Furthermore, once JS is enabled, I'm left wondering, "Why is JS needed at all?" Is there something happening on the page that requires JS that I'm simply unaware of? /gen It sincerely appears that HTML+CSS alone could support everything on the page.

It probably would. I'm not a webdev by day, but personally I find including javascript makes it much more simple for me than updating a bunch of <a> tags. All I have to do is build out the json file and it just populates all the info.

In the end, the amount of work is probably equivalent (updating html vs json), but html feels a little messier to me and less flexible if I have more dynamic needs in the future.

But I appreciate the feedback, I'll definitely think it over.