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by alphalima 652 days ago
Hey Matt,

Super cool to see this, and congrats on 1.0!

One question, has the GDS stance on Javascript softened, namely progressive enhancement being essentially mandatory [1], since I last worked with you? Is the target for more controlled user groups, non-govuk projects, or do you do SSR to give a usable first HTML response?

[1] https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/technology/using-progressi... Last update: 16 December 2019
2 comments
midenginedcoupe 651 days ago
No, it hasn't.

Although GDS lost their teeth (and their technical way) some years ago, this rule is still a major win for end users. To be honest, I'm sick of seeing techies fob this one off just because they want to use [insert fashionable framework of the day].

Disclaimer: I have a dog in this fight as I run a forms SaaS aimed at central gov and have also re-implemented the GOV.UK design system. But I've done it the way it was intended and only used JS for progressive enhancement.

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matteason 652 days ago
Haha, hi AL!

Yeah the target for this definitely isn't the regular transactional GOV.UK services. I've added a note at the top of the installation guide:

> GOV.UK Vue (or any JavaScript library) might not be suitable for your project if it's a standard transactional government service. Make sure you read the guidance on progressive enhancement and building more complex services before starting. GOV.UK Vue is designed to be used in more complex services, like interactive mapping, or internal tools where you've determined that JavaScript is acceptable.

GDS are also currently doing exploratory work to investigate how Frontend can be more closely integrated with React/Vue/Svelte/Angular etc, so it's definitely not verboten: https://github.com/alphagov/govuk-frontend/issues/5172

SSR/SSG is supported (the docs website is an SSG Nuxt app) but I need to do some work to improve how it works for certain components to ensure the state they're first rendered in is usable on its own (eg defaulting accordion components to open on the server-rendered version)

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alphalima 651 days ago
Nice!

I've been using GOVUK stuff for my own purposes for a good-long while now, this should speed up the process.

I'll try to plug your thing into Json Forms [1], then I'll be back to the good old days.

[1] https://github.com/eclipsesource/jsonforms

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