.

What about the "entitlement" of the web developer who tries to dictate what client (user-agent) may use to retrieve public information. Some users like me have very low requirements for websites. All I need is the text. It takes minimal effort to satisfy those users, much less than using a Javascipt app framework.

Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—things like article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting.

From the guidelines.

Really? Of course you can always do things in a cleverer, more technical, less visual, better performing, "look-everyone-how-i-can-do-it" kind of way.

But I really don't get the point of your comment. It's 2022. If some people publish work that visualizes information for all of us, I'm glad they have Javascript helping them do it.

I think this somewhat misses the point. The content is clearly there. When it fails to load javascript, instead of leaving the content there, it replaces the content with a message about requiring js

That's not "javascript helping them do it"

That line of thinking is why you need gigabytes of RAM just to check social media, all for a few kilobytes of text. HTML and CSS already give you all the visuals you'll ever need to display a little text.

The "look-everyone-how-i-can-do-it" idea is likely part of the reason that sites like this use an "app" framework. There is nothing more technical or "cleverer" about simpler websites that do not use "app" frameworks.

The issue however is not the use of an Javascript app framework (I have no issue with their use), the issue is that people falsely pronounce Javascript to be "required" and users are shown a blank page or some other ungraceful failure when they turn JS off. Clearly, JS is not required to retrieve the information, as demonstrated above. The web developer is intentionally hostile to users retrieving the information with clients (user-agents) that do not cater to advertising.

Everyone knows how easy it is to detect whether the user has Javascript enabled or not. The question is what web developers say and do when they detect it is not enabled.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com