The web, it's for everyone

http://thewebitsforeveryone.tumblr.com/

by hodgesmr • 12 years ago

43 74 12 years ago

thewebitsforeveryone.tumblr.com

prezjordan3• 12 years ago

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.

sp332• 12 years ago

Why can't you at least download it? You can download Firefox .xpi files from https://addons.mozilla.org using Chrome.

McGlockenshire• 12 years ago

They disabled normal local / offline installation of CRX packages a while ago due to "security" concerns.

https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/2811969

indubitably• 12 years ago

Because “everyone” means people who don’t necessarily follow browser development trends.

jashkenas• 12 years ago

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?

prezjordan3• 12 years ago

I understand that many of them are just shortcuts, but the point is still weaker than anything else posted here.

As for your second point, no it shouldn't :( Seems they built this "offline app" stuff into Chrome and plan on keeping it there.

Siecje3• 12 years ago

There are specific things you can do in Chrome Apps like access the Hard Drive.

Afforess• 12 years ago

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.

oscargrouch• 12 years ago

The point is not being open, the point is platform lockin. Once you accept it, you will "never" be able to leave chrome because you have all of your things in chrome apps now.

It was a huge effort to leave the Microsoft lockin back then, and the Web(togheter with Linux, GNU and open source), a open platform did it! It was like the 'man in the moon' back then; And now we are simply going back, and we are just repeating the same mistakes again

prezjordan3• 12 years ago

Thank you for pointing this out - I hadn't thought of it that way.

imanaccount2476• 12 years ago

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.

hollerith2• 12 years ago

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.

krapp6• 12 years ago

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.

notatoad2• 12 years ago

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.

Siecje3• 12 years ago

What about if you are using a screen reader?

wukkuan• 12 years ago

That's a valid concern, but unrelated to JavaScript being required. Making a JavaScript web application screen reader accessible is no problem.

Smudge8• 12 years ago

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.

micampe7• 12 years ago

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).

aroman• 12 years ago

I just tried disabling JavaScript and visiting Facebook and Twitter... both were entirely unusable. Nothing on Facebook worked, and on Twitter, all of the links and interactions were broken.

sanderjd3• 12 years ago

I think one problem is that it's actually a lot more expensive to build an interactive application-style site that works with well with javascript disabled. So sure, rich companies like Github, Twitter, and Facebook can (and I think should) invest in making things work relatively well. But a less rich company is faced with a choice between giving up that interactivity or committing to it. Most people have gotten used to the interaction patterns of javascript-heavy sites, so giving it up can put a company at a UX disadvantage, with no real pay-off, because it is very uncommon for people to turn off javascript. On the further end of the scale are applications like Google's inbox, which are largely designed around interactivity of the sort you need javascript to achieve, and are never going to work any other way (though it's very silly that it requires Chrome).

Zirro• 12 years ago

While I agree that a user with JavaScript disabled should not expect all fancy features to work, the site should still be able to present its main content in a non-broken visual environment. A minimal version built only with HTML and CSS, which is then expanded upon with JavaScript.

This does appear to be the case with the first warning published on the blog, where the site is put into a "read-only mode" and I disagree with it being listed there, but I come across many other sites which do not display any form of content at all when JavaScript is disabled.

oneeyedpigeon5• 12 years ago

It used to be the case (I haven't checked lately) that certain documentation pages on Apple's site were javascript-only - they were actually blank unless you had javascript on. These were literally just standard text-heavy pages with no discernible client-side behaviour that I ever saw. Whatever side of the argument anyone reading this is on, surely you have to agree that such behaviour is strange in the very least.

joshstrange4• 12 years ago

Could not agree more! We have an mainly internal-only app that I work on that started out as PHP+HTML+CSS only and then over the years JS has been bolted on in various places. At first it was just to make life easier (Autocomplete, minor AJAX) but now we have entire components that will not function without JS and could not function without JS. Recently some devs have pushed for supporting browsers without JS enabled and I have been vehemently against it for a couple reasons:

1) MAJOR parts of our app will not and can not work without JS. Period, exclamation point.

2) Because of point 1 it doesn't make sense to waste dev time on making some views work with/without JS (We are a younger company and don't have time to waste on something like this especially when it isn't public-facing, not to mention QA can't handle testing everything twice).

3) Even if V1 of a component does support both JS and no JS there is no guarantee that future updates will be able to keep feature-parity or have time to code for that.

For me JS is part of the web, not an optional add-on. It would be like saying "make a webpage that works with HTML" (IMHO).

I also feel that it's not fair to complain about the GOOGLE CHROME app store requiring GASP GOOGLE CHROME (Same for GOOGLE cloud print). Not shit sherlock. As for Apple not allowing their video feeds on anything but Safari+OS X I think this is BS, there is no good reason I can think of to alienate so many people on other OS's especially since I would think THOSE are the people you might want to reach with your keynotes to convince them why they should switch.

So while I like the idea of this Tumblr I can't help but think the JS/Google Chrome examples don't really fit and distract from the overall message. To be honest looking through the Tumblr again the ONLY valid concern is the one with Apple's keynote streaming, the other ones make complete sense. How is it Google's fault that they are pushing the envelope in terms of what is possible, even Google doesn't have the time/resources to make every one of their ideas (which may or may not make it long term) work across the board and that is their prerogative.

oneeyedpigeon5• 12 years ago

"I also feel that it's not fair to complain about the GOOGLE CHROME app store requiring GASP GOOGLE CHROME"

I read that as complaining about a WEB APP store requiring google chrome. Web apps tied to a specific browser are destructive to the overall ecosystem; you might as well just distribute native apps.

aaaaaaaaaaa12345• 12 years ago

Can you provide any details about the internal app? What features does it have that need javascript? Also, since it's internal only, does it even need any extra compatibility, since all the configurations are known? The "web" and the "intranet" are quite different situations.

chestnut-tree• 12 years ago

I understand the necessity of Javascript if you have a web app, but a lot of sites fail to display a page of text or a list of links if Javascript is disabled [1]. In my view, this is poor practice. What seems to be happening is that more and more people are using Javascript frameworks to build web sites (not web apps). This probably makes things easier for the developer. I'm not convinced it always makes for a better experience for users.

[1] Some examples of sites that won't display anything if Javascript is disabled (even though they're most displaying text): http://googlecommerce.blogspot.co.uk/ http://googleandyourbusiness.blogspot.co.uk/

imanaccount2476• 12 years ago

Javascript is not an important component if the internet. You can argue it is an important component of the web, but even that is pretty sketchy. I do browse without javascript. And 90%+ of the sites I have to turn it on for are just text. Javascript being required for webapps makes sense. Javascript being required for every blog on the planet does not.

_mulder_• 12 years ago

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• 12 years ago

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.

davegauer• 12 years ago

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.

Smudge8• 12 years ago

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• 12 years ago

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.

findjashua• 12 years ago

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.

serve_yay• 12 years ago

"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.

aaaaaaaaaaa12345• 12 years ago

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

micampe7• 12 years ago

Why did you need to create a throwaway account for this comment?

Siecje3• 12 years ago

Toggle a Menu

krapp6• 12 years ago

AJAX?

Not having to render and reload an entire page every time something changes or a request is made is actually quite useful. Load balancing is one of the reasons js-based templates are so popular.

Also I believe there are aspects of cross-browser compatibility related to mobile design and responsive design which depend on javascript, though I may be mostly wrong.

joshstrange4• 12 years ago

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?

WorldWideWayne• 12 years ago

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.

The web, it's for everyone

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