this post was submitted on 20 Feb 2026
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69
You no longer need JavaScript (for lots of stuff) (lyra.horse)
submitted 2 days ago by lemmydividebyzero@reddthat.com to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 12 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

"But CSS sucks”

I believe a lot of the negativity towards CSS stems from not really knowing how to use it. Many developers kind of just skip learning the CSS fundamentals in favor of the more interesting Java- and TypeScript, and then go on to complain about a styling language they don’t understand.

True. I did a HTML+CSS-only gallery when CSS3 just came out. And was positively surprised a few days ago, that a online gallery viewer had a shareable URL per picture (GET request).

While JS forms should just die. They always lose the content on reload or failed send (because of brittle client-side JS send, instead of using age-old browser-features).

[–] jubilationtcornpone@sh.itjust.works 5 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Personally I like using server side rendering when I can. The UI should be as light weight as possible and you can do a lot with just HTML and CSS. That said, it's pretty hard to build a responsive web app without at least a little bit of JavaScript.

[–] surewhynotlem@lemmy.world 7 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I'm the other way around. For me, the UI can be chonky frameworks or whatever as long as the user experience is good and it works on lots of platforms.

But keep every bit of UI out of my back-end systems. The data and business logic layers should be so divorced from the UI that they didn't even get visitation rights with the kids.

[–] boonhet@sopuli.xyz 3 points 2 days ago

Modern server side rendering can luckily be separate from your actual back end. Doesn't even have to live in the same server.

[–] MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

That said, it's pretty hard to build a responsive web app without at least a little bit of JavaScript.

Not really. You just need to learn the difference between width and max-width.
I do UserCSS now and then and 2 of 3 sites use them wrong. That and position: fixed overuse. Also, use @media (min-width) only for layout changes, not for sizing.

And also, functionality/layouting first, design after.

[–] vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org -1 points 2 days ago

That said, it’s pretty hard to build a responsive web app without at least a little bit of JavaScript.

And then the question comes up, why would you need responsiveness. Auto-completion of search results? Hate that crap. Endless scroll with loading additional contents? Hate that crap. Everything blinking and whistling? I suppose JS in that case is possible, but purely for stylistic purposes and not functionality.

[–] KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Sadly the linked example doesn’t seem to work on ios.

[–] AstroLightz@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago

I feel JavaScript should be more of a backend scripting language, like with Node, than a frontend. PHP can already accomplish a lot of what JS can do, just on the server-side as opposed to client-side.

PHP+CSS is really all you need to make something feel good. People often use JS to make a site look good, yet it usually suffers in functionality.