I, for one, would greatly appreciate web developers trying far less hard.
Breaking scrolling, javascript on or off, is inexcusable. The UI is the most important thing, far more important than all the other slow-loading javascript chrome that decreases this article's usability and stickiness.
You know what else I can't do? Get smooth scrolling when I page up and page down. Further, I can't use the top 100 pixels because it's occupied by a worthless black bar.
There are fewer than 80 words on the screen in a "full" page of text at normal window sizes.
This entire design is amateurish, thoughtless, and user-hostile, all because some set of web developers are trying something and end up making the page much worse than if they had tried less.
You're generalizing an entire industry based on a few bad sites. All the interactive projects you see news organizations doing are REQUIRE Javascript. You're asking developers to handicap themselves just because a few people decided to abuse a tool.
I've never done any of those things you've mentioned above and my first aim is always user experience across all devices. Don't portray all developers who are creating good experiences on the web as bad guys. Show HN itself contains numerous examples of Javascript doing amazing things in the browser and your attitude craps all over the hard work of those people.
Breaking scrolling, javascript on or off, is inexcusable. The UI is the most important thing, far more important than all the other slow-loading javascript chrome that decreases this article's usability and stickiness.
You know what else I can't do? Get smooth scrolling when I page up and page down. Further, I can't use the top 100 pixels because it's occupied by a worthless black bar.
There are fewer than 80 words on the screen in a "full" page of text at normal window sizes.
This entire design is amateurish, thoughtless, and user-hostile, all because some set of web developers are trying something and end up making the page much worse than if they had tried less.