Everything Breaks: Experiencing the Web Without JavaScript

Now that I'm using a slower laptop I've turned off JS by default in uBlock Origin. Pretty much every site that isn't a personal blog refuses to have even basic functionality without JS. An incomplete list of sites or apps that don't work at all (and I do mean that they don't work at all):

• Mastodon
• Imgur
• Youtube
• Logging in to Google
• Feedly

Now, I get that thelounge.chat doesn't work. It is after all a real-time chat app. But... why do so many pages show a huge cookie consent banner that is unresponsive unless JS is enabled? Why doesn't the JS free version of DuckDuckGo have image search? Why does Xenforo show a big banner saying "Please enable JavaScript for a better experience" with no way to remove it? Maybe I'm okay with a "worse" experience, but not okay with a big banner covering a quarter of my screen all the time.

I find myself enabling JS in uBlock Origin for page after page after page, even if just temporarily, in order to visit them at all. Are web designers not aware that a big chunk of people hate JS? Do modern frameworks not support JS free designs at all?

I don't know. It's just... Well, I don't understand it, basically. A few years ago there was a sort of pride within the industry at having a page that works without JS. Today that seems to be all but forgotten.

-- CC0 ew0k, 2022-04-02