Somebody at Google thought they’re being funny. I don’t think this is funny. It’s wrong. The exact opposite should be true. Whatever remains must *not* be an empty page.
@simevidas
100% agree. I added noscript to firefox on my phone (since I'm commuting more, I want to limit data usage when I'm browsing) It's amazing how many sites just give you NOTHING until you turn their scripts on. Yeah, it's a pain to toggle scripts on until the page works, but you really get a feel for how much crap we devs push up.
@simevidas @mcpaccard if only there was a low level method of presenting visuals on the web???
@DavidDarnes Haha, yeah. Can't think of a thing! /j
@simevidas there's obviously enough data in the url (= request) for the server, to get him to answer with a (static but who cares?) map of the requested area.
That, right there, is just lazy.
To add insult to injury, Google Maps used to do this. I remember when Google Maps worked fine on the browser on my Palm pilot. Maps detected the browser and served static map images.
@KewlCat @simevidas it’s not laziness. It’s a cost-benefit choice that the Maps team seems to have made. Even making a non JavaScript version takes a not so insignificant amount of dev resources.
@KewlCat @simevidas Lazy is an understatement. This behaviour is outright user hostile.
The map doesn’t even need to be entirely static. Image maps exist and work very well without an ounce of JavaScript.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/map
@simevidas A website that only delivers JavaScript to the Google crawler could never appear in Google search results
@simevidas it's also #ableist af as it literally discriminates against #ScreenReaders, #TUI #Browsers and other #accessibility tools like #TextBrowsers...
@simevidas It does imply that Javascript is "the impossible", which tracks.
@simevidas@mastodon.social For something like Maps it seems a lot more reasonable though.
@ottergauze An interactive Google Maps applications is not possible without JavaScript, but that doesn’t mean that it’s OK to just show a blank page. For example, Google could show the map as a static image, and if there’s a marker on the map, that marker could be positioned via CSS.
@simevidas the only thing worse is a site where you allowlist all the local JS that should be enough to get it running, but it ends up breaking because some 3rd party tracker didn't get loaded.
@simevidas also, I find it very funny that it says "the JavaScript" lol. Sounds a bit like when an older generation says "The YouTubes"
@simevidas WOW - I always thought what was left should be a readable and usable HTML file.
@simevidas well on the second look - this page is not what it claims to be at all - because actually it's not an empty page. It's a bad one, though.
#GoogleMaps has got some intentionally horrible wording there. It's very typical of #Google to enforce fingerprinting #JavaScript for everything they can get hands on.
@simevidas
ah ya that's true "the web is an app that we host" every right there
@simevidas how would Google maps without JS even work, static map images with links to pan?
@nkizz When it comes to no JavaScript, the goal isn’t to implement the same functionality as the JS version. The goal is to provide *some* functionality. Any functionality is better than a blank page. A static map with CSS-positioned location labels would be better than nothing. The labels could be links to pages with more information about the location.