
The web, it's for everyone - hodgesmr
http://thewebitsforeveryone.tumblr.com/
======
notatoad
I agree with the principle of this, but i disagree with including the
javascript-is-disabled errors. If you browse the internet with one of the most
important components of the internet disabled, you're going to find that a lot
of stuff is broken, and displaying a warning that "hey, things are going to be
broken here" is preferable to just displaying broken stuff.

~~~
Smudge
You might be surprised at what can be accomplished with HTML and CSS alone.
Most of github.com works just fine without Javascript. Much of Twitter and
Facebook work too. Facebook does give a warning, but they say you should
enable Javascript "for a better experience" instead of "for _any_ experience."

I agree that showing a "hey this is broken" warning is better than rendering a
totally broken page, but it's still not as good as presenting at least a
partially working version, perhaps minus all of the usual bells and whistles.
Now, of course, this is not super-feasible if you've chosen to build most of
your site using client-side code, especially if that's where most of the
rendering happens. But then again, the lack of server-side rendering is the
obvious downside of building your site that way.

~~~
micampe
Not everyone has the resources that Twitter and Facebook have to mantain what
essentially are two version of their website.

My position is that if you disable Javascript you get what you get (both you
and I will be happy to know that I don't do web development anymore).

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
If you use progressive enhancement, you don't _really_ need two versions. You
have the base version, and you layer javascript and css on top of it. Granted,
it might be a bit more work than just rushing out a javascript-dependent
version, but it's definitely not twice the work. And you then have a much
better structured, more solid base to work on - in the long-run, I'd be
surprised if it weren't less work to do things the progressive way.

~~~
micampe
Yes, that's the ideal. Try and do it. Remember to test all the different
progressively enhanced paths that only a tiny minority of your users is using.

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
Do you also take that attitude to your code? I.e. "it's alright, that code
path only executes one time out of fifty, doesn't matter that it crashes the
program".

~~~
micampe
That is not what I meant. I meant: “that code path only executes one time out
of fifty (thousand), but you have to test it exactly like the core code that
runs thousands of times more, so maybe you can drop the feauture since it's
used by a handful of users”.

(I have my doubts one in fifty people disable Javascript)

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
Well now you're talking about an analogy that's 3 orders of magnitude away
from what we're actually dealing with, so it doesn't really hold up. BTW,
we're not really talking about 'testing' here, either - you don't actually
need to test plain HTML beyond the most cursory of glances.

~~~
micampe
We are talking about people disabling JavaScript in their browser. One in
several thousands is still a large over estimation.

~~~
TheLoneWolfling
[Citation needed]

~~~
micampe
What a thoughtful and insightful remark. If you don't believe that statement
to be in the right ballpark you are out of touch with the world outside HN.

------
prezjordan
The Chrome extension example is pretty weak. I don't know why anyone would
think you could get something form the Chrome Web Store using Firefox.

~~~
jashkenas
I disagree. Two points:

1\. The vast majority of things on the Chrome Web Store are web apps, not
browser extensions.

2\. Should GMail really only be able to work offline in Chrome?

~~~
Afforess
> _2\. Should GMail really only be able to work offline in Chrome?_

Does anyone but me remember offline email clients (hello Thunderbird!)? You
can take Gmail offline already.

~~~
dllthomas
I really enjoy nmh, with sufficient scripting and aliases.

------
davegauer
I am so torn about this.

On one hand, I think that information should be available to the technological
lowest common denominator. I hate apps that should be websites. I hate having
my browser use 100% of my CPU for 30 seconds while trying to render a page
with just 300 words of actual text content.

On the other hand, I work on web applications and I want to be able to create
rich interactions using the best tools available. So I constantly wish I could
require all my users to conform to some pretty steep minimum requirements.

I guess it comes down to appropriateness. There is a place for rich
applications and there is a place for accessible content.

~~~
Smudge
As someone who also enjoys building rich interactions as well, I find that
it's just a matter of understanding the trade-offs.

Requiring Javascript support is sort of like relying heavily on the latest
HTML or CSS features (a recent example: WebRTC). I have to consider what
happens in browsers where the feature is unsupported or disabled, and if I'm
okay with narrowing those visitors out of my userbase, then I move forward.
Otherwise I make sure that something is in place for them to fall-back on.

Javascript is a bit tricker than, say, the fancier CSS selectors, because I
often rely on Javascript for polyfills/webshims, etc, and you can't polyfill a
lack of Javascript. But when I can I still make use of that old "progressive
enhancement" idea by starting with the basic HTML/CSS elements required to
make a feature work, and then enhancing it with Javascript and more modern
styling. It doesn't work everywhere, and certainly not in cases where most of
the work is done client-side, but I still get plenty of miles out of that
technique.

------
swartkrans
IE and Safari have self-interest motivated reasons for not supporting webrtc
and for propagating their own technology, so no, I don't agree with this. I'm
not going to avoid building apps that make use of technology that companies
like Apple and Microsoft don't implement, and I don't care if that this is a
problem for people. These companies don't really want to support the web as a
platform. They want a crippled web because it beats their ecosystem lock in.

------
_mulder_
Not really sure what the point of this is. How do Google Now and GMail Offline
== 'The Web'? They are specific Apps designed to work in a specific manner,
they are not 'the web'. GMail does work with any browser when accessed via
'the web'.

100% agree with the Apple example though. Why didn't they stream in a more
accessible format?! It just served to annoy people and exclude even more
people from the Apple elite.

a few years ago banks and financial institutions seemed to be especially bad
at restricting access to just IE. Thankfully they seem to have got better, but
maybe that's because I don't use Opera anymore!

Originally I thought this was going to be an attack on Hungary's Internet Tax
or some freedom of speech protest, alas.

~~~
TarpitCarnivore
> GMail does work with any browser when accessed via 'the web'.

But last I checked Offline Gmail does not. Which I think is the point this
Tumblr is trying to make.

------
serve_yay
"Javascript apps don't work when I turn off Javascript :( :( :( :( :( :("

If you think the things made by jerks like me aren't part of the web or
whatever, then fine. You stay on your version of the web and I'll stay on
mine, and never the twain shall meet.

.....Until you actually need to do something useful.

~~~
aaaaaaaaaaa1234
Can you provide an example of a useful web-based activity that can't be done
without javascript, other than web-based games?

I've seen a huge number of sites over the years stop working because they
redesign to incorporate javascript; yet, when I visit them at work (with a
javascript-enabled browser) their shiny new site doesn't actually have any new
features.

Things that don't need javascript:

\--Form verification (you should always be doing this on the server, and
optionally in client-side javascript)

\--<video> tag

\--Popup site menus

\--Web-based chat

\--Webmail

\--Message board comments (unless you locked yourself into Disqus)

\--Nearly everything

~~~
joshstrange
Yeah and the web doesn't need CSS either.... Come on this is ridiculous, web-
based chat? Webmail? I can't imagine using those without JS. So the user is
supposed to refresh the webpage constantly to see if they got a new
chat/email?

~~~
krapp
>So the user is supposed to refresh the webpage constantly to see if they got
a new chat/email?

I remember web chatrooms working that way back when dinosaurs roamed the
earth, or maybe they had meta-tags that refreshed the page periodically.

------
imanaccount247
The web has moved so far away from its original purpose that we need something
to fill the role the web was originally supposed to be for. I hate having to
have a massive complex piece of software that takes up a GB of RAM and
includes an entire programming language just to be able to view simple text
documents that link to each other.

~~~
hollerith
I agree. Browsing is important enough that there should be browsers just for
browsing.

What we have now are browsers that support browsing but also support access to
web applications. The need to serve two masters makes the browsers we have now
suboptimal for just browsing.

In particular, a browser just for browsing would be able to be significantly
simpler than a browser that serves two masters, and as a general rule, when we
are talking about something as complicated as a browser, making a program
simpler makes it more reliable and makes it easier for a human to predict what
it will do and consequently makes it less frustrating to use.

~~~
krapp
Regardless of what the web once was, it now _is_ an application environment,
for which one application is documents ("browsing".)

You already have what amounts to a "browser just for browsing" when you turn
off javascript in the one you're using now. But a browser which _only_
interprets html and css and not javascript is just a broken browser.

~~~
imanaccount247
That's the point. The web is completely broken for the use case of "browsing
the web". We need a replacement for the web, and for web browsers, to do fill
that use case again that the web used to fill.

~~~
krapp
Your use case, and your definition of "browsing" which excludes dynamic
content, isn't typical though. Most people keep javascript turned on by
default, and for most people, it isn't broken.

Nothing has changed about HTML or browsers that prevents anyone from building
a minimalistic site, or one that degrades gracefully, they just choose not to.
This isn't a problem of the web, but the culture of web design, and the
tendency of people to only use a few corporate sites which follow the same
design paradigms.

~~~
imanaccount247
I didn't say it was typical, what does that have to do with anything. It seems
like you are trying very hard to avoid reading my words and instead read what
you wish I said.

Yes, it is a problem with the web. The culture of web design is part of the
web. This is why we need a replacement for the use case that the web was
originally designed for but no longer fills.

~~~
krapp
No, I think you're misunderstanding my intent. I'm just saying basic html and
hyperlinking still works perfectly fine, and most people read the web as
hypertext in almost exactly the same way they always have. The original use
case still exists and it still works.

~~~
hollerith
It does not work as well as it used to, and more to the point, it does not
work as well as it would if it did not have to do double duty as an
application-delivery platform.

On a very long web page, do you ever hold down the mouse button on the slider
in the scroll bar so that you can scroll up and down rapidly? If you do that
on the web page on which these words appear, it will (probably) work smoothly
and well, but on certain Javascript-heavy pages, it is very jerky. The whole
page blinks rapidly. It is tedious and difficult to see the text while the
page is moving up or down.

That is just one of many examples where a particular functionality useful to
people who read and who "browse" (which might be defined as deciding what to
read next among many, many alternatives) does not work as well on the web of
2014 as it did in the past because of the need for the web of 2014 to support
ever more complicated or sophisticated web applications.

(The many examples include tasks that are not strictly part of reading --
tasks like making a copy of part of a web page or making a copy of the page's
URL in preparation for emailing the URL.)

Publishing static documents and reading and browsing static documents over the
internet is an important enough function in our society that we should feel
sad that it does not work as smoothly and as quickly as it could. The next
Einstein and the next Charles Darwin will use the web to learn and to share
their discoveries. What the next Einstein and the next Darwin need the most
from the web is the ability to browse static web pages quickly and reliably
without their having to devote a lot of their attention to the user interface
or to getting a particular page to work with their browser.

------
WorldWideWayne
The web IS for everyone - even for those who want to make proprietary apps and
pages. I don't see a problem with any of these examples unless I missed the
one that tax dollars paid for.

------
findjashua
You need Chrome to use Chrome extensions? Oh, the humanity!

That said, it's time to call bullshit on Google's whole 'do no evil' shtick,
considering how so many of their web apps only work on Chrome.

