Website without the use of server technology

Question

Web development

There are a lot of server-side technologies/frameworks in vogue now that allow you to dynamically generate HTML content: APS.NET, Ruby On Rails, and so on. On the other hand, JavaScript MV* frameworks like AngularJS, Backbone, etc. are gaining popularity. Is it possible to build a website that is large enough and uses only JavaScript MV* frameworks and AJAX requests to web services to populate the site with content? Would all pages be just static HTML?

Answer 1

External data sources can: be unreliable (and the site should not go down); give data in the wrong format (for example, there are no filters or are closed from the eyes of users, or there are just a lot of them); give them away for a long time; be legally or logically inapplicable to return to users.
Therefore, large sites somehow process data, store it, cache it, etc., which is why the backend is needed.
In general, it is possible to do something, but somehow it is unreasonably difficult and not entirely reliable. This is of course if the site is not a blog with pictures: this one will take off on one static if you prepare it correctly.

Answer 2

Purely theoretically, of course, you can find external services that allow cross-domain requests and provide api for storing and retrieving data in such a strange way.
There should be 2 services: image storage and database.
Even if we assume that such services will be found and will be free, or have an adequate price, which I strongly doubt ...
The speed of such a site will be, to put it mildly, not very good. It's the browser that needs to make a bunch of requests to the left servers, and then draw all this on js.
The key question is "why"?

Answer 3

Yes, you can.
The main problem is cross-domain requests:
- CORS is not available in all browsers;
- JSONP not for all APIs;
- only GET can be forwarded through an iframe.

Answer 4

Of course it is possible. Vkontakte, for example, works.

Answer 5

Any site must meet the conditions of compatibility with a certain bar.
For a fairly large site , especially if it is a site providing services,
this compatibility bar should be quite low, for example 0.5% of the audience.
Thus, it will be necessary not only to support technically outdated browsers,
but also to provide work without the use of JS.