"The World Wide Web And The Death Of Graceful Degradation by: Maya Posch"

[Gemmaugr]

https://hackaday.com/2025/05/20/the-world-wide-web-and-the-death-of-graceful-degradation/

Pale Moon mentioned:

"Sometimes these requirements are apparently merely a way to not do any testing on older or alternative browsers, with ‘forum’ software Discourse (not to be confused with Disqus) being a shining example here. It insists that you must have the ‘latest, stable release’ of either Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox or Apple Safari. Purportedly this is so that the client-side JavaScript (Ember.js) framework is happy, but as e.g. Pale Moon users have found out, the problem is with a piece of JS that merely detects the browser, not the features. Blocking the browser-detect-* script in e.g. an adblocker restores full functionality to Discourse-afflicted pages."

Good read, and another useful article that highlights how the web have gone wrong.

[andyprough]

From the article:

Functionality in Safari, Pale Moon, etc. often is more a matter of luck as the assumption is made by today’s crop of web devs that everyone uses the latest and greatest Chrome browser version. This ensures that using non-Chromium browsers is fraught with functionally defective websites, as the ‘Web Compatibility Support’ section of the Pale Moon forum illustrates.

While some of this may be true in some cases, it's also important to point out that Chrome gets literally millions of web compatibility complaints, and chromium has tens of thousands of unaddressed bug reports.

If you wanted to be a Dev working on a relatively quiet and stable browser, you'd be far better off on the Pale Moon side of things than on the Chrome side of this monstrous avalanche of complaints and bug reports. Probably the reason web devs use frameworks targeted at latest Chrome is because handcrafting code for that browser makes you navigate a nearly impossible minefield of hidden bugs and bug-related built-in hacks.

[Moonchild]

it's also important to point out that Chrome gets literally millions of web compatibility complaints, and chromium has tens of thousands of unaddressed bug reports

In most cases those are ignored unless there is concerted pushback from several communities - in other cases eventually the web masters will be persuaded to just "satisfy chrome" if it's not addressed in months. The key term in that sentence is "unaddressed". Chromium is exceedingly resistant to changing already established code; often a non-response meaning "won't fix" until Mozilla follows suit and both "votes" leading to a spec change after which the compatibility complaints on the web are "officially wrong".

[suzyne]

I don't mind the web as an infrastructure supporting apps (actually I like that state of affairs and use them regularly!), so I see the problem more as when sites that aren't webapps needlessly require similar amounts of code and processing to function.

Do we know who Maya Posch is and are they active on this forum?

The article is a good read.

[Mæstro]

To build upon what the article offers, I know of at least two further reasons why sites today tend to choke. One is that the bloat is itself a form of DRM. One could perhaps regard this as part of the closing statement that ‘the eyecandy is [for] your shareholders’, the real core reason JavaScript blights the Web. The other is that it is explicitly recommended to do so to deter bots:

Many bot tools and scripts contain user-agent strings with outdated browser versions. In contrast, humans are forced to auto-update their browsers to newer versions. Take steps to block outdated browser versions: BLOCK End of Life more than three years[;] CAPTCHA End of Life more than two years.

I have often felt that the Web has left me behind for the last decade and more, but this makes it explicit. Forced updates disregard my needs which arise direct from my disability; I had indeed disabled Windows Update in 2015 when I began to hear rumours about the aggressive methods Microsoft was using to hawk Windows 10, the lack of internet security actually being safer for me than the shocks which a disobedient OS could cause me. For a similar reason (among others), I do not use a smartphone. I have thus felt more and more sites pushing me away, at least in Pale Moon, where I have everything configured the way I like. (On auxiliary browsers, I only use µBlock or equivalent, inspired by Epiphany’s approach of applying EasyList and EasyPrivacy filters.) More and more, I wonder how many times I have been counted as a bot when I fail a captcha. Even more modest software like Anubis assumes that the user enables cookies and scripting, which I do not by default. (There are many sites, in turn, which will hold the site’s body for ransom, payable in tracking cookies, if scripts are enabled, but are visible in full if disabled.) Six years ago, I thought that the flood which has been underway since 2012 or so would soon halt, but the waters continue to prevail. For my part, I see HTML 4·01 as a fixed, eternal standard, and I do not care what the W³ have to say about it.

[Moonchild]

For my part, I see HTML 4·01 as a fixed, eternal standard, and I do not care what the W³ have to say about it.

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">

[Gemmaugr]

For my part, I see HTML 4·01 as a fixed, eternal standard, and I do not care what the W³ have to say about it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5?use ... G_conflict

"he W3C ceded authority over the HTML and DOM standards to WHATWG on 28 May 2019, as it considered that having two standards is harmful.[45][46][47][4] The HTML Living Standard is now authoritative. However, W3C will still participate in the development process of HTML.

Before the ceding of authority, W3C and WHATWG had been characterized as both working together on the development of HTML5,[11] and yet also at cross purposes[28][5] ever since the July 2012 split. The W3C "HTML5" standard was snapshot-based (HTML5, HTML 5.1, etc.) and static, while the WHATWG "HTML living standard" is continually updated. The relationship had been described as "fragile", even a "rift",[48] and characterized by "squabbling".[5] "

Sadly, HTML and DOM is now controlled by a group including google.

P.S I don't use a smartphone either, and share many of your sentiments here.

[Mæstro]

Sadly, HTML and DOM is now controlled by a group including google.

Well, aren’t they clever! They can say whatever they like. There is no hobgoblin that will beat me over the head with a truncheon if I keep to the old standard, in the same way the ICBN cannot throw me into the sea because I continue to regard fungi as a subdivision of the plant kingdom as traditionally defined. Google, the ICBN and friends are surely more popular than I am, but I do not choose my opinions according to social prestige. They cannot bind me unless I let them, and I choose to forbid them.