20190502-fix_the_web.txt
I Want to Fix the Web

So I recently tried to log into the A2Z massive online retailer. I've
had success before logging in and checking on stuff using lynx and
other JS-less browsers. I mean besides a few unhidden error messages,
it was fine. This time (and I think the past several times) it's been
telling me I don't have cookies enabled. What a crock of it. So I
braced myself for a long chat session with Customer Service. It was
surprisingly less painful than I thought and as I kind of figured,
there was no way to directly tell the web/UI team to get their stuff
together and stop breaking crap [0]for no reason.

I guess when I browse the web with a JS whitelist and just plain text,
I see things other devs and people don't. I'm not sure which sites I
hate more: the ones that load blank without JS, or the ones that load
okay but really can't function without JS. As a new adopter of PHP,
it's really frustrating KNOWING they could render dynamic content
without client-side scripting. I understand the bandwidth
considerations when you're talking about *-side scripting, but I still
feel like mobile sites, as they're already usually optimized to do,
should put minimal stress on mobile clients. I mean fbook can do it.

The titular problem I have when I see sites that just don't need this
UI excess or just don't work as they should, as a web developer, I
just want to go in there and say "Dude, this sucks. Make it [1]suck
less. There's no reason for it to not work for people who don't want
JS invading their face." I want to say "Do it this way and everyone
with a non-broken browser complying to W3C standards can use this.
Stop treating the Web as if there are only 2 different viewing modes
(portrait and landscape). And for the love of Pete, stop including
huge libraries when you use only two or three functions from it."

I actually like Javascript itself, it's just the implementation and
abuse of it online that makes me sad. This is why I have a JS
whitelist. Also, my favorite minimalist text browsers don't really
support it.

[0] gopher://republic.circumlunar.space/0/~np89/glog/20190126-google_rant.txt
[1] https://suckless.org/

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