JavaScript dos and donts Mu-An Chiou
Mu-An Chiou emphasizes a balanced use of JavaScript in web development, advocating for HTML enhancement, accessibility considerations, avoidance of unnecessary dependencies, and a focus on core skills for newcomers.
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Mu-An Chiou discusses the best practices for using JavaScript in web development, emphasizing a balanced approach between HTML and JavaScript. The article outlines scenarios where JavaScript is necessary, such as when core functionality cannot be achieved with HTML alone or when HTML lacks essential user interface patterns. Chiou advocates for starting with HTML and progressively enhancing it with JavaScript, ensuring that a non-JavaScript fallback is available whenever possible. Accessibility is highlighted as a critical consideration, particularly when using ARIA attributes. Conversely, Chiou warns against using JavaScript in situations where it is not needed, suggesting that many modern practices have unnecessarily complicated web development. The author reflects on the evolution of JavaScript practices, criticizing the industry's shift towards dependency-heavy frameworks and the increased barriers for newcomers to web development. Chiou encourages developers to assess their JavaScript usage critically and to focus on understanding the fundamentals of web technologies rather than relying solely on frameworks.
- JavaScript should enhance HTML, not replace it; always consider a non-JavaScript fallback.
- Accessibility is crucial; use ARIA attributes when necessary.
- Avoid unnecessary JavaScript dependencies to simplify web development.
- Newcomers should focus on core web development skills rather than being overwhelmed by frameworks.
- Regularly evaluate JavaScript usage to ensure it serves the intended purpose effectively.
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10 commentsLately I’ve felt especially frustrated that I’m wasting so much time dealing with performance for data tables, a concept that has been so thoroughly solved for decades in desktop applications. Feels like there should be a vanilla html option for a table that:
- supports massive collections (“virtual tables”)
- sortable, filterable by header
- overflowable cells
- user resizable column widths
- user show/hide columns
- freeze columns/rows
- performance!
- no strong opinions on style
I struggle to find one solid option that fits all of that. Usually I have to make a sacrifice and then wrestle with the library of choice for that missing feature.
I've been a GitHub user since around 2016. My overall impression is that it's gotten slightly better over the last couple of years but not really changed that much.
I’ve always thought of GitHub’s turbolink repo tabs as flaky and their full-page navigations as slow. It’s much better as an app (Graphite) than as a series of websites. The UX of GitHub.com has evolved at a glacial pace :-/
I do think it was very impressive in terms of functionality especially without relying on JS, possibly the most powerful and well crafted UI on the web, but still it was deeply flawed from a UX standpoint.
They lacked many critical features for viewing source code, like linking function definitions, or expanding directories without relying on a load.
I’m sure that the GitHub front end team was of the opinion that users should just clone every repo they interact with and use their own editors instead of the GitHub website. However this has always been a bit of a hassle compared to using the website, so I very rarely find myself doing this.
On the wall of naive sentences, this one deserves to be framed.
That’s not going to strictly be down to how the JavaScript is written, but even as someone also in the anti-JS camp, I don’t think I would want to write a file explorer and code editor without something like React (or in my case, Elm).
Here's a demo of Dart and Flutter in WebAssembly: https://flutterweb-wasm.web.app/
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