4 ms·

Unfortunately even Google started requiring JS, which was a huge attack against small browsers and the open web.

shevy-java 6mo ago
Google at this point kind of controls the www. Now, strictly speaking that statement is not true, but it now feels as if Google sits in so many areas that are important for the www; chrome is just the most obvious one.
nicoburns 6mo ago
Yep, https://html.duckduckgo.com https://html.duckduckgo.com works well in such browser though :)
- ksymph 6mo ago
  Also check out http://frogfind.com/ http://frogfind.com/, it automatically converts results into basic HTML.
rodarima 6mo ago
The Google index is still accessible from many other "proxy search engines" that still work without JS, one example is Startpage. See the nice list from Seirdy for more details on search engines: https://seirdy.one/posts/2021/03/10/search-engines-with-own-indexes/ https://seirdy.one/posts/2021/03/10/search-engines-with-own-...
- userbinator 6mo ago
  First thing I see when I try to visit Startpage, for probably the first time ever, is "Our system has detected the type of high-volume traffic coming from your internet connection that is normally associated with bots and scrapers." WTF. Total BULLSHIT. I have accessed that site precisely ZERO times from this IP. Now it will be one, and the last time I ever try.
childintime 6mo ago
But does it require ES6? Javascript was quite minimal in the early days. It doesn't need a JIT, in fact I'd prefer it not to be.
- nicoburns 6mo ago
  The difficult bit isn't the core JavaScript support. There are a dozen engines packaged as libraries that can use for that. The difficult bit is supporting all of the hundreds of DOM APIs.
  - userbinator 6mo ago
    Also the "undefined behaviours" used for fingerprinting and denying access to non-mainstream UAs even if they have JS support. If I remember correctly, YouTube was doing something like that.
butz 6mo ago
It is a feature. If website does not work in basic HTML, it is probably just a waste of time.

Google at this point kind of controls the www. Now, strictly speaking that statement is not true, but it now feels as if Google sits in so many areas that are important for the www; chrome is just the most obvious one.

nicoburns 6mo ago

Yep, https://html.duckduckgo.com https://html.duckduckgo.com works well in such browser though :)

ksymph 6mo ago
Also check out http://frogfind.com/ http://frogfind.com/, it automatically converts results into basic HTML.

rodarima 6mo ago

The Google index is still accessible from many other "proxy search engines" that still work without JS, one example is Startpage. See the nice list from Seirdy for more details on search engines: https://seirdy.one/posts/2021/03/10/search-engines-with-own-indexes/ https://seirdy.one/posts/2021/03/10/search-engines-with-own-...

userbinator 6mo ago
First thing I see when I try to visit Startpage, for probably the first time ever, is "Our system has detected the type of high-volume traffic coming from your internet connection that is normally associated with bots and scrapers." WTF. Total BULLSHIT. I have accessed that site precisely ZERO times from this IP. Now it will be one, and the last time I ever try.

childintime 6mo ago

But does it require ES6? Javascript was quite minimal in the early days. It doesn't need a JIT, in fact I'd prefer it not to be.

nicoburns 6mo ago
The difficult bit isn't the core JavaScript support. There are a dozen engines packaged as libraries that can use for that. The difficult bit is supporting all of the hundreds of DOM APIs.
- userbinator 6mo ago
  Also the "undefined behaviours" used for fingerprinting and denying access to non-mainstream UAs even if they have JS support. If I remember correctly, YouTube was doing something like that.

butz 6mo ago

It is a feature. If website does not work in basic HTML, it is probably just a waste of time.