# JS-free view ? (newcomer)

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/js-free-view-newcomer/83078>\
**Category:** Radiant CMS\
**Created:** [January 23, 2007, 3:57pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/js-free-view-newcomer/83078 "2007-01-23T15:57:41Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 17\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![boris](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/74df32/32.png) [@boris](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/boris)\
**Post date:** [January 23, 2007, 3:57pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/js-free-view-newcomer/83078/1 "2007-01-23T15:57:41Z")

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Hi,

I was looking for “rails cms” and finally, radiant is the one I want.  
However I ride w3m in text mode (a11y background) and because of  
javascript, I can’t pass the demo test…

Is it possible to turn off javascript in the view layer ?

if yes? then users += 1 end

Thanks !

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**Author:** ![boris](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/74df32/32.png) [@boris](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/boris)\
**Post date:** [January 23, 2007, 5:50pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/js-free-view-newcomer/83078/2 "2007-01-23T17:50:17Z")

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Boris,

In order to get “unobtrusive” Javascript and full plain-text  
compatibility,  
we would have to change a lot of the code – maybe this can be a 1.0  
goal.  
Luckily JS is only required in the admin interface, so you might be able  
to  
enable JS just for that domain/url in your browser.

Sean

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![boris](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/74df32/32.png) [@boris](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/boris)\
**Post date:** [January 23, 2007, 6:33pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/js-free-view-newcomer/83078/3 "2007-01-23T18:33:31Z")

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On 1/23/07, Sean C. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote:

> Luckily JS is only required in the admin interface, so you might be able  
> to enable JS just for that domain/url in your browser.

He cannot. It is a text browser not supporting JS

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**Author:** ![boris](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/74df32/32.png) [@boris](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/boris)\
**Post date:** [January 23, 2007, 6:38pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/js-free-view-newcomer/83078/4 "2007-01-23T18:38:32Z")

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Right, I must have misread that. Sorry!

Sean

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**Author:** ![boris](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/74df32/32.png) [@boris](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/boris)\
**Post date:** [January 23, 2007, 7:15pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/js-free-view-newcomer/83078/5 "2007-01-23T19:15:40Z")

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Boris wrote:

> I was looking for “rails cms” and finally, radiant is the one I want.  
> However I ride w3m in text mode (a11y background) and because of  
> javascript, I can’t pass the demo test…

The Radiant admin will probably always require Javascript.

–  
John L.  
[http://wiseheartdesign.com](http://wiseheartdesign.com)

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![boris](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/74df32/32.png) [@boris](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/boris)\
**Post date:** [January 24, 2007, 8:26am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/js-free-view-newcomer/83078/6 "2007-01-24T08:26:41Z")

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“John W. Long” [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) writes:

[…]

> The Radiant admin will probably always require Javascript.

So I will probably never be able to use radiant ☹

Requiring JS breaks overall radiant accessibility. Isn’t JS mostly  
used to shrink the content tree ? This would be great to relax this,  
by providing simple fallbacks for people without JS support in their  
browser, see quotes below.

Requiring JS would also break “no-fluff” and “minimalistic” claims,  
IMO.

So how could I bypass the admin view requiring JS ? Is there a way to  
manage content offline ?

I’m looking forward to see radiant as the first accessible Rails CMS !

Thanks for your attention,

Quotes:

“developers need to provide fallback options for users on other  
platforms or browsers, as most methods of Ajax implementation rely  
on features only present in desktop graphical browsers.”  
–Wikipedia,

> **[Ajax (programming)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajax_(programming)#Accessibility)**
>
> Ajax (also AJAX /ˈeɪdʒæks/; short for "Asynchronous JavaScript and XML") is a set of web development techniques that uses various web technologies on the client-side to create asynchronous web applications. With Ajax, web applications can send and retrieve data from a server asynchronously (in the background) without interfering with the display and behaviour of the existing page. By decoupling the data interchange layer from the presentation layer, Ajax allows web pages and, by extension, Aja...

“AJAX and JavaScript are supposed to be used to enhance the user  
experience when run on a platform that supports it, they are not  
there to replace the job of the server in the first place”  
–Brett Parker, [http://www.sommitrealweird.co.uk/blog/2006/08/29](http://www.sommitrealweird.co.uk/blog/2006/08/29)

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![boris](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/74df32/32.png) [@boris](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/boris)\
**Post date:** [January 24, 2007, 4:00pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/js-free-view-newcomer/83078/7 "2007-01-24T16:00:05Z")

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Boris wrote:

> “John W. Long” [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) writes:
> 
> > The Radiant admin will probably always require Javascript.
> 
> So I will probably never be able to use radiant ☹

While it saddens me that you can’t find a Ruby solution to meet your  
needs, I’m afraid I have to fall back on the old excuse that I designed  
Radiant to meet my needs and expectations–not yours. Early on I made  
the decision that Javascript would be a requirement to improve the speed  
of development. There are times when there is not an easy way to create  
an alternate representation of the same functionality for browsers with  
Javascript turned off. So I made the decision that we would not support  
it–at least initially.

> So how could I bypass the admin view requiring JS ? Is there a way to  
> manage content offline ?

1. You can create and submit patches to repair the current  
implementation.

2. You can create an extension which provides a text-browser friendly  
version of the admin.

–  
John L.  
[http://wiseheartdesign.com](http://wiseheartdesign.com)

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![boris](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/74df32/32.png) [@boris](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/boris)\
**Post date:** [January 24, 2007, 11:52pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/js-free-view-newcomer/83078/8 "2007-01-24T23:52:59Z")

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> > The Radiant admin will probably always require Javascript.
> 
> So I will probably never be able to use radiant ☹
> 
> Requiring JS breaks overall radiant accessibility. Isn’t JS mostly  
> used to shrink the content tree ? This would be great to relax this,  
> by providing simple fallbacks for people without JS support in their  
> browser, see quotes below.

I was going to write back to your original message and say “all you  
needed to do to create fallbacks is to fix x,y and z”, but realised  
after the first couple of entries that it was starting to get  
non-trivial.

The main awkwardness that I see is page parts. Adding them, removing  
them, displaying them in a usable manner. All those would be quite  
difficult without JS.

Using extensive javascript in an administration application is a very  
reasonable design decision - the administration application has the rare  
luxury of dictating its audience. Unless you’re running on a old wyse  
terminal there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be able to spin up firefox  
for your website management.

Dan.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![boris](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/74df32/32.png) [@boris](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/boris)\
**Post date:** [January 24, 2007, 5:37pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/js-free-view-newcomer/83078/9 "2007-01-24T17:37:46Z")

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OK – I’ll try.

Thanks,

“John W. Long” [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) writes:

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**Author:** ![boris](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/74df32/32.png) [@boris](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/boris)\
**Post date:** [January 25, 2007, 3:31pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/js-free-view-newcomer/83078/10 "2007-01-25T15:31:12Z")

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“John W. Long” [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) writes:

> Boris wrote:

[…]

> > So how could I bypass the admin view requiring JS ? Is there a way to  
> > manage content offline ?
> 
> 1. You can create and submit patches to repair the current implementation.
> 
> 2. You can create an extension which provides a text-browser friendly  
> version of the admin.

I finally think that a good solution would be to provide an API  
through XML-RPC, like others already do. This would be real  
luxury :-). Maybe it’s non-trivial, but at least I won’t be alone to  
use it… so hopefully not alone for achieving it!

What do you think about that?

Thanks,

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![boris](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/74df32/32.png) [@boris](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/boris)\
**Post date:** [January 25, 2007, 8:16am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/js-free-view-newcomer/83078/11 "2007-01-25T08:16:45Z")

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Hi Dan,

Not everybody has the luxury to have a body that can use Firefox. That  
was the point in this case.

```
 Erik.

```

Daniel S. wrote:

> Using extensive javascript in an administration application is a very reasonable design decision - the administration application has the rare luxury of dictating its audience. Unless you’re running on a old wyse terminal there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be able to spin up firefox for your website management.
> 
> Dan.

–  
Erik van Oosten

> **[Day to day stuff](http://day-to-day-stuff.blogspot.com/)**
>
> Experiences from a hard core JVM programmer. Likes to keep things simple.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![boris](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/74df32/32.png) [@boris](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/boris)\
**Post date:** [January 25, 2007, 3:43pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/js-free-view-newcomer/83078/12 "2007-01-25T15:43:21Z")

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Boris,

XML-RPC would be great. I don’t know the innards of Radiant (mental)  
enough to give a definitive answer, but if it can be done, it would  
give Radiant tremendous flexibility.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![boris](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/74df32/32.png) [@boris](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/boris)\
**Post date:** [February 23, 2007, 4:03am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/js-free-view-newcomer/83078/13 "2007-02-23T04:03:28Z")

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> I finally think that a good solution would be to provide an API  
> through XML-RPC, like others already do. This would be real  
> luxury :-). Maybe it’s non-trivial, but at least I won’t be alone to  
> use it… so hopefully not alone for achieving it!

I’m actually quite interested in implementing the atom publishing  
protocol, and have been thinking a lot about how radiant’s model of what  
constitutes a page can be mapped to atom entries.

Then main issue is radiant’s concept of page parts (which ironically  
enough is the reason why the admin interface needs javascript and the  
reason for this thread starting) - but there’s many ways in which parts  
could be mapped to atom collections. I take it that wordpress/movable  
type/other blogging platforms don’t have a similar concept, which is why  
we don’t line up with the rest - perhaps only the ‘content’ parts get  
exposed through the atom entry… it’s a little bit of a clash of  
schemas.

Until I start seeing gui clients implementing the APP, it’s not easy to  
see how to map radiant to atom so that it’s usable, but it probably wont  
stop be geeking out on it sometime in the not too distant future.

Dan.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![boris](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/74df32/32.png) [@boris](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/boris)\
**Post date:** [January 25, 2007, 4:09pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/js-free-view-newcomer/83078/14 "2007-01-25T16:09:28Z")

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I think a REST implementation would be very simple to accomplish.  
However,  
that too would need to be developed as an extension for the time being  
because I don’t believe that’s on the table for the core before 0.7 at  
least  
(a task listed on the 0.7 release plan is ‘Add support for publishing  
through Mars Edit’ – I imagine TextMate might be possibility too).

Sean

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![boris](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/74df32/32.png) [@boris](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/boris)\
**Post date:** [February 23, 2007, 5:14am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/js-free-view-newcomer/83078/15 "2007-02-23T05:14:28Z")

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What’s the basic idea behind making a JS-free view?

Is it for users with text-only browsers? Why not take the approach of  
making sure that all of the features of the admin be easily supported  
through script/console.

For instance, we already tell people to use script/console to edit the  
Conf. Would some API improvements like this meet your needs Boris?

What if you built an extension that just added a bunch of utility  
classes/methoda that made it easier to build a site directly from  
script/console?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![boris](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/74df32/32.png) [@boris](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/boris)\
**Post date:** [February 23, 2007, 5:41am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/js-free-view-newcomer/83078/16 "2007-02-23T05:41:34Z")

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Jacob B. wrote:

> classes/methoda that made it easier to build a site directly from  
> script/console?

All of the features can be done from the console, if you know what  
you’re doing. However, script/console is not for casual users; it’s  
better if you’re familiar with using it from other Rails projects.

Sean

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![boris](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/74df32/32.png) [@boris](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/boris)\
**Post date:** [February 23, 2007, 4:46am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/js-free-view-newcomer/83078/17 "2007-02-23T04:46:31Z")

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Integration with Mars Edit is planned for 0.7, FYI. I don’t know what  
that entails, but I imagine there will be the possibility for supporting  
other options.

Sean