I must say, I don't understand the disable JS movement. I browse with JS on, and uBlock Origin to block ads. It's rare that I have any javascript-related problems in my web browsing. On the other hand, I definitely use a number of sites that rely on javascript for useful purposes.<p>If you're worried about tracking, you can block ads and tracking scripts without disabling javascript. If you're worried about viruses, well, all I can say there is that in my experience and understanding, if you keep your browser updated, the odds of getting a virus via browser JS are exceedingly low. Doubly so if you're not frequenting sketchy sites.<p>I don't know, it seems to me like advice from a time before security was a priority for browser makers, and high-quality ad blockers existed. At this point, I really don't see the value.
As someone who has JS off by default for a long time (ever since I discovered how much it could remove annoyances, and this was back when SPAs were basically nonexistent) and is thus often subjected to "Please enable JS" messages which more likely than not will simply make me click the back button[1], I am delighted to see this exists --- I've thought of the idea before, but never did anything with it:<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11411982" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11411982</a><p>[1] I once enabled JS on a site that claimed it would provide "a better experience", and was bombarded with a bunch of ads and other irritations that just made me turn it off again. It was not a "better experience".
I prefer making all my sites work just as well without JavaScript as with it. This is cool though if you need a quick check to see if JavaScript is enabled.
So running untrusted code on your computer is a bad thing. Well, it should be in a sandbox, but that has many intentional and proably some less intentional holes to do stuff on your machine.<p>So how do I trace what Javascript is doing on my machine?<p>Generally mitmproxy gives a feeling what sites the browser talks too. And strace gives often a good feeling what a Linux binary does. But the browser is too big and complicated to read strace output in most cases.<p>Can anybody recommend a tool to look what Javascript code loaded by a certain page is doing?
I’d love to get rid of JS for my personal sites, but I know of no clean and simple way to render dynamic content otherwise. Server-side rendering seems a bit messy. I want a clean REST API separate from the UI.<p>How can I generate pages with dynamic content easily? Ideally with absolute minimal dependencies.
It's worth noting that this is the personal website of Heydon Pickering, a prolific (and opinionated!) writer and speaker on web design. He's the force behind Inclusive Components [0] and half of Every Layout [1].<p>Watch his videos. Check out his articles on A List Apart and in Smashing Magazine, among others. Pay attention, he's very thoughtful and you'll probably learn a lot.<p>0: <a href="http://book.inclusive-components.design/" rel="nofollow">http://book.inclusive-components.design/</a><p>1: <a href="https://every-layout.dev/" rel="nofollow">https://every-layout.dev/</a>
Wow, something is wrong with uMatrix. I have uMatrix with 1st party javascript disabled by default. Yet this site says "Please disable JavaScript to view this site." To be sure, I curled the source and hosted it elsewhere, and my browser (firefox 84.0b4 on linux with uMatrix) still runs the JavaScript.
I expected this to be implemented with something like document.body.textContent = "Please disable JavaScript to view this site" on page load. Which would be enough to work. It's actually exactly it, but with the extra precaution of wrapping the entire page inside a noscript tag. Hilarious. I guess it's useful to avoid having a chance to see the content during a flash, before the script executes.<p>A good contrast with web pages which are not apps telling you "This app requires Javascript to run".
A small snippet to add to your nojs sites.
<a href="https://ghostbin.com/paste/kupyj" rel="nofollow">https://ghostbin.com/paste/kupyj</a><p>Shows a banner "You Don't Need JavaScript to Run This Site (turn it off here)"<p>It's a response to all the "You Need JavaScript to Run This Site" banners we see everywhere even on plain text/image sites.
It ought to be possible for the page to disable JavaScript with a meta tag:<p><pre><code> <meta name="noscript">
</code></pre>
The browser could put an extra icon next to the https padlock so the user would know they were viewing a document rather than an application.
I wanted to read the source, but it was all on 1 line, so I fed it to <a href="https://validator.w3.org/nu/?doc=https%3A%2F%2Fheydonworks.com%2F&showsource=yes" rel="nofollow">https://validator.w3.org/nu/?doc=https%3A%2F%2Fheydonworks.c...</a>
Any guesses as to why the source code look the way it does? I was expecting a traditional website inside the noscript tags, but instead I found an obfuscated soup letter between them.
I am not a developer, and I learned how to disable JavaScript in Chrome to read this site, out of curiosity. I then checked a few other sites and learned<p>* Washington Post no longer has a paywall<p>* anandtech.com is seemingly unaffected, but tomshardware.com is very different (and less pushy)<p>* SoundCloud says "Oh no! | JavaScript is disabled | You need to enable JavaScript to use SoundCloud"<p>* nationalreview.com is broken -- I can only read a few paragraphs in a NR PLUS story, and there's no way to keep scrolling (I can read the article fine in another tab)<p>* An article I co-wrote, published in a Cambridge University Press journal, is now sans tables and figures, but the console reports no errors or exceptions.<p>An interesting experiment! Overall, it seems my internet experience is better without JS (but reading an academic article online is way worse).
I must say I had to look for how to disable JS in Firefox + uBlock.<p>As someone pointed out, there's a button on uBlock to disable it.<p>I didn't quite spend so much time on Firefox preferences but I didn't find the option. I'm sure it's there somewhere<p>You can open developer console, go into <i>it's</i> settings and look for Disable Javascript. Checking the box will disable JS and reload the page.
"I have spoken on stages all over the world, including at Fronteers, Beyond Tellerrand, and JS Heroes"<p>Would love to have heard that final talk!
> This website will not [...] tell you fibs<p>That's literally the only thing it did until I reconfigured my browser to access it. It's a misuse of `<noscript>` and it's completely unnecessarily intruding on how I use my own computer to access the content. I thought that was the kind of thing people here (especially the anti-JS people) frown upon.
For a personal website for showcasing their works I think requiring JavaScript turned off is a little too far.. I removed JavaScript from my sites to improve accessibility and user experience, but for this I have to go to settings and turn off JavaScript, which is worse user experience than having JavaScript on the site.
Worth mentioning: Twitter legacy, which does not require Javascript, will be shutting down in 15 days.<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25088561" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25088561</a>
In my view, micrototalitarian actions like this are every bit as bad as the ills they seek to cure. Insisting on infringing the liberty of others, before even so much as talking to another person is the very core of what ails our society in this time.
Some Onions do this.<p>I think it's a conflict between Tor trying to be mainstream as possible and Onions trying to reduce users attack vectors, JavaScript has been used against users on Tor.
How nice! I hope others support this trend so that the web is clearly split into two: (1) the traditional one, document-based, and (2) applications. Both are very useful, but (2) comes at a price not everybody wants to pay.
Isn't this one to steal Facebook session? Didn't look at the code but the fact that you get Facebook page "translate" seems weird. I have seen same link posted on Facebook.
Well, I went through the trouble of disabling javascript and was treated to an utterly mundane blog site with astounding insights worthy of a 22 year-old, such as "if you're a libertarian you're just being exploited by the capitalists, man."