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You can still use XUL based add-ons. You just can't do it in the chrome-in-spirit modern Firefox. There are plenty of great Firefox forks still maintained to th

You can still use XUL based add-ons. You just can't do it in the chrome-in-spirit modern Firefox. There are plenty of great Firefox forks still maintained to this day that support XUL add-ons. And despite Mozilla's attempts to stop it users have scraped and collected together all the old addons in various archives. I'm not saying this is a good solution for facebook/youtube/twitch/etc users that treat their browser as an OS to run applications. It's not. But if you surf with javascript disabled and tend to only use actual websites written in HTML it's still viable. (the html web still exists, it's just not as loud and attention grabbing as the megacorp javascript silos)

smabie 4y ago
who actually surfs with js enabled? gotta be less than 1%
- throwaway290 4y ago
  You wouldn't know because none of the trackers would fire...
  - dathinab 4y ago
    That is a common misconception. There are multiple ways to track people with similar precision as common JS trackers without using JS. When it comes to simple statistics there are even far more ways. I would go a step further and say that JS tracking is mostly limited to a certain very small subset of people which making it likely less then 0.01%, potentially even much less then that. Most of the web is inaccessible without JS including many of the most widely used websites and most users don't even understand why not using JS could do anything good. Or understand what JS is. Expecting any not completely irrelevant non-JS browser share is just not realistic.
    - throwaway290 4y ago
      This is all beyond the point which was that stats about no-JS users are almost nonexistent. You can keep saying "but there can't be many people using web without js" but they literally fly under your radar. > There are multiple ways to track people with similar precision as common JS trackers without using JS. And almost no one uses them. > I would go a step further and say that JS tracking is mostly limited to a certain very small subset of people which making it likely less then 0.01%, potentially even much less then that. I barely see a project that does anything except Google Analytics at default settings with a script tag. > Most of the web is inaccessible without JS including many of the most widely used websites "Most of the web" actually works. Some of the popular ones don't but Wikipedia/Google/Amazon/Facebook (to a degree) are OK. All latest front-end frameworks are built to deliver working HTML with minimal JS instead of SPAs. > most users don't even understand why not using JS could do anything good. Or understand what JS is. There was a time most users didn't even understand why not using IE could do anything good or understand what a browser is. Times change.
      - dathinab 4y ago
        > Times change. Exactly, they changed from no-js having some relevance to it basically having no relevance at all and most no-js support is legacy from the past. Today in my experience people are less, not more, likely to disable Js. EDIT: Also a non small part of the web today is video content, which won't work without js.
        throwaway290 4y ago
        Yeah yeah, "I don't think there are many no-JS users", etc, you keep repeating this in different ways without refuting the point. > Today in my experience Today in my experience 99% of trackers only measure users with JS. > Exactly, they changed from no-js having some relevance to it basically having no relevance at all and most no-js support is legacy from the past. People learned basic technical ideas and changed from buggy insecure ways of browsing the internet (IE, activeX) and forced web engineers to change their ways (test in other browsers than IE) before. It's not even a question of "will it happen again?" because it's already happening > EDIT: Also a non small part of the web today is video content, which won't work without js. Maybe you are just not qualified to argue this. Videos work just as images, text or audio. Try disabling JS and opening https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video for example, it works just fine. If a video doesn't load without JS it's a problem with website or browser implementation.
  - akdor1154 4y ago
    You could probably guess it by taking a diff of server side requests between a browser initiated dest (header.png) and js initiated dest (/api/user). Yes there would be gotchas around crawlers, adblockers etc but could do for a decent first go. Also wouldn't be generalisable to the wider internet because 'does the site even work without js' would be a huge cofounder. Still wish I had access to traffic stats on a large enough site to play around with this.
    - throwaway290 4y ago
      You could, but 99% of websites I encounter just throw in a GA/GTM script and with statically generated sites there's no server side whatsoever.

smabie 4y ago

who actually surfs with js enabled? gotta be less than 1%

throwaway290 4y ago
You wouldn't know because none of the trackers would fire...
- dathinab 4y ago
  That is a common misconception. There are multiple ways to track people with similar precision as common JS trackers without using JS. When it comes to simple statistics there are even far more ways. I would go a step further and say that JS tracking is mostly limited to a certain very small subset of people which making it likely less then 0.01%, potentially even much less then that. Most of the web is inaccessible without JS including many of the most widely used websites and most users don't even understand why not using JS could do anything good. Or understand what JS is. Expecting any not completely irrelevant non-JS browser share is just not realistic.
  - throwaway290 4y ago
    This is all beyond the point which was that stats about no-JS users are almost nonexistent. You can keep saying "but there can't be many people using web without js" but they literally fly under your radar. > There are multiple ways to track people with similar precision as common JS trackers without using JS. And almost no one uses them. > I would go a step further and say that JS tracking is mostly limited to a certain very small subset of people which making it likely less then 0.01%, potentially even much less then that. I barely see a project that does anything except Google Analytics at default settings with a script tag. > Most of the web is inaccessible without JS including many of the most widely used websites "Most of the web" actually works. Some of the popular ones don't but Wikipedia/Google/Amazon/Facebook (to a degree) are OK. All latest front-end frameworks are built to deliver working HTML with minimal JS instead of SPAs. > most users don't even understand why not using JS could do anything good. Or understand what JS is. There was a time most users didn't even understand why not using IE could do anything good or understand what a browser is. Times change.
    - dathinab 4y ago
      > Times change. Exactly, they changed from no-js having some relevance to it basically having no relevance at all and most no-js support is legacy from the past. Today in my experience people are less, not more, likely to disable Js. EDIT: Also a non small part of the web today is video content, which won't work without js.
      - throwaway290 4y ago
        Yeah yeah, "I don't think there are many no-JS users", etc, you keep repeating this in different ways without refuting the point. > Today in my experience Today in my experience 99% of trackers only measure users with JS. > Exactly, they changed from no-js having some relevance to it basically having no relevance at all and most no-js support is legacy from the past. People learned basic technical ideas and changed from buggy insecure ways of browsing the internet (IE, activeX) and forced web engineers to change their ways (test in other browsers than IE) before. It's not even a question of "will it happen again?" because it's already happening > EDIT: Also a non small part of the web today is video content, which won't work without js. Maybe you are just not qualified to argue this. Videos work just as images, text or audio. Try disabling JS and opening https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video for example, it works just fine. If a video doesn't load without JS it's a problem with website or browser implementation.
- akdor1154 4y ago
  You could probably guess it by taking a diff of server side requests between a browser initiated dest (header.png) and js initiated dest (/api/user). Yes there would be gotchas around crawlers, adblockers etc but could do for a decent first go. Also wouldn't be generalisable to the wider internet because 'does the site even work without js' would be a huge cofounder. Still wish I had access to traffic stats on a large enough site to play around with this.
  - throwaway290 4y ago
    You could, but 99% of websites I encounter just throw in a GA/GTM script and with statically generated sites there's no server side whatsoever.