My overhauled article on JavaScript
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I finished updating my article about JavaScript. It's almost entirely rewritten from scratch and has a new title: "Why (and How) to Kill JavaScript". Link here:
https://onpon4.github.io/articles/kill-js.html
Let me know what you think. (^_^)
Well done. I absolutely agree on "infinite scrolling". It's a serious usability issue to our detriment. They just introduced this trap on my favourite website and I find it demoralising. You're a good writer.
>Most notably, JavaScript is the most powerful spyware tool in the world right now. Many websites routinely use JavaScript to report back to the website's operator on your activity, and JavaScript is also used to substantially enhance "fingerprinting", a technique for uniquely identifying users, taking away any anonymity you thought you had.
This.
Not only I read your text with great pleasure but I also bookmarked it. Well done Onpon. Cheers o/
Also, I wanted to add, I've been running jsless for I'd say over 5 years now. I enjoy the web as it should be: fast, efficient, no ads, no stupid distractions, only text, images and css, that is, what I call the 'sane Internet'. o/
Haven't finished reading yet, but this link
https://www.leaseweb.com/labs/2013/07/10-very-good-reasons-to-stop-using-javascript/
seems to be broken. I was able to find it via Wayback. Maybe you could link to that instead.
Thanks for pointing that out. I fixed the link.
In the workarounds section, I would suggest the following workarounds: change the user agent to mobile or a search engine (this will test whether search engines or mobile users can see a script-free version - this is especially useful if the website contains a video file which is delivered script-free via HTML5 on mobile but requires Flash for desktop users - some websites offer search engines a script-free website so they can index the website with less effort which is why the search engine trick sometimes works), change the referrer (e.g. the website makorrishon.co.il works fine without scripts when I set the referrer to duckduckgo.com), find a suffix that works without scripts (adding "?_escaped_fragment_=#!" to the end of Wix pages renders them correctly without scripts) or visit the cached version on Searx (which fetches an older version from archive.org) or use Google's cache text-only version.
General tips, huh? That actually might be a good idea.
That thing about Wix sites is interesting. I can't think of any Wix sites to test that on, though. Do you know of any?
I tried the first two listed here and the trick worked fine:
themeisle.com/blog/wix-website-examples/
I also found Wix websites listed here:
wix.com/blog/2016/03/wix-websites-examples/
Some websites are partially usable without the workaround - these two require the workaround though:
olivessecret.gr/
liam-rinat.com/
i see, so that little bit just disables CSS on those websites. Thanks for the info, and that does seem to be an excellent general tip.
> General tips, huh? That actually might be a good idea.
Gmail has an HTML mode, and m.facebook.com and mobile.twitter.com both work without JS. I'm not sure whether or not these should be included as "tips" though, as while if someone uses these sites they would do well to avoid their JS, freedom- and privacy-wise they would be better off avoiding these sites entirely. Then again, your article seems targeted toward a wider audience than just people who care about freedom and privacy, so maybe it is worth including. I don't know.
Usually disabling scripts or setting user-agent to mobile will redirect to mobile versions of websites, although remembering the URLs is also useful. Email can be used without scripts using a client as well (as is mentioned in the article).
Yeah, it's meant for a wide audience. (^_^)
One thing I was really interested in, actually, is Yahoo Mail. I tried to sign up for an account there to test it, and I didn't encounter any JS issues, but I don't have a mobile phone and therefore wasn't able to complete the sign-up. Would anyone be able to test that out? I just want to know if Yahoo Mail lets you sign up, configure important settings, and send/receive email without JavaScript (and whether or not the webmail works without JavaScript).
I just tried signing up using my JMP number and got the message "We don't support this number, provide another one." so I don't know how much further I could have gotten without JS. Requiring a cell phone is as bad as requiring JS in my opinion.
That was a nice reading. I e-mailed it to my department colleagues at University. I doubt many will care for such, but I hope they do read your article.
Congratulations.
Thank you! Real good. I will spread it around.
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