I disagree. An HTML website which uses links, forms, buttons and inputs will by default:

* Have working back/forward buttons * Have working progress indicator as provided by the browser * Show errors to the user - even if they are ugly * Be accessible to keyboard navigation

With SPAs these are all things the developer has to get right.

So often when using a SPA I'll click a button, you get a spinner and then nothing will happen. Is it still in progress? Don't know. Eventually I'll open developer console and trace the network requests to find the JSON HTTP request that returned "ERR_BAD_EMAIL" and fix what I've entered. With a normal form submission at least the user will see the error message and can press back and then fix it.

True. Crappy developers will build crappy websites irrespective of the tech.

The article is clearly aimed at non crappy developers or developers who want to do better for their users.

And it provides an anecdotal experience where an HTML first option developed by a good developer was far superior to what a JS necessary option would have been, given the user base of this application.

At least it'll be a fast and crappy website.

You can do a bad job with any tool but you cannot do a good job with any tool.

I agree. Server-rendered React can also send down 100% HTML apps.

But I 100% see where the author's coming from, considering the massive fragmentation of react codebases/patterns and decision paralysis of React development in general. I really doubt most React apps, even the more accessible ones, are testing their multi-page form wizards with JS completely turned off.

HTML-first does seem highly underutilized in the commercial web, and I learnt a lot from reading this (as a solidJS/react dev).

I find it's way easier to build crappy React apps than an HTML-first approach.

An "old school" Ruby on Rails/Symfony/Django app, with templates, usual get/post forms etc, frames you and pushes you in using the standards and relying on browser default behaviors.

In JS-heavy apps, it's as easy to code normal `button` elements as it is to code clickable `div` elements. But with the divs you just forget to handle keyboard nav, proper element roles, etc. It's easy to create fake links, not relying on `a` tags, using an internal JS router that doesn't expose URLs, doesn't handle middle click mouse, for no particular reasons.

In less JS-heavy contexts, the easiest way to do is to use proper HTML so you are less inclined to mess up.

Even on codebases that use a decent framework like Next.js that handles those for you on paper, it's often we see people not very aware of the benefits of using proper semantics and standard behaviors, and you easily end up with web apps with poor UX in the end.

true, but where can I find the smallest functional react website where react is needed...?

with this logic, why discuss any technology?

Not really, no. Astro requires you to opt a component in to client-side rendering, React (with its server components etc) require you to opt out. Defaults matter in scenarios like this and I'd bet the average developer of crappy websites would have a much faster site with Astro than React for that reason alone.

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