
Ask HN: What is a lightweight web framework? - muzani
I&#x27;m building something targeting legacy devices. The devices are run on an old Webkit, able to run basic HTML&#x2F;JS&#x2F;CSS but not even things like CSS3.<p>We tried Angular 4 but it was too heavy. It does run with Node&#x2F;express hosting a HTML file. What are some lightweight frameworks we can use between this?
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farnsworthy
Given _legacy devices_ , I'm not sure that vanilla JS is the best way to go,
despite being a lightweight option.

Sometimes I think if you're dealing with an old browser(s), pick a technology
of its time--in this case, perhaps jQuery (lightweight and ubiquitous).

It's like a time machine, where the old browser can say: "Oh god, thank you.
Finally someone I can _understand_. Why do these kids keep asking me for
promises? Promise what?!"

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roryisok
If this is a web based app (rather than a local app based on web technologies,
like webos or windows phone), you should move as much of the processing server
side as possible. Aim to not use a client side framework at all, if you can
get away with it.

Obviously there's a trade off to be made between performance and development
speed, but the more work you make the client do on a legacy device, the worst
the user experience will be.

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al2o3cr
How fast is the network connection, if present? There's been massive strides
in optimizing JS performance in the past few years, so a system prior to those
is going to struggle with many of the modern frameworks. If the network is
fast, you might get snappier results doing more things server-side.

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muzani
Yeah, the devices themselves don't hold a lot of memory but the network
connections are fast. Everything has always been done server side.

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seanwilson
What does the application do? Why legacy devices? Why do you need to use a JS
framework?

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quickthrower2
I think you can be this fancy with your CSS:

[http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/](http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/)

And use vanilla JS.

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muzani
I've always liked raw JS, but frameworks are useful when there's dozens of API
calls.p

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ams6110
Mithril always seemed pretty lightweight to me.

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tboyd47
Why do you need a framework?

