December 27, 2025
HTML vs JS: petty fight of the week
Replacing JavaScript with Just HTML
Ditching JavaScript for plain HTML: cheers, eye-rolls, and spicy memes
TLDR: A developer urges using built‑in HTML features for small UI widgets, saving JavaScript for harder jobs. Comments split: fans love the faster, simpler approach, while critics slam datalist’s weak search and poke at the site’s own JS‑only logo—making this a practical debate with a side of irony.
A hot new post says: stop making tiny website features (like accordions and suggestion menus) depend on JavaScript, and let simple HTML do the job. Cue the crowd noise. The simplicity squad showed up first: one fan called the built‑in details tag a secret superpower and roasted component libraries for “pretending it doesn’t exist.” Another cheered the idea of starting simple instead of grabbing a giant framework for basic tricks.
But the skeptics brought receipts. The most flamed feature? The datalist autocomplete. Critics say it’s fine until you mistype or need Google‑style “match anywhere” results—then it taps out, and you’re back to custom code. One commenter went full “gotcha”: the site’s own Pentagram logo didn’t load without JavaScript, prompting side‑eye and “practice what you preach” jokes.
Meanwhile, old‑school browser users chimed in with a surprising twist: even when newer HTML features don’t fully work, they degrade gracefully, unlike many JavaScript‑heavy sites that just break. The memes wrote themselves—“Let JavaScript handle the hard stuff, give HTML the chores,” and “No JS, no problem… except your logo vanished.” Verdict: this isn’t a war, it’s a vibe check on what deserves JavaScript and what doesn’t.
Key Points
- •The article promotes using native HTML/CSS to replace common JS UI patterns for performance and simplicity.
- •Accordions can be implemented with <details>/<summary>, using open for default state and name to allow only one open panel.
- •Appearance can be customized with CSS, and open/close can still be triggered via JavaScript if needed.
- •Autofiltered suggestion dropdowns can be built with <input> + <datalist>, and work with multiple input types (e.g., text, number, time).
- •Code examples and use cases are provided to encourage adopting native features so users download less JS.