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The web without JavaScript is dead. Next Google will deprecate <noscript>.

by chrismsimpson 3y ago

numpad0 3y ago
AOL was right having its own browser for Web.
sambazi 3y ago
content heavy sites mostly work fine w/o .js (nope, video is not a dense format neither are podcasts)
sublinear 3y ago
I hope you're being facetious. Deprecating any tags in the post HTML5 world requires WHATWG approval and noscript is more of a fallback mechanism than a "security" feature or means to convey an opinion. There's no good reason to get rid of it.
- TeMPOraL 3y ago
  > and noscript is more of a fallback mechanism That is exactly the good reason to get rid of it, for Google. Why would they want to allow a fallback to script-less web?
  - chrismsimpson 3y ago
    Exactly. Once they can lock everyone into a JS only world, they can maintain their position as the only viable web index.
    - sublinear 3y ago
      Creating a page that doesn't display content without javascript is literally the single worst thing you can do for SEO on Google or any search engine. Noscript has nothing to do with the issue you all are talking about.
      - chrismsimpson 3y ago
        Google: Please make your pages easy to scrape, we’ll incentivise you to do so Also Google: If we detect you’re scraping us or any of our “partners” (read: the public web) we’ll shut you down. We have ways of ensuring we’re the only bot capable of indexing the web. Heard of web fingerprinting?
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
  - sublinear 3y ago
    Google does not have control over WHATWG. That's the point of its existence. Javascript can fail to load for a lot more reasons than just the user disabling it. Noscript is the only way to let the user know that's occurred or to ensure some functionality doesn't break. In fact Google Analytics uses a noscript tag containing an iframe as a fallback to keep the data flowing even when stuff like a content security policy or bad network request causes the javascript to fail.
- josefx 3y ago
  > Deprecating any tags in the post HTML5 world requires WHATWG approval The WHATWG, the group that exists because browser developers decided to ditch the existing standard and do their own thing? What is it going to do? Complain about Google ditching the standard and doing its own thing?
  - guraf 3y ago
    Ditching the standard bodies that gave us xhtml and then never fixed its warts you say? Why would they do that !?
forgotmypw17 3y ago
The accessible and compatible Web is alive and well in my little corner of it, where I strive to accommodate each and every user the same way as a five-star hotel would to a top client, and a building architect would for a wheelchair user. I think that this is the only way, and everything else is, to be perfectly honest, just sloppy and lazy. But I tend to visit those parts of the Web less and less as they close themselves off to me.
- sbergot 3y ago
  js and accessibility are not exclusives.
  - forgotmypw17 3y ago
    What you are saying is akin to saying, "stairs and accessibility are not exclusives". No, they certainly are not. But there are some people who go to buildings every day who need an alternative to stairs. People in wheelchairs, with walkers, with strollers, transporting something heavy on wheels, and other scenarios I can't even think of right now, all rely on ramps to access areas that others access through stairs, and may find stairs to be more accessible. They are often a relatively small percentage of the population, but they exist, and as a society, we have decided that they deserve access to our buildings. Similarly, there are visitors to my websites who require an alternative accommodation to JavaScript, such as people with slower devices which don't perform well with JS enabled, people who are concerned about security and privacy, people who are using a text-mode browser, people who are using something like wget to archive the site for later reading, and so on. There are, just like with the ramps, scenarios I can't even think of right now, but that are accommodated by allowing no-JS access. And I'm going to continue choosing to accommodate them, bending over backwards to do everything I can to ensure that each and every visitor is treated like they are visiting a five-star hotel, not a prison. Of course, this philosophy is not for everyone, obviously not for the Gmail team, and perhaps not for you either, but it works for me and my conscience.

The web without JavaScript is dead. Next Google will deprecate <noscript>.

numpad0 3y ago

AOL was right having its own browser for Web.

sambazi 3y ago

content heavy sites mostly work fine w/o .js (nope, video is not a dense format neither are podcasts)

sublinear 3y ago

I hope you're being facetious. Deprecating any tags in the post HTML5 world requires WHATWG approval and noscript is more of a fallback mechanism than a "security" feature or means to convey an opinion. There's no good reason to get rid of it.

TeMPOraL 3y ago
> and noscript is more of a fallback mechanism That is exactly the good reason to get rid of it, for Google. Why would they want to allow a fallback to script-less web?
- chrismsimpson 3y ago
  Exactly. Once they can lock everyone into a JS only world, they can maintain their position as the only viable web index.
  - sublinear 3y ago
    Creating a page that doesn't display content without javascript is literally the single worst thing you can do for SEO on Google or any search engine. Noscript has nothing to do with the issue you all are talking about.
    - chrismsimpson 3y ago
      Google: Please make your pages easy to scrape, we’ll incentivise you to do so Also Google: If we detect you’re scraping us or any of our “partners” (read: the public web) we’ll shut you down. We have ways of ensuring we’re the only bot capable of indexing the web. Heard of web fingerprinting?
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
- sublinear 3y ago
  Google does not have control over WHATWG. That's the point of its existence. Javascript can fail to load for a lot more reasons than just the user disabling it. Noscript is the only way to let the user know that's occurred or to ensure some functionality doesn't break. In fact Google Analytics uses a noscript tag containing an iframe as a fallback to keep the data flowing even when stuff like a content security policy or bad network request causes the javascript to fail.
josefx 3y ago
> Deprecating any tags in the post HTML5 world requires WHATWG approval The WHATWG, the group that exists because browser developers decided to ditch the existing standard and do their own thing? What is it going to do? Complain about Google ditching the standard and doing its own thing?
- guraf 3y ago
  Ditching the standard bodies that gave us xhtml and then never fixed its warts you say? Why would they do that !?

forgotmypw17 3y ago

The accessible and compatible Web is alive and well in my little corner of it, where I strive to accommodate each and every user the same way as a five-star hotel would to a top client, and a building architect would for a wheelchair user. I think that this is the only way, and everything else is, to be perfectly honest, just sloppy and lazy. But I tend to visit those parts of the Web less and less as they close themselves off to me.

sbergot 3y ago
js and accessibility are not exclusives.
- forgotmypw17 3y ago
  What you are saying is akin to saying, "stairs and accessibility are not exclusives". No, they certainly are not. But there are some people who go to buildings every day who need an alternative to stairs. People in wheelchairs, with walkers, with strollers, transporting something heavy on wheels, and other scenarios I can't even think of right now, all rely on ramps to access areas that others access through stairs, and may find stairs to be more accessible. They are often a relatively small percentage of the population, but they exist, and as a society, we have decided that they deserve access to our buildings. Similarly, there are visitors to my websites who require an alternative accommodation to JavaScript, such as people with slower devices which don't perform well with JS enabled, people who are concerned about security and privacy, people who are using a text-mode browser, people who are using something like wget to archive the site for later reading, and so on. There are, just like with the ramps, scenarios I can't even think of right now, but that are accommodated by allowing no-JS access. And I'm going to continue choosing to accommodate them, bending over backwards to do everything I can to ensure that each and every visitor is treated like they are visiting a five-star hotel, not a prison. Of course, this philosophy is not for everyone, obviously not for the Gmail team, and perhaps not for you either, but it works for me and my conscience.