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Comment by kilemensi | Hacker News Reader

My problem with this approach is most people don't/can't pull it off properly with the end result being mediocre/sub-standard in either case. It's like when iPhone competitors tried to compete by producing duo keyboard/touch screen phones. They just ended up loosing both ways.

Pick one and do the best design/implementation you can pull off. One design/implementation is hard enough and unless you don't plan to do any real hustling (like getting out of the office and do some face-to-face marketing and lead generation), SEO shouldn't be that high on your list anyway. Good if SEO works for you but it's not the end of the world if it doesn't.

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I agree, the goal of Snapsearch is to allow the possibility of going full steam ahead with heavy javascript, and not having to worry about trying to make it all compatible with non-js clients like search engines. It's all about reducing the workload in making single page apps.

> the goal of Snapsearch is to allow the possibility of going full steam ahead with heavy javascript, and not having to worry about trying to make it all compatible with non-js clients like search engines.

The same people who can't build websites in a progressively enhanced way are the same ones that also can't get other fundamental concepts working properly, like:

* Using HTTP URLs in links (or even, using anchor elements as links)

* text-equivalents for non-text content

* not relying on colour to convey content

* Using appropriate semantic structure to mark up content.

There's not much that can be done to save a developer at that point. The best your tool can do is expose more inferior/low-quality content to a search engine (inaccessible in terms of Perceivability, Operability and Usability - since your solution only deals with the Robustness principle of accessibility), after it has been safely constrained inside a JavaScript-mandated environment.

When JavaScript dependency becomes an acceptable starting point, semantic structure, and good markup principles get dumped just as quickly, because they are interdependent.

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