i absolutely hate how the modern web just fails to load if one has javascript turned off. i, as a user, should be able to switch off javascript and have the site work exactly as it does with javascript turned on. it’s not a hard concept, people.
but you ask candidates to explain “graceful degradation” and they’ll sit and look at you with a blank stare.
It’s not the bulk of your point (of which I agree with) but your mention of the back button reminded me how much I despise – sometimes above everything else – how much these sites override basic functionality of the browser, overriding inbuilt history navigation, screwing up Ctrl click behaviors, stealing my right-click menu or default key bindings.
There’s a lot of reasons one might not want to use TikTok but the reason that stops me before even having to consider other reasons (but I can’t really explain to most people) is that it’s a site designed without any really respect or regard for the user.
Alt+d doesn’t work and Ctrl+l pops up some modal about logging in. I can’t open any of the recommended videos in a new tab because they clearly must’ve just done them as
onclicks and not real anchor tags so right clicking doesn’t give me the option and neither does Ctrl clicking (which – also – that’s…got to be an accessibility violation, right?). And more than half the time the full page doesn’t even load because it’s such a strangle of resources that it needs me to click a button on the page because it wasn’t able to load the videos listing of an account in time.The whole thing is just a nightmare in terms of design and primarily not even in terms of inefficiency but direct hostility to UX. Absolute garbage.