this post was submitted on 05 May 2025
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Why care about the no-JS experience? (gomakethings.com)
submitted 1 day ago by dilaw@futurology.today to c/programming@programming.dev
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[–] Vincent@feddit.nl 28 points 1 day ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) (3 children)

Note there's a group of users that larger than the group of users without JS (for whatever reason): users of assistive technology. And they don't even have a choice.

While I'm all for considering the needs of every user... If you get to the point where you're worrying about no-JS users, I hope you've already considered the needs of people with disabilities, whether temporary or permanent.

Edit: oh right, wanted to add: just making a site work without JS doesn't automatically make it accessible to people with special needs.

[–] ozr@programming.dev 10 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

No-JS pages that fully comply with WAI ARIA are much better for users of assistive technology than any single page web app can ever hope to be. All the myriad states that an interactive JS page can enter are absolutely never ever properly tested for disabled users, and even after full expensive testing, just a little change in the JS can ruin it all again. While with WAI ARIA you can just quickly assert that the page is compliant with a checker before pushing it to live.

[–] masterspace@lemmy.ca 3 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) (2 children)

This is both factually incorrect, and ignores the original point.

First of all, no you cannot just run an automatic WAI ARIA checker. That will highlight some surface level basic structural issues but in no way is adequate testing for a pleasant accessible UX.

Secondly, modern frameworks like React and Angular have the same ARIA validation utilities. It does not matter whether components are loaded in dynamically by the framework as long as they're defined in the codebase where linters and code analyzers can run.

Thirdly, you're ignoring the actual point that is being made. You know as well as I do, that virtually nowhere actually puts serious effort and usability testing into websites making sure their websites are accessible, and that directly impacts the lives of millions of people who are cut off from the world of technology because of a disability.

Until you're making all of your websites and apps accessible by second nature (i.e. until at a bare minimum you have your Web Accessibility Specialist certification), then focusing your time and efforts on catering to a niche ideological no JS crowd is quite frankly somewhat cruel and self serving.

[–] andioop@programming.dev 4 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago)

If you want to learn the stuff necessary for that certification, here's a document, the WAS Body of Knowledge listing what you need to know and maybe where you can learn that. Less detailed version in the WAS Exam Content Outline.

[–] Vincent@feddit.nl 1 points 19 hours ago

Heh, just deleted my reply - thanks for covering all that, you're exactly right :)

[–] wewbull@feddit.uk 2 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

They overlap. Js is a shit technology for the blind.

Dynamic sites that move / hide / unhide components as you do things are unhelpful and confusing. A screen reader will tell you what's under the cursor right now. If that changes, you don't get notified that you're now pointing at something else.

Static sites are better for accessibility too.

[–] Vincent@feddit.nl 0 points 19 hours ago

They can overlap, yes. Static sites are definitely not automatically better for accessibility.

[–] Static_Rocket@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Doesn't avoiding JS typically structure a website in such a way that the browsers built-in assistive services can cover it easier?

[–] Vincent@feddit.nl 1 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

Not necessarily, unfortunately. (Though I guess technically it's easier to throw up barriers using JS, but it's not an inherent quality, and leaving it out doesn't automatically make it good.)

[–] xthexder@l.sw0.com 2 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

I'm curious what parts would be challenging to use with a screen reader? If a site just has basic links and no JS, I can't really think of anything unless the tab layout is somehow completely shuffled due CSS.

[–] Vincent@feddit.nl 1 points 50 minutes ago

A comprehensive answer is out of scope and probably best given by a true accessibility specialist, but for example, if you only use <div> tags for everything, a lot of the screen reader's affordances for navigating are unusable. Images that carry information but not in their alt text are another simple example.

And then there are parts where JS could actively help. For example, if you have a tabbed interface, but clicking a tab results in a full page refresh, the screen reader loses all context.

Also keep in mind that there's more to assistive technology than just screen readers, e.g. sufficient colour contrast and keyboard navigability are important to many people. Too many websites still get those basics wrong.

[–] GoOnASteamTrain@lemmy.ml 10 points 1 day ago

Hmm...this has me thinking, maybe I'll change up my Hugo site a little, so that there's no dropdown menu - it's the only thing javascript is needed for.

Thank you for this, some points that I'd not even considered, and a helpful reminder to myself to try and get that javascript from 99% to 100% unused. :)

[–] Aatube@kbin.melroy.org 31 points 1 day ago

The point is: a lot of people browsing your site will at least temporarily have a no-JS experience without intentionally doing so.

💯

[–] MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml 9 points 1 day ago

People should not be prioritizing no-JS users. No one turns off JavaScript.

If you keep the JS to a minmum, you have

  1. less work maintining that shit, HTML/CSS is patient
  2. better user experience

So much forms and textboxes don't save content anymore after a reload, because it's dynamically loaded from somewhere or even a frame handled entirely by JS. Buttons/Checkboxes that don't work, it's sad.

[–] PunkRockSportsFan@fanaticus.social 37 points 1 day ago (2 children)

JavaScript sucks. I hate using it I hate coding it.

I whitelist js sources on my personal computer.

Only absolutely necessary for function scripts get loaded.

If they ask me to disable the adblocker I blacklist the domain.

[–] mesamunefire@piefed.social 30 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

I've done more than 18 years of dev work. I only hate js. All the other parts of the job are fine. Other languages are fine as well. I've had to learn so many. Hell I know cobol right along side ruby.

Js sucks. It sucks to debug. Its frameworks still have issues with basic stuff like many to many relationships.

All the solutions that don't use or use it sparingly work for years. The ones that rely on the language usually die a firey death by npm/yarn or get deprecated within 6 months.

[–] PunkRockSportsFan@fanaticus.social 16 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Js frameworks make php frameworks seems stable efficient and logical by comparison.

Yikes.

[–] mesamunefire@piefed.social 12 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Modern day php and laravel is actually not terrible.

But yeah I agree with you.

[–] msage@programming.dev -3 points 1 day ago

Laravel is shit.

I can believe it became popular only because devs don't care about the code.

[–] jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 5 points 1 day ago

Javascript is like Dungeons and dragons. It's a mess, weighed down by legacy decisions, too heavy in some places and too light in others, and used in far more places than it should be. It also has some diehard fans, and some diehard fans who have never used anything else.

[–] SpicyLizards@reddthat.com 20 points 1 day ago

Sadly, the rise of frameworks and SAAS have really killed security and accessibility through enforcement of JS.

'Back in the day' performance, download size, backwards compatibility, and non-js functionality was expected. Now it's not even on the radar for most big corps/agencies. Many places I've worked don't even care about responsiveness, which is crazy.

Now, there are so many 25mb websites that are unusable without JS or the right device...

[–] MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Not to mention, more accessible.

[–] termaxima@programming.dev 3 points 1 day ago

Can confirm I’m one of those people with JS off and a pretty strict whitelist !

[–] masterspace@lemmy.ca -2 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago) (1 children)

Lmao, oh yes, let's go back to the golden age of every app having all of its logic running on centralized servers, rather being able to easily create cross platform client side distributed applications.

The "no-js" philosophy is fundamentally at odds with a future of distributed, OS agnostic, application development.

It remembers the web when the web was simpler, and ignores that that was the era of dll hell and applications being locked to specific OSes. The modern web is the most successful cross platform development framework by orders of magnitude,it's all based on open internationally agreed on standards, and it is vastly simplifying and detangling the overall computing environment / platforms that we used to be locked to.

Just use a framework like Nextjs or it's open source off shoots / clones and get the best of both static pre rendering and dynamic on the fly rendering.

[–] nomugisan@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago) (1 children)

#1 popup and tracker enjoyer over here

[–] masterspace@lemmy.ca -2 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) (1 children)

I use utilities like unlock origin, a pihole, etc to block trackers and ad network requests without blocking literally all logic that can run on a page, which works great as an interim solution.

And the long term solution to advertising and tracking is legislation, not throwing out a computer's ability to compute.

[–] nomugisan@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

Personally I think it's better if WWW moves beyond HTTP as a protocol

[–] twice_hatch@midwest.social 1 points 18 hours ago

HTTP is really nice. We should move beyond HTML as a document format

[–] tauren@lemm.ee -1 points 1 day ago (3 children)

A lot of people who shared this sentiment were hung up on the idea that “no one turns off JS.” But some people do, for a variety of good reasons!

What % are we talking about? 50%, 25%, 10%, 1%, 0.1%? People make choices, but those are their choices. I need to get the job done and I can't cater to everyone's needs.

[–] MadhuGururajan@programming.dev -1 points 3 hours ago

I can't cater to everyone's needs.

Can't wait for the law to slap you in the face someday.

[–] Corbin@programming.dev 3 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

Forget about your job for a moment. In general, why are you willing to set a threshold on how accessible your work is? I urge you to forget about how callous your employer wants you to be.

[–] tauren@lemm.ee -1 points 22 hours ago

You call people callous for using js? 😂 Sorry, I'm not interested in a conversation with a fanatic because that kind of arguments have zero value.

[–] MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 day ago

And who has to maintain it, not you?