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Comment by compactmani | Hacker News Reader

You've highlighted one of the many advantages to browsing with javascript off by default. I think at this point it should really only be used for must-have cases.

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Isn't like 90% of the web broken these days without JS?

Yes, but that's why I use an extension like NoScript. If it's too badly broken I enable domains 1 by 1 till I get enough content, sometimes websites just look odd or behave odd but still give you what you came for. It also helps to have FlashBlock as well, which will stop plenty of flash adverts from loading in the background.

I have flash set to "on request only".

I have a Flash profile in Chrome.

Maybe, but the typical person doesn't browse the entire web, they browse a tiny part of it. Could be the GP visits sites (such as this one) that don't all depend on JS and there's a positive feedback loop for them.

Nope. Most of it's just fine, and NoScript makes it easy to temporarily enable for sites you do want to interact with.

I've permanently whitelisted about 150 domains, and temporarily whitelist domains as I need them. It's not very problematic and pays dividends in general web browsing speed.

Which also raises the question why do these websites not offer versions of their website that at least function enough without all the JS sugarcoating. I miss the early web with simpler designs.

Edit: Fixed poor wording.

raises the question

The main issue is that people expect the modern web to behave more like an application, which generally requires client side code. JS is not the only thing to blame, as some CSS can cause the graphics card to switch from 2D to 3D, causing a vast increase in power consumption.

It would be much better of there was a good way to have the server issue partial updates of the DOM in response to user action without needing JS glue to make it happen.

Web developers can do this now if they don't need to easily react to user input. They can use HTTP multipart messages and slowly stream in HTML as needed. This is also fairly buggy in current browsers as websites stopped using it ever since XMLHttpRequest came out.

Because designing, building, maintaining and supporting multiple versions of a site costs more. Imagine a tech support call when the first thing you need to determine is whether a user is using your full-featured site or your reduced-functionality site, and then explaining to the end user that they're on entirely the wrong site. Id guess that cost/benefit analysis just doesn't justify the effort in most cases.

How is that an advantage? Then you wouldn't be able to USE these javascript-heavy apps.

like voting on hackernews?

voting works with javascript off

Correct. Voting works, but the arrow icon will not update.

No, that's not true. Voting works properly, at least in my experience.

My current config: OS X, Firefox 45.0.2, NoScript 2.9.0.11.

What doesn't work properly is the search at the bottom of the page. For that I switch to Safari (with JS enabled).

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