ironing our pants into the universe

There's a difference between webpage and a webapp; have the good taste to make the distinction.

JavaScript opulence is great for web apps that allow the user to manipulate data, the backend of a CMS, or a corporate intranet application with specific requirements for a small subset of people.

Javascript is like seasoning, don't dump a sack of pepper on my food because you want to show off how much pepper you have.

JavaScript is nice when you want inline voting, a rollover for more info, and other elegant innovations.

The browser is a consistent interface.

In the late 90's people raged on Flash. The main arguments were that it was superfluous, ruined the web browser experience, and negatively affected simple web crawlers.

Now, JavaScript is repeating those same mistakes, but worse. Some examples:

The infinite scroll bar

The scrollbar, in a web browser, indicates the length of a page. It even resizes proportionally based on the amount of content in the page. When the scrollbar reaches the bottom, I know I am done. I use the scrollbar as a visual indicator for time and space; this is extremely valuable information.

Some sites now automatically append new content once the scrollbar reaches the bottom. This is idiotic.

Pagination

When I click Page 2, I expect Page 2. Not Page 1 repopulated with new information. My browser has a built in status indicator, a URL that acts as an ID for the page, and a back button. Overriding this behaviour is stupidity.

Inline loading

The browser has a cache, a web crawler that pre-caches inline URLs, and other great innovations. Web servers have text compression, communicates with the browser to avoid sending redundant pages, and trivial setup procedures to cache static pages . Unless you are Gmail, there is no benefit to inline loading. It looks better because you have animation? No. It's boneheaded.

Stop the insanity!

Help I've fallen and I can't get up...