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Happily used to (5 years ago) surf the web with no JS and no CSS, or rather applying my own style-sheet for 90% of my web viewing. I'd fall back to Chrome when

Happily used to (5 years ago) surf the web with no JS and no CSS, or rather applying my own style-sheet for 90% of my web viewing. I'd fall back to Chrome when absolutely necessary. It was fast and comfortable, it just relies on well structured accessible content.

vog 9y ago
There's also a nice Open Source project which implements that using a proxy: https://www.tedunangst.com/flak/post/miniwebproxy https://www.tedunangst.com/flak/post/miniwebproxy
dahart 9y ago
> it just relies on well structured accessible content. Honest question: how much of this is left? What popular sites are still accessible this way? HN might be the only site I visit frequently where browsing with no js/css has any hope of working.
- rplnt 9y ago
  No js is suprisingly fine. Google search works, gmail works, maps don't :)
- ekianjo 9y ago
  Check surfraw (by Assange), you can actually access a surprising amount of resources using sr and lynx from a terminal. Text only, but still makes internet pretty useful.
  - MamboJ 9y ago
    Are you aware of any piece, writeup review or anything on Assange’s programming skills?
- _jal 9y ago
  Try it and see. I block a ton by default[1]; most sites are just fine without it. I get that some people have low tolerances for things not being perfect. CNN stories without JS usually have a pile of empty images at the top, for instance. But that is probably fixable; I just haven't bothered to figure out which bit of JS to allow for that. Usability depends on your tolerance for imperfections vs. your tolerance for being observed. [1] Current setup uses JS Blocker 5, uBlock, an aggressive cookie manager and my home proxy, which does a ton of things, many of which I don't even remember at this point.
- sevensor 9y ago
  I browse HN using w3m, from which I'm commenting right now. It works on probably 80% of the links I attempt to visit. In many cases it works better than a graphical browser: I only see article text, and for reasons I haven't investigated I often seem to be ignored by paywalls. I never see subscription nagboxes or ads. Sometimes I have to search forward for the title to skip the load of garbage that precedes the article text.

vog 9y ago

There's also a nice Open Source project which implements that using a proxy: https://www.tedunangst.com/flak/post/miniwebproxy https://www.tedunangst.com/flak/post/miniwebproxy

dahart 9y ago

> it just relies on well structured accessible content. Honest question: how much of this is left? What popular sites are still accessible this way? HN might be the only site I visit frequently where browsing with no js/css has any hope of working.

rplnt 9y ago
No js is suprisingly fine. Google search works, gmail works, maps don't :)
ekianjo 9y ago
Check surfraw (by Assange), you can actually access a surprising amount of resources using sr and lynx from a terminal. Text only, but still makes internet pretty useful.
- MamboJ 9y ago
  Are you aware of any piece, writeup review or anything on Assange’s programming skills?
_jal 9y ago
Try it and see. I block a ton by default[1]; most sites are just fine without it. I get that some people have low tolerances for things not being perfect. CNN stories without JS usually have a pile of empty images at the top, for instance. But that is probably fixable; I just haven't bothered to figure out which bit of JS to allow for that. Usability depends on your tolerance for imperfections vs. your tolerance for being observed. [1] Current setup uses JS Blocker 5, uBlock, an aggressive cookie manager and my home proxy, which does a ton of things, many of which I don't even remember at this point.
sevensor 9y ago
I browse HN using w3m, from which I'm commenting right now. It works on probably 80% of the links I attempt to visit. In many cases it works better than a graphical browser: I only see article text, and for reasons I haven't investigated I often seem to be ignored by paywalls. I never see subscription nagboxes or ads. Sometimes I have to search forward for the title to skip the load of garbage that precedes the article text.