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The NoJS Club

74 points by 0goel0 6y ago

0goel0 6y ago
I also wrote about building those club: https://goel.io/nojs-club https://goel.io/nojs-club Someone might find it useful, and hopefully someone from GH takes the constructive criticism.
skulk 6y ago
I have JS on my page (<username>.org) but it's only for a fun, if slightly annoying visual effect that isn't triggered unless a link is clicked. I hope that's acceptable! (To be clear, I'm not asking to join the club with JS on my page, just highlighting what I think is an acceptable use of JS)
searchableguy 6y ago
I am tempted to build the fangobrrr.club which lists all the sites which makes your fans go brrr.
gkoberger 6y ago
JavaScript is amazing. Sure, there's issues, but the state of the web in 2020 is so much better than it was two decades ago. Yes, some sites abuse it... but abusing web technologies is a time-honored tradition since the Internet started. People used to be tracked using 1x1 pixels or Flash. Don't blame the technology, blame people. We've seen so many amazing things become possible due to JavaScript. We can communicate and collaborate better than ever before. Even news sites, historically some of the biggest abusers of JS (with ads/tracking), have used JavaScript to build amazing data visualizations and tell stories in new and unique ways. The criteria for this "club" is so narrow, even Hacker News wouldn't even be eligible! Is that really what we should be striving for? Sure, sometimes JS has been abused. But Chrome/Firefox/Safari have done an amazing job of reigning in abuse and speeding it up, and I'm so excited about the crazy weird new things I get to build every day because web technologies have gotten so good.
- 0goel0 6y ago
  "Javascript is good in some cases" is the point of this club. You can build great websites without the cruft. Secondly, JS abuse is now built into browsers, so yes no JS is a decent goal for privacy, security, and speed.
  - krapp 6y ago
    >"Javascript is good in some cases" is the point of this club. The very first qualifier to join is "Make sure there is no Javascript on your website," not "make sure the Javascript on your site is necessary."
    - userbinator 6y ago
      The point of this is to specifically point out sites which do not need any JS at all.
- pmoriarty 6y ago
  The problem with javascript is not just abuse, it's overuse. There are countless websites which have no dynamic content and yet choose to require javascript to function. The other major problem is the vulnerabilities you open yourself up to by allowing javascript to run in your browser. 99.9% of the time it's simply not worth it for me, and I wish I could say "no thank you" to all those sites that use it but don't actually need it to deliver all their static content. Even many of the sites that deliver dynamic content via javascript could probably have been designed to work just fine without it, but no, companies just have to have their tracking and serve up all their ads via JS.
  - userbinator 6y ago
    Even many of the sites that deliver dynamic content via javascript could probably have been designed to work just fine without it, but no, companies just have to have their tracking and serve up all their ads via JS. Two noteworthy examples on this are Twitter and YouTube, especially in their latest designs. 99% of their functionality could be accomplished without any JS, and thus be accessible from a very wide range of browsers, but they've turned into horribly wasteful SPAs that now require an extremely recent browser and accompanying dependent software --- and hardware --- to access. IMHO it's a huge waste of resources, and it's time this endless churn was put to a stop.
chrysoprace 6y ago
I don't understand this obsession with not having JavaScript. Ideally all sites should work without JavaScript, but what's with this "I don't use that JavaScript non-sense" rhetoric?
- tcbasche 6y ago
  I think it’s become fashionable due to how trackers and dark patterns have used JS. But as someone has pointed out, it’s people not the technology...
  - 0goel0 6y ago
    It's the technology arguably more than the people. People started using invasive trackers not because the trackers are innate, but because someone built them.
    - chrysoprace 6y ago
      Sure, and websites should respect that the browser doesn't want JavaScript. I've taken great care to make sure my site works with and without JavaScript. What I don't understand is why it's trendy to say you don't have JavaScript on your site.
      - userbinator 6y ago
        What I don't understand is why it's trendy to say you don't have JavaScript on your site. People are starting to realise how a lot of JS use is unnecessary, and the opposition to it is growing.
        ulisesrmzroche 6y ago
        I think most people are not interested in this at all. The truth is that people love JS and want more of it.
        6y ago
darepublic 6y ago
So the less client side js the better, although I think things like ajax make a page more usable not less. So SSR pages with minimal amounts of js to facilitate no reload of the page for simple things... And CSS the rest of the way. Analytics can be server side too if need be. And graceful fallback if no js enabled.. so the only diff need be that instead of ajax u get full page reloads
vulcan01 6y ago
How do you get mobile navbars to work without JS? When I've built websites before, they're typically the only place I'm compelled to use JS in.
- tannhaeuser 6y ago
  While you can implement sidenavs using just CSS, you can't implement reveal menus which have become the most common nav for simple sites such as portfolios. Ie where you start with your fat logo centered and have it shrink into a fixed/sticky top menu/logo as you need to interrogate the scroll position for that.
- darepublic 6y ago
  CSS my friend.. also u can technically post back to the server for even switching between hamburger open and closed, if u want to take it that far.
- robgibbons 6y ago
  If you mean something like a sidebar that pops out, that's definitely possible via some clever CSS. Make the menu button a hidden checkbox and add a CSS transition to move your sidebar based on its checked state.
  - vulcan01 6y ago
    I hadn't thought of this; thank you!
- wishinghand 6y ago
  Do you mean menus that hide off-screen and then slide over to fill the screen once a menu icon is touched? If so, I dducked "css only slide out menu" and this was the second result: https://1stwebdesigner.com/pure-css-navigation-menus/ https://1stwebdesigner.com/pure-css-navigation-menus/
- cmroanirgo 6y ago
  Use a hidden checkbox. No js necessary. Eg. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/31506684/expand-collapse-mobile-navbar-without-javascript https://stackoverflow.com/questions/31506684/expand-collapse...
darepublic 6y ago
For a lot of the entries here it's not only no js but minimal CSS and just minimal content as well.. showing me some sparse HTML with courier font is not really inspiring me here
landongn 6y ago
no, indeed
mellosouls 6y ago
Related current discussion fwiw: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25240299 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25240299
wishinghand 6y ago
While I'm in the camp that use Javascript is fun, useful, and cool, I also realize it's not nearly as necessary as some think it. The nojs.club site is a good idea, but now that it's been established I hope to see some actually good looking websites added. There were about two when I clicked through the top 15 links- most of them are small black text on a bright white page. I'm grateful that at least the majority of those restricted page width to something less than 100 characters.
pwdisswordfish4 6y ago
There's a perverse bias here that's almost in strange loop territory. To submit a site, you have to file an issue on GitHub. If you consider developers who use GitHub vs developers who don't/won't use GitHub... it seems that any given developer in the former set is more likely to be using JS on their homepage than those in the latter set. Regardless of anything, given the subtleties of the way the system is designed, it's important to understand that this is not, as will be popularly interpreted, a "list of people with homepages that don't use JS", but instead "a list of people on GitHub who have homepages that don't use JS".
- 0goel0 6y ago
  If you want to add a site but don't use github, feel free to email me.
  - pwdisswordfish4 6y ago
    (For anyone wondering why someone might not use GitHub, comments like the above are a good example. On GitHub, nobody recognizes the distinction between an error report and a support request.)
    - cjaybo 6y ago
      The only thing I'm wondering is why you felt it necessary to add this strangely patronizing comment. The GP voiced a simple complaint, not an "error report" or a "support request".
      - pwdisswordfish4 6y ago
        You are wrong about 'not an "error report"'. What you are calling a complaint was an error report. The person who responded ("If you want to add a site but don't use github, feel free to email me") did so in a way that would make sense if it were a support request. As a response to an error report, it's a non-sequitur. The inability to distinguish between support requests and error reports is precisely the reason for the "patronizing comment"—exactly as stated in the comment itself. So where's your confusion coming from?
werber 6y ago
I feel weird making my livelihood through js while also worrying about the implications of its misuse. I don’t personally write malicious code but I see so many ways to do it. If I didn’t have a well paying job I think it be easy to make the switch to be crappy
vmception 6y ago
I don't find a single one of those websites aesthetically pleasing And I’m finding that with all these “buck the site design trend with this unnecessary design constraint” So far I haven't seen any staying power in production and it seems more like art subcultures that very young people dabble in for a while in niche online communities more so than a statement or something to pay attention to
ampdepolymerase 6y ago
Does it count if I render everything with WebAssembly?
- reificator 6y ago
  I was under the impression that web assembly did not provide utilities for interacting with the page/DOM without a JS glue layer. Am I mistaken there?
keb_ 6y ago
A lot of commenters are completely missing the point of this site somehow. The site says: > Not all websites need Javascript to be beautiful and usable. This is a showcase of the Javascript-less web. It does not say: > JavaScript is bad and no one should ever use it.
- earthtobishop 6y ago
  The problem is most of the websites that are being showcased are ugly and basic.
  - keb_ 6y ago
    Of course, that's entirely subjective and I think several sites on this list look great. Regardless, JavaScript does not inherently make a site look better, and it isn't a necessity for nice looking sites. See: CSS Zen Garden.
numlock86 6y ago
> Not all websites need Javascript to be beautiful and usable. This is a showcase of the Javascript-less web. First link is literally only four lines of text. Three of those are links. Second link is dead. Third is basically the first but with emojis ... Ok, I stopped after that. What exactly is this trying to showcase again?
- earthtobishop 6y ago
  Yeah the majority of the websites seem like throw away projects that were made in 5 minutes. Whoever created this probably should have taken the time to find JavaScript free websites that are actually presentable.
  - keb_ 6y ago
    Please read the site. It's inspired by https://1mb.club/ https://1mb.club/. All of the sites are user-submitted examples; they are not curated.
bstar77 6y ago
You can't do any kind of ecommerce or media without Javascript (or something like flash). Do we really want to limit those sorts of things solely to apps? This whole movement is insane. Lets get rid of cars while we are at it, they run people over after all.
- Rounin 6y ago
  That's not the case at all. Ecommerce is mainly a serverside application. At most, doing everything serverside would introduce some extra lag.
  - Rounin 6y ago
    HTML also has elements such as <video>, <object> and <embed>, some of which have existed for many years already. As far as I'm aware, browsers are free to play any media files included via these tags directly, without relying on any external piece of software.
  - bstar77 6y ago
    It's just not scalable for most businesses as you would have to operate cache-less if you truly went javascript-less.
- FroshKiller 6y ago
  I ran a retail website for several years that used almost no JS, and what was there was not part of checkout. I don’t know where you got this idea.
  - bstar77 6y ago
    Technically it's possible if everything is handled server-side, so I should have acknowledged that, but IMO, it's not practical for most businesses.
umaar 6y ago
I automated going through the 100 most popular websites, disabling JavaScript, and taking a screenshot to see what they look like https://github.com/umaar/offline-website-scripts/tree/master/results/disable-javascript-screenshot https://github.com/umaar/offline-website-scripts/tree/master... - Lots of Google products don't work - Wikipedia looks the same - GitHub works pretty well, including lots of functionality I thought was JS only - Amazon seems to work just fine
- Hamcha 6y ago
  I was personally amazed by Amazon. Sadly it seems the websites that work best without JavaScript are those where I really don't feel like it's a hindrance to begin with.
  - phone8675309 6y ago
    Amazon is set up to make money when you spend money, not just by tracking you, so of course they would make their platform work without Javascript because you want to maximize the number of browsers people can use to impulse/drunk/Ambien order tons of useless shit from your site.
  - crubier 6y ago
    Sounds a bit tautological doesn’t it? Of course a site that uses a lot of JS will not work well if you disable JS
ryanmarsh 6y ago
If I understand the argument in TFA, JavaScript is unnecessary and often misused and that makes JavaScript bad. Allow me to introduce you to fire, and the wheel. ARM has a JS specific instruction. If you want to homestead off the grid without JS I think that’s cool bro, but don’t act like you’re better for it.
ulisesrmzroche 6y ago
None of the sites showcased are beautiful. They're just unstyled. I think something like CSS Garden is a much better showcase.
marksmillibend 6y ago
A small snippet to add to your nojs sites. https://ghostbin.com/paste/kupyj https://ghostbin.com/paste/kupyj Shows a banner "You Don't Need JavaScript to Run This Site (turn it off here)" It's a response to all the "You Need JavaScript to Run This Site" banners we see everywhere even on plain text/image sites.

74 points by 0goel0 6y ago

I also wrote about building those club: https://goel.io/nojs-club https://goel.io/nojs-club Someone might find it useful, and hopefully someone from GH takes the constructive criticism.

skulk 6y ago

I have JS on my page (<username>.org) but it's only for a fun, if slightly annoying visual effect that isn't triggered unless a link is clicked. I hope that's acceptable! (To be clear, I'm not asking to join the club with JS on my page, just highlighting what I think is an acceptable use of JS)

searchableguy 6y ago

I am tempted to build the fangobrrr.club which lists all the sites which makes your fans go brrr.

gkoberger 6y ago

JavaScript is amazing. Sure, there's issues, but the state of the web in 2020 is so much better than it was two decades ago. Yes, some sites abuse it... but abusing web technologies is a time-honored tradition since the Internet started. People used to be tracked using 1x1 pixels or Flash. Don't blame the technology, blame people. We've seen so many amazing things become possible due to JavaScript. We can communicate and collaborate better than ever before. Even news sites, historically some of the biggest abusers of JS (with ads/tracking), have used JavaScript to build amazing data visualizations and tell stories in new and unique ways. The criteria for this "club" is so narrow, even Hacker News wouldn't even be eligible! Is that really what we should be striving for? Sure, sometimes JS has been abused. But Chrome/Firefox/Safari have done an amazing job of reigning in abuse and speeding it up, and I'm so excited about the crazy weird new things I get to build every day because web technologies have gotten so good.

0goel0 6y ago
"Javascript is good in some cases" is the point of this club. You can build great websites without the cruft. Secondly, JS abuse is now built into browsers, so yes no JS is a decent goal for privacy, security, and speed.
- krapp 6y ago
  >"Javascript is good in some cases" is the point of this club. The very first qualifier to join is "Make sure there is no Javascript on your website," not "make sure the Javascript on your site is necessary."
  - userbinator 6y ago
    The point of this is to specifically point out sites which do not need any JS at all.
pmoriarty 6y ago
The problem with javascript is not just abuse, it's overuse. There are countless websites which have no dynamic content and yet choose to require javascript to function. The other major problem is the vulnerabilities you open yourself up to by allowing javascript to run in your browser. 99.9% of the time it's simply not worth it for me, and I wish I could say "no thank you" to all those sites that use it but don't actually need it to deliver all their static content. Even many of the sites that deliver dynamic content via javascript could probably have been designed to work just fine without it, but no, companies just have to have their tracking and serve up all their ads via JS.
- userbinator 6y ago
  Even many of the sites that deliver dynamic content via javascript could probably have been designed to work just fine without it, but no, companies just have to have their tracking and serve up all their ads via JS. Two noteworthy examples on this are Twitter and YouTube, especially in their latest designs. 99% of their functionality could be accomplished without any JS, and thus be accessible from a very wide range of browsers, but they've turned into horribly wasteful SPAs that now require an extremely recent browser and accompanying dependent software --- and hardware --- to access. IMHO it's a huge waste of resources, and it's time this endless churn was put to a stop.

chrysoprace 6y ago

I don't understand this obsession with not having JavaScript. Ideally all sites should work without JavaScript, but what's with this "I don't use that JavaScript non-sense" rhetoric?

tcbasche 6y ago
I think it’s become fashionable due to how trackers and dark patterns have used JS. But as someone has pointed out, it’s people not the technology...
- 0goel0 6y ago
  It's the technology arguably more than the people. People started using invasive trackers not because the trackers are innate, but because someone built them.
  - chrysoprace 6y ago
    Sure, and websites should respect that the browser doesn't want JavaScript. I've taken great care to make sure my site works with and without JavaScript. What I don't understand is why it's trendy to say you don't have JavaScript on your site.
    - userbinator 6y ago
      What I don't understand is why it's trendy to say you don't have JavaScript on your site. People are starting to realise how a lot of JS use is unnecessary, and the opposition to it is growing.
      - ulisesrmzroche 6y ago
        I think most people are not interested in this at all. The truth is that people love JS and want more of it.
        6y ago

darepublic 6y ago

So the less client side js the better, although I think things like ajax make a page more usable not less. So SSR pages with minimal amounts of js to facilitate no reload of the page for simple things... And CSS the rest of the way. Analytics can be server side too if need be. And graceful fallback if no js enabled.. so the only diff need be that instead of ajax u get full page reloads

vulcan01 6y ago

How do you get mobile navbars to work without JS? When I've built websites before, they're typically the only place I'm compelled to use JS in.

tannhaeuser 6y ago
While you can implement sidenavs using just CSS, you can't implement reveal menus which have become the most common nav for simple sites such as portfolios. Ie where you start with your fat logo centered and have it shrink into a fixed/sticky top menu/logo as you need to interrogate the scroll position for that.
darepublic 6y ago
CSS my friend.. also u can technically post back to the server for even switching between hamburger open and closed, if u want to take it that far.
robgibbons 6y ago
If you mean something like a sidebar that pops out, that's definitely possible via some clever CSS. Make the menu button a hidden checkbox and add a CSS transition to move your sidebar based on its checked state.
- vulcan01 6y ago
  I hadn't thought of this; thank you!
wishinghand 6y ago
Do you mean menus that hide off-screen and then slide over to fill the screen once a menu icon is touched? If so, I dducked "css only slide out menu" and this was the second result: https://1stwebdesigner.com/pure-css-navigation-menus/ https://1stwebdesigner.com/pure-css-navigation-menus/
cmroanirgo 6y ago
Use a hidden checkbox. No js necessary. Eg. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/31506684/expand-collapse-mobile-navbar-without-javascript https://stackoverflow.com/questions/31506684/expand-collapse...

darepublic 6y ago

For a lot of the entries here it's not only no js but minimal CSS and just minimal content as well.. showing me some sparse HTML with courier font is not really inspiring me here

landongn 6y ago

no, indeed

mellosouls 6y ago

Related current discussion fwiw: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25240299 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25240299

wishinghand 6y ago

While I'm in the camp that use Javascript is fun, useful, and cool, I also realize it's not nearly as necessary as some think it. The nojs.club site is a good idea, but now that it's been established I hope to see some actually good looking websites added. There were about two when I clicked through the top 15 links- most of them are small black text on a bright white page. I'm grateful that at least the majority of those restricted page width to something less than 100 characters.

pwdisswordfish4 6y ago

There's a perverse bias here that's almost in strange loop territory. To submit a site, you have to file an issue on GitHub. If you consider developers who use GitHub vs developers who don't/won't use GitHub... it seems that any given developer in the former set is more likely to be using JS on their homepage than those in the latter set. Regardless of anything, given the subtleties of the way the system is designed, it's important to understand that this is not, as will be popularly interpreted, a "list of people with homepages that don't use JS", but instead "a list of people on GitHub who have homepages that don't use JS".

0goel0 6y ago
If you want to add a site but don't use github, feel free to email me.
- pwdisswordfish4 6y ago
  (For anyone wondering why someone might not use GitHub, comments like the above are a good example. On GitHub, nobody recognizes the distinction between an error report and a support request.)
  - cjaybo 6y ago
    The only thing I'm wondering is why you felt it necessary to add this strangely patronizing comment. The GP voiced a simple complaint, not an "error report" or a "support request".
    - pwdisswordfish4 6y ago
      You are wrong about 'not an "error report"'. What you are calling a complaint was an error report. The person who responded ("If you want to add a site but don't use github, feel free to email me") did so in a way that would make sense if it were a support request. As a response to an error report, it's a non-sequitur. The inability to distinguish between support requests and error reports is precisely the reason for the "patronizing comment"—exactly as stated in the comment itself. So where's your confusion coming from?

werber 6y ago

I feel weird making my livelihood through js while also worrying about the implications of its misuse. I don’t personally write malicious code but I see so many ways to do it. If I didn’t have a well paying job I think it be easy to make the switch to be crappy

vmception 6y ago

I don't find a single one of those websites aesthetically pleasing And I’m finding that with all these “buck the site design trend with this unnecessary design constraint” So far I haven't seen any staying power in production and it seems more like art subcultures that very young people dabble in for a while in niche online communities more so than a statement or something to pay attention to

ampdepolymerase 6y ago

Does it count if I render everything with WebAssembly?

reificator 6y ago
I was under the impression that web assembly did not provide utilities for interacting with the page/DOM without a JS glue layer. Am I mistaken there?

keb_ 6y ago

A lot of commenters are completely missing the point of this site somehow. The site says: > Not all websites need Javascript to be beautiful and usable. This is a showcase of the Javascript-less web. It does not say: > JavaScript is bad and no one should ever use it.

earthtobishop 6y ago
The problem is most of the websites that are being showcased are ugly and basic.
- keb_ 6y ago
  Of course, that's entirely subjective and I think several sites on this list look great. Regardless, JavaScript does not inherently make a site look better, and it isn't a necessity for nice looking sites. See: CSS Zen Garden.

numlock86 6y ago

> Not all websites need Javascript to be beautiful and usable. This is a showcase of the Javascript-less web. First link is literally only four lines of text. Three of those are links. Second link is dead. Third is basically the first but with emojis ... Ok, I stopped after that. What exactly is this trying to showcase again?

earthtobishop 6y ago
Yeah the majority of the websites seem like throw away projects that were made in 5 minutes. Whoever created this probably should have taken the time to find JavaScript free websites that are actually presentable.
- keb_ 6y ago
  Please read the site. It's inspired by https://1mb.club/ https://1mb.club/. All of the sites are user-submitted examples; they are not curated.

bstar77 6y ago

You can't do any kind of ecommerce or media without Javascript (or something like flash). Do we really want to limit those sorts of things solely to apps? This whole movement is insane. Lets get rid of cars while we are at it, they run people over after all.

Rounin 6y ago
That's not the case at all. Ecommerce is mainly a serverside application. At most, doing everything serverside would introduce some extra lag.
- Rounin 6y ago
  HTML also has elements such as <video>, <object> and <embed>, some of which have existed for many years already. As far as I'm aware, browsers are free to play any media files included via these tags directly, without relying on any external piece of software.
- bstar77 6y ago
  It's just not scalable for most businesses as you would have to operate cache-less if you truly went javascript-less.
FroshKiller 6y ago
I ran a retail website for several years that used almost no JS, and what was there was not part of checkout. I don’t know where you got this idea.
- bstar77 6y ago
  Technically it's possible if everything is handled server-side, so I should have acknowledged that, but IMO, it's not practical for most businesses.

umaar 6y ago

I automated going through the 100 most popular websites, disabling JavaScript, and taking a screenshot to see what they look like https://github.com/umaar/offline-website-scripts/tree/master/results/disable-javascript-screenshot https://github.com/umaar/offline-website-scripts/tree/master... - Lots of Google products don't work - Wikipedia looks the same - GitHub works pretty well, including lots of functionality I thought was JS only - Amazon seems to work just fine

Hamcha 6y ago
I was personally amazed by Amazon. Sadly it seems the websites that work best without JavaScript are those where I really don't feel like it's a hindrance to begin with.
- phone8675309 6y ago
  Amazon is set up to make money when you spend money, not just by tracking you, so of course they would make their platform work without Javascript because you want to maximize the number of browsers people can use to impulse/drunk/Ambien order tons of useless shit from your site.
- crubier 6y ago
  Sounds a bit tautological doesn’t it? Of course a site that uses a lot of JS will not work well if you disable JS

ryanmarsh 6y ago

If I understand the argument in TFA, JavaScript is unnecessary and often misused and that makes JavaScript bad. Allow me to introduce you to fire, and the wheel. ARM has a JS specific instruction. If you want to homestead off the grid without JS I think that’s cool bro, but don’t act like you’re better for it.

ulisesrmzroche 6y ago

None of the sites showcased are beautiful. They're just unstyled. I think something like CSS Garden is a much better showcase.

marksmillibend 6y ago

A small snippet to add to your nojs sites. https://ghostbin.com/paste/kupyj https://ghostbin.com/paste/kupyj Shows a banner "You Don't Need JavaScript to Run This Site (turn it off here)" It's a response to all the "You Need JavaScript to Run This Site" banners we see everywhere even on plain text/image sites.