You no longer need JavaScript
So much of the web these days is ruined by the bloat that is modern JavaScript frameworks. React apps that take several seconds to load. NextJS sites that throw random hydration errors. The node_modules folder that takes up gigabytes on your hard drive.
It’s awful. And you don’t need it.
Name Status Type Size Time app 200 document 153.8 kB 51 ms 6920616d20612066 -s.p.6f6e7421 .woff2 200 font 31.5 kB 32 ms 686579206d652074 -s.p.6f6f2121 .woff2 200 font 28.5 kB 116 ms 77687920646f6573.css 200 stylesheet 253 kB 47 ms 2074686520646566.js 200 script 648 kB 83 ms 61756c74206e6578.js 200 script 166 kB 363 ms 746a732074616b65.js 200 script 83.3 kB 46 ms turbopack-20757020302e354d.js 200 script 38.0 kB 95 ms 423f207468617427.js 200 script 414 B 34 ms 73206d6f72652074.js 200 script 32.6 kB 49 ms 68616e206d792065.js 200 script 15.1 kB 71 ms 6e7469726520626c.js 200 script 143 kB 48 ms 6f6721 hey there! 200 script 4.1 kB 103 ms
The intro paragraph of this post is tongue-in-cheek. It’s there to get you to read the rest of the post. I suspect the megabytes of tracking scripts intertwined with bad code is far more likely to be the real culprit behind all the terrible sites out there. Web frameworks have their time and place. And despite my personal distaste for them, I know they are used by many teams to build awesome well-optimized apps.
Despite that, I think there’s some beauty in leaving it all behind. Not just the frameworks, but JavaScript altogether. Not every site needs JavaScript. Perhaps your e-commerce site needs it for its complex carts and data visualization dashboards, but is it really a necessity for most of what’s out there?
It’s actually pretty incredible what HTML and CSS alone can achieve.
So, what do you say?
My goal with this article is to share my perspectives on the web, as well as introduce many aspects of modern HTML/CSS you may not be familiar with. I’m not trying to make you give up JavaScript, I’m just trying to show you everything that’s possible, leaving it up to you to pick what works best for whatever you’re working on.
I think there’s a lot most web developers don’t know about CSS.
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