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0 pointsscrollaway7y ago0 comments

Relying on JavaScript doesn't "break the fundamental precepts underlying the web", that horse has sailed long past that bridge.

Today, not running JS breaks the web. You can lament this, I too think it's not ideal, but you can't change it. So don't accuse devs of breaking the web for using an SPA just because you're part of the 0.002% of users that doesn't run js by default.

Furthermore SPAs do not break accessibility, that is nonsense. Devs may break accessibility if they choose to reimplement components without thinking about it but that has zero to do with SPAs.

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2 comments · 1 top-level

bo10247y ago· 1 in thread

Hi and thanks for your responses. I think you may not be considering my post in the context of the above person's webpage. I would be interested to hear if you see my perspective a bit more after viewing the page and its source code if you haven't already.

(1) I do think I can make a small difference toward making the web better by pointing out the drawbacks of unnecessary JS. I also think it's fair to describe this page as breaking the way hyperlinks usually work on the web.

(2) I don't mean to say all SPAs always break accessibility -- again this is all in the context of the page above. I do think, for the reasons I gave, it's fair to say that a plain HTML page with a list of links is much more amenable to generic accessibility tools than a block of JS that emulates behavior of links.

scrollawayOP7y ago

I misunderstood your post regarding accessibility then :) it's unfortunate but some react and Vue patterns tend to lead to a lot of div soup. It doesn't have much to do with the tooling but rather a lack of education for the devs on the subject and it's a testament to how easy it is to create custom components in both.

> I also think it's fair to describe this page as breaking the way hyperlinks usually work on the web.

Well maybe. A good SPA imo will render the first pageload with SSR, which means that your links will actually work the same. You share a link or open it in a new tab or whatever and it will load a page full of HTML that might not even need JavaScript.

SPAs do hijack the link system but they do so to retain natural back button functionality. Back when they didn't, people complained about that, rightfully so.

Howe there's nothing emulating anything. SPA links are anchors, as they are anywhere else on the web, and all the apis are native to the browser. It doesn't have anything to do with accessibility, no.

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