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I remember disabling Javascript for a couple of months in Chrome some time ago and it barely broke anything. Had a great browsing experience. This might be beca

I remember disabling Javascript for a couple of months in Chrome some time ago and it barely broke anything. Had a great browsing experience. This might be because of my own personal preferences when it comes to sites, but I don't think that JS is a necessary evil in today's modern web.

hprotagonist 7y ago
a browsing experience without noscript is painful
- geggam 7y ago
  add pi-hole and it gets even better
  - snazz 7y ago
    If you’re already adding extensions, uBlock Origin does a better job than Pi-hole (client-side is more powerful than DNS). Enable advanced features and then you can use the uMatrix-esque dynamic filtering panel to prevent 3rd party or all JavaScript. I recently learned to use its power and now no longer feel the need to use uMatrix or NoScript.
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      Why not both? A client-side adblocker can obviously do a better job at blocking, but DNS-level blocking removes crap from most applications on any device, not just from browsers.
latexr 7y ago
If you enjoyed navigating with JavaScript turned off, why did you stop doing so (or so it seems)? Chrome even has (what I consider) a great interface for minimally controlling JavaScript and cookies, by placing an icon on the omnibar when either are blocked, letting you enable them on a per-site basis.
- wickerman 7y ago
  I changed OS, had to reinstall, then forgot about it. I also don't browse as much as I used to? I'm mostly working on personal projects when I'm home, so I barely spend time outside of podcasts or youtube videos.
chrismorgan 7y ago
A few months ago I decided to try uMatrix out, which defaults to blocking third-party JS, but allowing first-party JS. It broke a lot of things. But I persevered, and manually whitelisted various things as time went by; I decided to always whitelist by individual third-party for each domain, rather than just throwing in the towel and letting a site do what it wants. Some things were very painful to get working; Dropbox login, which I occasionally need to use for work, was excruciating. More recently I’ve been playing around with heading in the other direction: when things break, I try blocking first-party JavaScript instead. This has often been successful, so that I’m considering disabling all JS by default and only turning it on when needed. All this definitely speeds things up. I installed NoScript on my fairly slow phone (Firefox for Android) a month ago, which I don’t use for much, but do a little web reading on sometimes. Disabling JS definitely sped things up a lot. A few sites do stupid things like visually hiding all content if you don’t have JS. Those I don’t use, use reader mode or once or twice have added a user stylesheet for if I’m going to touch them more than once but decide not to whitelist them for probably capricious reasons. But this disabling-JS lark is definitely not for the consumer.
- timw4mail 7y ago
  Sites don't "visually hide all content" without JS, they are using JS to render content in the first place, thus no JS, no content.
  - codedokode 7y ago
    No. Many sites have a style like "display: none" on body element, to hide content until JS is loaded. But of course they have content in HTML for search engines optimization. So they show content to Google robot instantly, but the human user has to wait. Google also uses this trick in search results if I remember correctly.
    - chrismorgan 7y ago
      Exactly. Here’s an example I encountered today: https://status.digitalocean.com/ https://status.digitalocean.com/, all the content is in a div that is affected by `.layout-content.status.status-index { opacity: 0 }`. JavaScript code then sets `.style.opacity = 1` on the element to undo that. This is a bad technique. If you really want that effect, something friendlier would be this in the head of the document: <script>document.documentElement.className+=' js'</script> … then prefix that earlier selector with `.js`. Or another approach: remove the `opacity: 0` from the stylesheet, and immediately inside the element to be hidden while loading, add <script>document.currentScript.parentNode.style.opacity=0</script> Remember that external JS is never guaranteed to load; even on normal people’s computers, networks are not reliable and even first-party resources can fail to load, though it’s ones on a different origin that are the least reliable.
asdff 7y ago
Everything was fine for me until I noticed all my bank and cc and utility websites broke without JS.

hprotagonist 7y ago

a browsing experience without noscript is painful

geggam 7y ago
add pi-hole and it gets even better
- snazz 7y ago
  If you’re already adding extensions, uBlock Origin does a better job than Pi-hole (client-side is more powerful than DNS). Enable advanced features and then you can use the uMatrix-esque dynamic filtering panel to prevent 3rd party or all JavaScript. I recently learned to use its power and now no longer feel the need to use uMatrix or NoScript.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    Why not both? A client-side adblocker can obviously do a better job at blocking, but DNS-level blocking removes crap from most applications on any device, not just from browsers.

latexr 7y ago

If you enjoyed navigating with JavaScript turned off, why did you stop doing so (or so it seems)? Chrome even has (what I consider) a great interface for minimally controlling JavaScript and cookies, by placing an icon on the omnibar when either are blocked, letting you enable them on a per-site basis.

wickerman 7y ago
I changed OS, had to reinstall, then forgot about it. I also don't browse as much as I used to? I'm mostly working on personal projects when I'm home, so I barely spend time outside of podcasts or youtube videos.

chrismorgan 7y ago

A few months ago I decided to try uMatrix out, which defaults to blocking third-party JS, but allowing first-party JS. It broke a lot of things. But I persevered, and manually whitelisted various things as time went by; I decided to always whitelist by individual third-party for each domain, rather than just throwing in the towel and letting a site do what it wants. Some things were very painful to get working; Dropbox login, which I occasionally need to use for work, was excruciating. More recently I’ve been playing around with heading in the other direction: when things break, I try blocking first-party JavaScript instead. This has often been successful, so that I’m considering disabling all JS by default and only turning it on when needed. All this definitely speeds things up. I installed NoScript on my fairly slow phone (Firefox for Android) a month ago, which I don’t use for much, but do a little web reading on sometimes. Disabling JS definitely sped things up a lot. A few sites do stupid things like visually hiding all content if you don’t have JS. Those I don’t use, use reader mode or once or twice have added a user stylesheet for if I’m going to touch them more than once but decide not to whitelist them for probably capricious reasons. But this disabling-JS lark is definitely not for the consumer.

timw4mail 7y ago
Sites don't "visually hide all content" without JS, they are using JS to render content in the first place, thus no JS, no content.
- codedokode 7y ago
  No. Many sites have a style like "display: none" on body element, to hide content until JS is loaded. But of course they have content in HTML for search engines optimization. So they show content to Google robot instantly, but the human user has to wait. Google also uses this trick in search results if I remember correctly.
  - chrismorgan 7y ago
    Exactly. Here’s an example I encountered today: https://status.digitalocean.com/ https://status.digitalocean.com/, all the content is in a div that is affected by `.layout-content.status.status-index { opacity: 0 }`. JavaScript code then sets `.style.opacity = 1` on the element to undo that. This is a bad technique. If you really want that effect, something friendlier would be this in the head of the document: <script>document.documentElement.className+=' js'</script> … then prefix that earlier selector with `.js`. Or another approach: remove the `opacity: 0` from the stylesheet, and immediately inside the element to be hidden while loading, add <script>document.currentScript.parentNode.style.opacity=0</script> Remember that external JS is never guaranteed to load; even on normal people’s computers, networks are not reliable and even first-party resources can fail to load, though it’s ones on a different origin that are the least reliable.

asdff 7y ago

Everything was fine for me until I noticed all my bank and cc and utility websites broke without JS.