Imagine Gmail, ChatGPT, Slack, and so on as server side rendered websites, but with smooth transitions. This wouldn't work at all.

Let's take slack as an example. We had those chat websites 20 years ago. The thread was in it's own frame and got periodically reloaded. It's just bad UX.

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strken 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

I think you're using "single-page app as opposed to no or limited JS on the client" while an alternative would be "single-page app as opposed to multi-page app". There's no reason you have to implement something like Slack by reloading an iframe.

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andix 4 days ago | parent [-]

Not reloading the document via HTTP while updating the content is the definition of a SPA.

	▲	strken 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		I would argue that the line between an SPA and not is blurred. Consider progressive enhancement; or, per the Slack example, pages with content that's updated dynamically but which rely on reloading a whole page for navigation. I would even argue that passing snippets of HTML around like e.g. Hotwire is still a middle ground.

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epolanski 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

You are extremely confused, you can absolutely have client side JavaScript in a website and poll or stream whatever you want like chats.

It has nothing to do with being a static website or an SPA, nothing.