Facebook: the client-side code is a mess

Facebook logoNo kidding. If you take a look at the source code of any Facebook page (for example, your home page), you will see something quite shocking: the 80%-90% of the page is made up by JavaScript code! That's why Facebook doesn't work with assistive technologies: there's very few actual content to parse and render in such pages. Facebook seems to embrace the what-you-see-is-what-you-get philosophy or, as they put it, we're not cool enough to support your browser (said to a Lynx user). Fine. So they don't care if many users can't access their web application. But there's another thing that needs to be emphasized: by relying so heavily on JavaScript and Ajax, Facebook delivers a consistent parsing and rendering load to web browsers. Sure, JavaScript engines evolve, but what about backward compatibility? There should be a certain balance between effective content and JavaScript-generated content. Facebook is completely unbalanced. And yes, this is a mess. No kidding.

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