HTML and JavaScript serve distinct purposes, making better or worse comparisons logically flawed. Complex/interactive web apps requires JavaScript, period. Attempting to build sophisticated apps solely through HTML (looking at you HTMLX) eventually hits a functional ceiling.
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I dont think anyone is arguing Google Earth should be pure HTML. But it is equally false you cant do Gmail with HTML only.
There are things that HTML could do, and should be doing, that is not done or not yet possible simply due to hype and trend from browser vendors. We could continue to polish HTML + sprinkle of Javascript to its absolute maximum before hitting JS Apps. Right now this is far from the case.
Gmail used to provide an HTML version. It got removed only recently
Actually, I do think that. Wouldn't it be lovely to have an image format for truly enormous images and have the browser request only the chunk currently visible? It could just be a container format with jpg's in it. Let the file system figure out that x/y means tile number 56436.
You could provide multiple image versions for zooming to get to the TB scale.
Computers are really good, performance is astonishing, no reason why we should never be able to use a TB size image. Never is a really long time.
Have epic panoramas, detailed scans from paintings, extremely easy game design and maps that just work.
Gmail with html only would not be a nice experience. Modern gmail is really bloated but it's actually one of the few web apps I have no problems with.
Gmail used to have an html-only version if I remember rightly. Perhaps still does. It was faster and perfectly usable.
Hey the email services has just proved you could offer better than Gmail experience with HTML + small dose of JS. Another example being the new FE on Github.
At the end of the day it isn't really the tech that is the problem. Is how people use the tech. And for thousands of different reasons keeping it simple has always provided better experience evaluated on the whole.
> Another example being the new FE on Github.
Github's old frontend was mostly HTML with a bit of JS, their new frontend is react. The old UI had its bugs, but it was much better than the react version in my experience. I still commonly find the UI out of sync with itself requiring a reload, but now I also frequently wait for the page to load and viewing large diff's is a performance nightmare.
Not really. I used the HTML version for well over a decade and it was absolutely fine. I guess if you need fancy animations, maybe that doesn't suit you, but I came through Pine and Eudora and Gmail HTML was a million times better than both of those and entirely sufficient for a media that dates back about 50 years.
I assume you mean htmx. It doesn't have to be either/or. You can supplement htmx with Javascript.
The core idea with htmx is that you transfer hypertext with controls and structure built in, not just a JSON blob that requires additional context to be useful.
I have just shipped a very useful and interactive app surprisingly quickly for my customer using just htmx with a little Javascript.
It shouldn't have to be this way though. There is no reason html can't do things it needs to do to build complete apps. We could use reasonable defaults to allow a new type of html markup without JavaScript.
All the http verbs. Decent html input controls What else?
Depends on how complex it is meant to be. Just like many wordpress sites that could easily have been static websites, many javascript heavy sites could have easily just have been using htmlx.
If your need really, goes beyond what htmx offers, then you may need Javascript. But in my experience people tend to use the tools they know for their job, not the tools that would be best suited.
FYI, it's easy to cache the html output of a WordPress site, resulting in essentially a static site with graphical admin, page builder, and all the other bells and whistles.