this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2025

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Mildly Infuriating

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269

nobody in webdev knows what graceful degradation is anymore (piefed.blahaj.zone)

submitted 1 week ago by cupcakezealot@piefed.blahaj.zone to c/mildlyinfuriating@lemmy.world

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i absolutely hate how the modern web just fails to load if one has javascript turned off. i, as a user, should be able to switch off javascript and have the site work exactly as it does with javascript turned on. it's not a hard concept, people.

but you ask candidates to explain "graceful degradation" and they'll sit and look at you with a blank stare.

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[–] moseschrute@lemmy.world 17 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (2 children)

I’ve spent the last year building a Lemmy and PieFed client that requires JavaScript. This dependency on JavaScript allows me to ship you 100% static files, which after being fully downloaded, have 0 dependency on a web server. Without JavaScript, my cost of running web servers would be higher, and if I stopped paying for those servers, the client would stop working immediately. Instead, I chose to depend heavily on JavaScript which allows me to ship a client that you can fully download, if you choose, and run on your own computer.

As far as privacy, when you download my Threadiverse client* and inspect network requests, you will see that most of the network requests it makes are to the Lemmy/PieFed server you select. The 2 exceptions being any images that aren’t proxied via Lemmy/PieFed, and when you login, I download a list of the latest Lemmy servers. If I relied on a web server for rendering instead of JavaScript, many more requests would be made with more opportunities to expose your IP address.

I truly don’t understand where all this hate for JavaScript comes from. Late stage capitalism, AI, and SAS are ruining the internet, not JavaScript. Channel your hate at big tech.

*I deliver both web and downloadable versions of my client. The benefits I mentioned require the downloaded version. But JavaScript allows me to share almost 100% code between the web and downloaded versions. In the future, better PWA support will allow me to leverage some of these benefits on web.

[–] monobot@lemmy.ml 7 points 6 days ago (3 children)

Problem is so many websites are slow for no good reason.

And JS is being used to steal our info and push aggressive advertisment.

Which part is unknown to you?

[–] moseschrute@lemmy.world 7 points 6 days ago

I don’t understand why we are blaming the stealing info part on JavaScript and not the tech industry. Here is an article on how you can be tracked (fingerprinted) even with JavaScript disabled. As for slow websites, also blame the tech industry for prioritizing their bottom line over UX and not investing in good engineering.

[–] cley_faye@lemmy.world 2 points 6 days ago

Problem is so many websites are slow for no good reason.

Bad coding is a part of it. "It works on my system, where the server is local and I'm opening the page on my overclocked gamer system". Bad framework is also a part of it. React, for example, decided that running code is free, and bloated their otherwise very nice system to hell. It's mildly infuriating moving from a fast, working solution to something that decided to implements basic language features as a subset of the language itself.

Trackers, ads, dozen (if not hundreds) of external resources, are also a big part of it. Running decent request blocking extensions (stuff like ublock origin) adds a lot of work to loading a page, and still makes them seems more reactive because of the sheer amount of blocked resources. It's night and day.

[–] Infinite@lemmy.zip 3 points 6 days ago

Problem is so many trains are ugly for no good reason.

And steel is being used to shoot people and stab people aggressively.

[–] dawcas@scribe.disroot.org 4 points 6 days ago

The matter is not javascript per se but the use companies and new developers do, if everyone used like you there would probably be no problem. A gazillion dependencies and zero optimization, eating up cpu, spying on us, advertisements...

And if you try and use an alternative browser you know many websites won't work.

[–] cley_faye@lemmy.world 9 points 6 days ago (1 children)

it’s not a hard concept, people.

Depends. Webapps are a thing, and without JavaScript, there isn't much to show at all.

Websites that mostly serve static content though? Yeah. Some of them can't even implement a basic one-line message that asks to turn on JavaScript; just a completely white page, even though the data is there. I blame the multiple "new framework every week" approach. Doubly so for sites that starts loading, actually shows the content, and then it loads some final element that just cover everything up.

[–] Scrollone@feddit.it 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

It depends. Inertia.js can pre-render pages server side, so you don't need JavaScript to see the content.

[–] cley_faye@lemmy.world 3 points 5 days ago

React can do SSR, too. The issue is that some sites actually means nothing if not dynamic. It makes sense to have SSR and sprinkle some JS on the client for content delivery, no issue there.

[–] swelter_spark@reddthat.com 11 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Love it when a page loads, and it's just a white blank. Like, you didn't even try. Do I want to turn JS on or close the tab? Usually, I just close the tab and move on. Nothing I need to see here.

[–] Croquette@sh.itjust.works 3 points 6 days ago (1 children)

React tutorial are like that. You create a simple HTML page with a script and the script generates everything.

I had to do a simple webpage for an embedded webserver and the provider of the library recommended preact, the lightweight version of react. Having no webdev experience, I used preact as recommended and it is a nightmare to use and debug.

[–] swelter_spark@reddthat.com 1 points 3 days ago

So that's why.

[–] normalexit@lemmy.world 11 points 6 days ago

Developers are still familiar with the concept, there are even ideas like server side rendering in react to make sites more SEO friendly.

I think the biggest issue is that there is very little business reason to support these users. Sites can be sued over a lack of accessibility and they can lose business from bad ux, so they are going to focus in those two areas ten times out of ten before focusing on noscript and lynx users. SEO might be a compelling reason to support it, but only companies that really have their house in order focus in those concerns.

[–] kieron115@startrek.website 11 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

I thought graceful degradation in terms of web design was mostly just to promote using the latest current browser features but to allow it to fall back to the feature set of, say, 1 or 2 previous browser versions. Not to support a user completely turning off a feature that has been around for literal decades? I think what you're promoting is the "opposite" side, progressive enhancement, where the website should mostly work through the most basic, initial features and then have advanced features added later for supported browsers.

[–] rumba@lemmy.zip 11 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Not OP, But welcome to my TED talk.

Supporting disabled JavaScript is a pretty significant need for accessibility features. None of the text browsers supported JavaScript until 2017, and there's still a lot of old tech out there that doesn't deal well with it.

It wasn't until the rise of react and angular that this became a big deal. But, It's extremely common now to send most of the website as code. And even scrapers now support JavaScript.

There's no "minor point" clause on the term graceful degredation. At the same time, there's no minimum requirement. Would it be good to be thorough and provide a static page? I'd say yes but it's not like anyone is going to do that anymore.

The tables have turned, You can no longer live without JavaScript and now you need browsers that lie about your screen resolution, agent and your plugins because mega corps can sniff who you are by the slightest whiff of your configs.

And that's NOT pretty cool

[–] kieron115@startrek.website 3 points 6 days ago

Thanks for the response, good points all around. The fingerprinting is the most convincing argument to me but I think the accessibility issue you bring up is more important.

[–] Sertou@lemmy.world 8 points 6 days ago (1 children)

The web isn't just HTML and server side scripting anymore. A modern website uses Javascript for many key essentials of the site's operation. I'm not saying that's always a good thing, but it is a true thing.

It is no longer a reasonable expectation that a website work with JavaScript disabled in the browser. Most of the web is now in content management systems that use JavaScript for browser support, accessibility, navigation, search, analytics and many aspects of page rendering and refreshing.

[–] cupcakezealot@piefed.blahaj.zone 8 points 6 days ago

The web isn't just HTML and server side scripting anymore. A modern website uses Javascript for many key essentials of the site's operation.

which is why the modern web is garbage

[–] Borger@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (4 children)

i, as a user, should be able to switch off javascript and have the site work exactly as it does with javascript turned on

Not agreeing or disagreeing, but why?

[–] frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zone 11 points 6 days ago (3 children)

JavaScript is directly related to almost everything that makes browser tabs take up more RAM than a typical PC in 1998. There are ways to use it in targeted ways that improve responsiveness (objectively or subjectively). The web as it stands is so far beyond that justification that it's almost laughable to even bring it up.

I run a personal blog with zero JavaScript; just HTML, CSS, and some pictures. Firefox's memory snapshot says it uses <3MB on the homepage. Amazon's homepage is currently giving me 38MB, and this comment section with the Alexandrite frontend is giving me 30MB. Those two may even be at the low end of what's out there.

[–] Borger@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Oh yeah. There’s no doubt that modern web tech stacks are inefficient slop - patchwork built upon patchwork.

However, JS has been included in every major browser for well over a decade. It’s industry standard at this point, so I found the position of expecting commercial services to be backwards compatible with a 1998 browser setup a little odd.

What do you think about WebGL apps?

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[–] grueling_spool@sh.itjust.works 6 points 6 days ago

I would word it as: I should not have to allow strangers to execute arbitrary code on my PC just so I can view some text and/or images.

[–] CombatWombat1212@lemmy.ml 5 points 6 days ago

Low-key I'm disagreeing

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[–] Shanmugha@lemmy.world 7 points 6 days ago

Yeah, it should also work without browser exactly as it does with a browser

[–] phoenixz@lemmy.ca 4 points 6 days ago

Ibuild pretty feature heavy CMS type sites, and though I always try to go HTML only first (I'm quite old school still), it's almost impossible to escape JavaScript

Having said that, the entire "my website won't even show anything on the landing page without JavaScript" should die a quick death already

[–] python@lemmy.world 1 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

I only figured this out like, a month ago! I only became a frontend dev when I got shifted into a new team at work, so I came in with zero prior knowledge and have been using exclusively React and Typescript since Day 1. Didn't even know how to add a css class to something or what tags beside <div> html has until I started a personal project, ran into performance issues (while hosting it in a shitty aws free tier micro t2 lol) and started investigating why my code loads 3MB of Javascript every time I refresh the page.

I'm working on getting better at it in my personal project, might even try kicking React out entirely and seeing whether just Laravel Blade + Livewire already does everything I need. No way that I'm rocking the boat at work tho.

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