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kkuchta
css-only-chat
Ruby2019–2024
kkuchta / css-only-chat

css-only-chat

A truly monstrous async web chat using no JS whatsoever on the frontend

13Distinct people
13Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
6.6KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

A truly monstrous async web chat using no JS whatsoever on the frontend

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use was verified in the last source check.

What people are saying

No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 3:56:07 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year13 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2019-05-07 18:27:42 UTC to 2024-03-01 14:56:23 UTC.

012342019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 3 submissions, 1 comments20192020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 1 submissions, 2 comments2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments20212022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 1 submissions, 1 comments2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2024

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20192019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC431
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC312
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC211
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101

What Hacker News says

13 sources
Real fun begins when you realize that the streamed content can react to interactions that user submits from the streamed page: form targetted into hidden iframe or any other mean of issuing HTTP request back to the server and handling data it can react to in next streamed chunk. This way you can have for example "CSS only chat" [1], or basically anything, since the chunk with new data can contain style directives hiding the old data… [1] https://github.com/kkuchta/css-only-chat
In Streaming HTML out of order without JavaScript
The idea of using CSS-triggered requests for analytics was really cool to me when I first encountered it. One guy on twitter (no longer available) used it for mouse tracking: overlay an invisible grid of squares on the page, each with a unique background image triggered on hover. Each background image sends a specific request to the server, which interprets it! For fun one summer, I extended that idea to create a JS-free "css only async web chat": https://github.com/kkuchta/css-only-chat
In How Bear does analytics with CSS
You mistake everyone using javascript to do those things as the only way it's possible to do those things. That's certainly not true. You can use HTML, Canvas, and CSS to do just about everything you mentioned. Video is easy. In pure HTML: <video autoplay loop muted playsinline src="..."></video>. No Javascript (or even CSS) required. You can certainly expand on that as well. Google Maps does not require Javascript to provide it's core and common functionality either: https://appelsiini.net/2008/google-maps-without-javascript/ You would have to make some changes, but core functionality still exists. Github does not require Javascript to function. You can toggle JS off and still use it pretty much as is, and the features that do break are trivial to implement without it. Interactive realtime chat does not require javascript. https://github
Read the rest
.com/kkuchta/css-only-chat , and the same principals can be applied to online docs and editors as well. Javascript is the norm because it has inertia behind it - largely due to circumstance more than any inherent natural benefit, not because it has some secret sauce that the internet needs that couldn't be easily replaced should it be Thanos-meets-Tron-Crossover Snapped out of existence. A much stronger argument in favor of Javascript would not be pointing to all the good things you can do with it, but rather, with how well and optimized and streamlined doing those things with Javascript is these days. Just to clarify, I'm not saying Javascript is the problem, but rather, the abuse of it, and that abuse would still be an issue if other technologies replaced it one day. I use the internet with JS toggled off by default as a result of the rampant abuse of dark patterns (for example, the Google Search Suggested Alternatives box that is served below the sponsored result(s) that always "conveniently" expands after a short delay to push the first actual result down the page and replaces it with yet more sponsored content), 3rd party/cross site abuses (Malware), as well as the overabundance and omnipresent ad-spam. Sites that break as a result of my opt-in JS browsing is usually a sign it's not worth my time. Sometimes I'm proven wrong, but sites that can fallback gracefully and display some basic info without JS are usually the worst offenders.. TL;DR: Yes, in a way, I do prefer "the web from 1995", where Javascript isn't everywhere, and only present in places that I specifically whitelist, because it's all too often abused to negatively impact my experience instead of enriching it.
In Audacity fork without any sentry telemetry or crash reporting
Flash based website chat room? What? Never ran into something like that - the closest thing i've seen was a chat with flash based sound notifications using flash, so if you didn't want it to give out any sounds it worked fine without flash. There are a lot of technologies that can be used for chat. Literally by looking for a flash chat room (searched "flash chat room for a website") the third result I got in google was a html5 based one. Just to name a few random examples of open source html/css/js based chats: https://github.com/credija/opa https://conversejs.org/ https://rocket.chat/ https://firechat.firebaseapp.com/ https://deadsimplechat.com/ and since I mentioned css, I have to add this: https://github.com/kkuchta/css-only-chat :)
In Ask HN: Has Flash Been Replaced?

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