cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/72814294
Wait which frontends don't need that monster?
this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2026
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Basic Lemmy works without JS. Some stuff breaks, but it's still usable.
Can't vote or comment without JS
They say: "Javascript is disabled. Actions will not work"
Some stuff breaks, but it’s still usable.
You can see posts, thus it's usable.
That's more like "almost all, but not all of the stuff breaks".
Web applications need JavaScript.
Web sites do not; the static web technologies allow effectively any styling, and browsing any content your browser can handle, and HTML forms work fine. In any case, many people who need to access the web site can't run modern JavaScript. So it should work without that.
There may be special dynamic enhancements that require JavaScript, but the site should do its core job flawlessly, without any JavaScript.
I disliked that Tesseract was a bit of a busy mess, visually. I genuinely wanted to like it because it definitely added several useful features. I even self-hosted it for a while. But the default Lemmy UI is so much more simple/streamlined and handles 95% of what I want to do anyway. I would only use Tesseract on occasion, when I needed to perform some action that I knew Tesseract handled better than the default Lemmy UI. But default PieFed supports every feature I liked out of Tesseract anyway, so I didn't miss it at all when I switched from a Lemmy instance to a PieFed instance.
Have you tried Alexandrite?
Wait, people are actually out here daily driving the default Lemmy web UI instead of using their own client?
Yeah, that's a pretty common setup. I'd estimate about half of users just stick with the default web UI.
Definitely why wouldn't I?
When I'm on the toilet, I use a client app on my phone, but when I'm at my desk, I use my desktop and the web ui. Why would I use an app there?
There're alternative frontends that your admin. can install (and some designed so you can use without them being installed on your particular instance: https://phtn.app/ (https://phtn.app/accounts/login, to login)); no need for any app. (outside your browser) to be installed for you to use a different web UI other than the default one.
yes, me.
The only web client that doesn't use JavaScript is mlmym. the modern slopware on the web where websites pump 5 MB of scripts straight to your browser is insanity, but JavaScript can also make websites much much nicer to use (routers that don't require full page reload).
Plenty of web clients allow the user to turn off JavaScript. Which is a good safety and security measure.
If a web site breaks without JavaScript, that's the fault of the web site designers and implementers.
Leave JS alone? 🥲 /s
I'd love to. Sadly, when I do leave JavaScript alone, too many web sites that should work fine just break.
I only know Tesseract as an offshoot of Cube 2 Sauerbraten