100% no-JS clients compatibility
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Hi
First of all, I understand that most of the NodeBB community should be against the "NoScript" movement and all those people disabling Javascript in their client. I understand that. I don't like having to support this kind of client.
But you have to.
For now, NodeBB runs in some kind of read-only mode with a lot of thing disabled and/or buggy when Javascript is disabled. That's not really a good thing. You should be able to create topics and new posts. Without the WYSIWYG editor, but with a preview button for example. You should be able to search in the topbar. You should at least have messages for everything you can't do.
So yeah, that's a feature request. Please make NodeBB 100% usable (without the cool stuff JS offers, but with what shouldn't require JS).
Thanks
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We set out from the start to be able to support users with javascript disabled. I recognise there are users who run with locked down script execution for safety, and I respect that.
Specifically for NodeBB, it functions as you correctly discovered, in read-only mode. We periodically check that NodeBB is browsable in read-only mode, though it's been awhile since we last checked.
Writing is more difficult, as it would mean we'd have to support a POST route for replying to topics, among other things. Almost 100% of NodeBB is driven by websockets, which requires javascript support.
As much as I hate to say it, for the aforementioned reasons, bringing NodeBB to 100% feature parity for a NoScript user would introduce a significant overhead that we cannot commit to supporting.
Sadly, the same can be said for our less represented users: IE users, users on slower smartphones, 2G networks, etc.
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I 100% agree with @julian's position here and also appreciate that the team is recognizing the need for making the forum as accessible as possible. But like any software project you have limited resources and have to pick your battle carefully.
I don’t mean to steal the original topic, but a related issue here is supporting email replies. If people can reply from email, they don’t even have to open the browser. I think that would helps cover most of, if not all, the people who would otherwise try to use a browser with JS disabled, or use some crippled browsers.
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@a_5mith I should clarify, I mean IE8 and below XD We do support newer versions, and will resolve bug reports targeting recent versions.
@arasbm Reply-by-email is definitely doable with the emailer plugins, although the specific implementation may be different based on the provider. It's on my mind of things to do, although I'm always sidetracked these days with other features
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The email replies, and probably the digests too, should be implemented as official plugin(s), IMO.
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@julian exactly. They should probably be reduced to an official plugin. And if they can't, add hooks to do so.
Digests are, IMO, a plugin kind of issue.
If they were a plugin, they could be implemented in different, custom, ways and stuff.
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Maybe a stupid reflexion but since NodeJS is based uppon JS if you disable JavaScript that's logic that the forum doesn't work as expected. And more over all the realtime with sockets won't be avaible too, same for the ajax navigation I don't really see how NodeBB could be noJS.
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What features of the forum should be available without Javascript?
For instance:
- Logging in
- Viewing posts
- Making posts
- Editing posts
- Deleting posts
- Previewing posts
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I'm not seeing much point us debating what should and shouldn't be available without the use of JS. As JS is a requirement of websockets, which is (as Julian mentioned) the majority of the forum platform.
The solution seems pretty simple, use or allow javascript, or the forum is read only.
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Yeah one thing we love a lot about node.js is the fact that we can share libraries across server and client side. So we only have to write certain modules once (form validation, for example) and distribute to both server and client side.
I think the read-only mode is a pretty good enough compromise though. For reference, both Facebook and Twitter put you in read-only mode as well. Some software don't even bother with this... just gives you a blank page
At least in read-only we do retain SEO value on some search engines that don't support JS yet, and of course we do display a message asking the user to switch on JS or download a newer browser
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@psychobunny said:
I'm sorry, I can't click that link. I blocked vBulletin at router level years ago.
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If you really need this functionality, you could start working on it yourself, and then I'm sure the devs would be glad to merge it into their code.
