Shoving JavaScript down my throat
How come Facebook functions perfectly well with no JS? I can read and send messages, even ones with images, I can browse posts, groups, heck, I can even play videos if I can be arsed to disable NoScript for each of them individually. All this buttery smooth, no slow, incremental loading of pages, no single-page-application navigation bullshit. What about some other sites? Maybe I’ve been a slave to JS with no reason for all those years?
- The Guardian? Looking good. I mean, not looking-good looking good, the site looks awful, but it’s fully functional.
- Ars Technica? Aside from embedded media not working, everything seems fine.
- Hacker News? Wait, did you really think the site would look any different with JS turned off? Alright, you can’t collapse - comments. Happy?
- Slashdot? Hardly any difference either.
- 4chan? Sure, as if 4chan cares about anything. Ever. Same as above.
- Apple? I am absolutely blown away by the looks of the no-JS version of the site. Just go see it yourself.
- BBC? Usable if you don’t need article thumbnails.
- CNN? Okay-ish.
- Dropbox? Can’t call that functional.
- Instagram? Nope.
- LinkedIn? Nope.
- Google Drive? Google Maps? Google Docs? GMail? Nope.
- The Washington Post? Nope.
- Snapchat? No luck.
- 9Gag? Nuh-uh.
To be fair, I know that many of the sites I listed substantially improve their functionality, ease of use and accessibility with JavaScript. However, I believe that the vast majority of their functionality could be replicated without using any JavaScript whatsoever.
I am wondering whether we would be able to see some kind of a pattern here if more sites were surveyed. For instance, I’m guessing the businesses whose revenue comes from sources other than targeted advertising and personal data trafficking would have much more NoScript-compatible websites. Facebook would be quite a notable exception there. If you know of any such surveys, let me know.
One thing that stood out to me while testing all the websites: they were blazingly fast. It felt as if I was accessing local copies of those websites. Makes me try to imagine a world where JavaScript has never come to be.
PS: I just remembered this one site: https://slimvoice.co/about
This makes me feel warm. There are still people who care : )