
Ask HN: What do you think about websites that won't work without JavaScript? - WildGreenLeave
Personally I prefer websites that work without Javascript, websites that only use HTML&#x2F;CSS and a regular (PHP&#x2F;Ruby&#x2F;Python) backend. Want to use JS? Fine but make sure it also works without. Since a few days I started using VueJS seriously because of a project that has those requirements (mostly an advanced ajax filter) and I like it, but it also got me thinking. Is there any reason to keep maintaining a website for users without Javascript enabled?<p>tldr; sites that won&#x27;t work without Javascript enabled, a good thing or a bad thing?
======
spion
Pointless JavaScript is a bad thing.

Want to take over the scrolling just because you dislike the default one?
Please don't. Also, I believe that by this point the novelty of scroll
animations (used to be popular a couple of years ago) has worn off.

Want to include a billion JS tracking services on your mostly-textual webpage?
Please, make sure they don't interfere with the rest of the page.

Want to include cool charts, even if they're not interactive? Tables with
sortable, re-arrangeable columns? Forms with smart autocomplete that narrows
choices based on previous choices? Shopping cart? Chat? Anything that will re-
render the entire page for changes on less than 1/2 of the page? Yes, please
use JavaScript.

------
toennisforst
I'd say that my tolerance depends on the kind of project.

Does it do 3D maps? I can understand that the UX will be terrible even with a
lot of progressive enhancements. Does it display text (i.e. news sites)? Then
it should by all means work without scripting support, and should display
images that would usually be lazy-loaded.

I am also willing to compromise on functionality. If a site offers nice,
client-side filters for their 100 products, it is OK if they do not work as
long as I can [Ctrl]+[F] to find products.

Another thing to consider is that most users who block sites consciously use a
plugin that allows unblocking scrips based on the domain (e.g. NoScript,
uBlock, uMatrix). Scripts that enable functionality should be hosted on the
same TLD or a CDN. I have no mercy if your site depends on various A/B testing
and ad tech scripts to work, but I will gladly allow scripts from the origin
host, especially if the functionality I gain is explained well.

~~~
skwirl
Do these plugins care if content (images, in particular) loaded by the scripts
is hosted on the same TLD?

What do they do about sites that use Google's CDN hosted libraries for things
like JQuery? Do they have a whitelist?

------
anexprogrammer
It's a bad thing to not work, _unless the JS adds something fundamental._ Like
it's an actual web app that needs it. I run without whenever possible as the
web is surprisingly fast once again.

Making me have JS on to show _any_ text, or images, when it's just a news
piece or blog post gets you a place in hosts and I'll never know if your site
ever starts working sensibly. At least most single page SaaS sites work OK
just with no Font Awesome icons.

My tolerance these days is quite low. It was rather higher a few years ago as
there were fewer overall annoyances. Now we have paywalls, adwalls, sites
_stupidly_ broken without JS, every damn blog wants to present a modal
subscribe when you scroll a bit, and Cloudflare wants VPN users to fill in at
least 1 captcha every page load [1]. JS is often there just to bombard me with
more annoyance, ads and the 24 analytics packages that every page now seems to
want.

Often I find that the sites I visit often enough to trust a little, and would
whitelist in NoScript don't _actually_ need JS much. Most news sites for
instance. Most product/service sites (though they lose a bit).

[1] Cloudflare decided on Thu and Fri that not only did most sites need a
CAPTCHA, but if they used a CDN that needed one too, separately. That's a
first. Cloudflare need to die in a fire. Or at least stop being so damn
hostile to VPN users.

~~~
miohtama
It is an issue with low reputation IP addresses. Your VPN provider is being
used to spam, etc. Switching to more reputable, usually more expensive,
provider cures the issue.

~~~
anexprogrammer
Not sure where I'd switch to - Private Internet Access seems to get
recommended often, including here on HN. I'm ignoring the affiliate reviews as
PIA game those heavily. Now they seem to be gaming OpenVPN audits lol.

Of the more expensive that spring to mind Perfect Privacy doesn't seem that
great for the highest price. Vypr look excellent but logs IP etc - no use for
us living in hostile regimes (the UK). I guess that leaves BlackVPN.

------
milcron
If I expect the website to be static (like an article) and it requires
javascript, then I just close the tab.

If the website provides dynamic content then it's understandable that js would
be required.

------
ars
The "basic" stuff should work without Javascript, but I don't expect much
else.

If you need Javascript to display text on your page there is something
seriously wrong with how you program. (And yes, I've seen sites like that.)

If you need Javascript for something as simple as submitting a form, then
<shrug>, it doesn't really matter these days.

~~~
erlehmann_
Just to be precise: If you need Javascript for something as simple as
submitting a form, then there is also most likely something seriously wrong
with how you program – unless you are using a HTTP method that is not GET or
POST.

~~~
ars
No, that isn't true.

If your site is AJAX everywhere then adding fallbacks for regular forms is
possible, yet a waste of development time. So I don't hold it against
developers.

In contrast there is almost never a reason to render text with Javascript
(with certain exceptions).

------
ldjb
I don't mind websites relying on JavaScript if it would not be feasible to
develop them without. However, I frequently come across largely static
websites with limited interactivity that require JavaScript, which I tend to
consider poor engineering.

I make exceptions for hacks, proof of concepts and the like, but when
developing websites professionally, it's a good idea to first build them
without JavaScript, then add on whatever JavaScript you feel improves the
experience.

------
jasode
_> Personally I prefer websites that work without Javascript, websites that
only use HTML/CSS_

You need to explain _what kind_ of website you had in mind.

Is it a website that's meant for _text content_ like Wikipedia, The New York
Times, or TIAMW[1]? Yes, a lot of technical folks will agree with you that
Javascript is unnecessary and is only prevalent to push ads.

Or is your website an "app" like Google maps or the shopping cart checkout
page with _dynamic_ elements like recalculating shipping and sales tax when a
shopper changes an item quantity? Yes, you can make a "maps" website without
javascript (reload _every_ page like the 1990s MapQuest.com). And make web
shoppers click the "update cart after quantity change" button so the server
sends a brand new webpage (which is very jarring, user hostile, and heavily
penalizes mobile phones with slow connections.)

[1][http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/](http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/)

------
StuieK
So we built slant.co with the philosophy that all the reading should work ok
with JS off, but the contributing systems require JS. The problem is testing,
we're a tiny team so I'm not sure the last time we made sure the no js
experience works as expected.

~~~
Llevel
This is the trouble with web dev. There are a million factors in play, and
it's very tough to create tests for them all, not to mention potentially
financially restrictive with the need for multiple browser testing VMs. You
have to test cross-browser, make sure all the versions of IE you want to
support play nicely with your JavaScript and CSS. The site also needs to be
responsive and handle resizing gracefully. Then how about making your site
accessible, making sure all the aria tags are where they should be, and that
screen readers will read, or not read, your content properly. When there is
time to polish, it's often in the form of CSS transitions or animations.

Making my site fallback to no-js gracefully affects so few people, that it
falls by the wayside since there's so many other higher priorities that affect
a lot more people.

~~~
erlehmann_
The parent poster is most likely using a strategy to build web sites called
“graceful degradation”, where one builds “fallback” code paths for specific
scenarios. The result is something that you see on web sites that have a
“desktop” (all features) and a “mobile” (not all features) version.

What the parent poster wrote about testing is only true as long as one chooses
“graceful degradation” as the strategy to build web sites. Using the
alternative strategy “progressive enhancement” means that one does not have to
test as much. The reason is that with “progressive enhancement” the more
complex functionality of a web site is built on top of the simpler (think “no
JS”) layers.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graceful_degradation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graceful_degradation)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_enhancement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_enhancement)

It may seem counterintuitive, but choosing the right approach to build a web
site can save a lot of testing effort – and even make sure that a site
displays on browsers one did not even consider.

------
lousken
Whenever I can, I try to use CSS instead of js. CSS has become really powerful
over the last couple of years with better browser support and I prefer it over
loading extra javascript. You-dont-need-javascript[1] lists a couple of those
great examples. But as other people already said, if the website has to be
interactive I use javascript but I try to keep it low and avoid libraries as
much as I can (if I am gonna use just one thing out of x amount of others).
2G/FUP etc. are still a thing, unfortunately, and I don't want those users to
suffer.

[1] [https://github.com/you-dont-need/You-Dont-Need-
Javascript](https://github.com/you-dont-need/You-Dont-Need-Javascript)

~~~
jkmcf
I believe AWS uses/used CSS to animate their admin ui arrow spinners. They use
enough CPU to turn the fans on my laptop which rarely turn on under normal
circumstances.

------
tobltobs
> Is there any reason to keep maintaining a website for users without
> Javascript enabled?

The search engine robots. They might be able to crawl your JS site, but I
wouldn't bet my business on that.

~~~
severine
I have a very low-powered machine and sometimes I use a very lightweight web
browser (Dillo), which is amazingly fast.

Your comment makes me think that a lot of the sites I visit with Dillo are
accesible for users like us only as second thought or for lazyness.

Could a leap in JS crawling have accesibility as a victim?

~~~
tobltobs
I don't think that extracting the text from a JS page is the hard part.
Linking it to a page URL is difficult.

------
dwe3000
I prefer sites that _should_ work without JavaScript, but I don't always worry
about disabling it. There a number of situations where I do appreciate the
enhanced experience - image galleries, client-side form validation to reduce
server-side errors/warnings (the edits should be both client side and server
side, but that's a different conversation), or controls for multimedia come to
mind. I get really annoyed by JavaScript powered ads or excessive, bloated
libraries downloaded because the developer didn't care.

------
moron4hire
This question assumes in the reader a shared understanding and acceptance for
what "a website" means and should be. Really, the question is asking, "don't
you think the Web should be limited to documents, that apps should be left to
app stores?"

I think the Web is, long-term, the only equitable application deployment
system. We've seen plenty of examples of the walled garden ecosystems using
their control to shut down free speech and criticism. We need a Free, Open
Web, one that is as accesible as possible. JavaScript being the only language
that runs natively in the browser means that these applications must have JS
that works.

The flip side of the coin on a completely open system is that you have to take
the bad with the good. That some people are bad developers and make a blog
platform into an app or don't have a non-app message for why their game or map
rendering engine is not working it's beside the point. People do bad work with
every tool. But for some reason, when it's bad from the app store, we blame
the developers, but when it's bad in the browser, we blame JS and browser
vendors.

I think we are ultimately all doing the best we can. I'd rather a world where
people can make mistakes than one that requires permission to release
software.

------
skwirl
I personally think that it's unreasonable to expect websites to work without
JavaScript at this point. The "JavaScript disabled" edge case is something
I've honestly never even thought about.

~~~
mjevans
I completely disagree. Not only is it a requirement for websites to present
the content (if not in a pretty way at least a readable way), it is also
practically a requirement for a search engine to index you and it may also be
a legal requirement for your support of differently able visitors.

I also have a pet peeve about websites that enforce very small
fonts/padding/other things which should be tweakable by user style sheets for
improved visibility.

------
TAForObvReasons
I have a bigger problem with sites that won't load because a social media
service is blocked. I shouldn't have to enable access for a facebook or
twitter button to view your page.

------
dawnerd
We try to not use Javascript unless we have to. I don't see the point in all
this fancy js stuff like smooth scrolling (which usually breaks with swiping
back on trackpads).

------
raintrees
I spend less time on sites that do not work without Javascript - I consider it
another barrier towards "not worth it."

I have gotten used to viewing source for those that still pass the threshold.
I use NoScript to block Javascript by default, only trusting sites I choose.
And that sometimes only fleetingly.

------
hlandau
They're by definition incompetently designed, as far as I'm concerned.
Obviously this excludes anything which couldn't possibly work without
JavaScript, like "Photoshop in your browser" or something. For pages of
information, there's no excuse.

I use the Firefox noscript extension by default. If I find some page which
doesn't work without JavaScript, more often than not I'll leave it. Sometimes
going a step further and actually disabling CSS makes it usable.

The most common irritants nowadays are "single-page web-page viewing web
applications", which I want nothing to do with (if you think you can
reimplement a web browser's navigation logic as robustly as a web browser
does, you're probably wrong; every now and then I have to hard-refresh one of
these sites because their navigation process breaks and the "single-page web-
page viewing web application" has effectively crashed.)

A particularly bizarre example of a pointless and needlessly JS-requiring
single-page web-page viewing web application is certain blogspot.com themes
which have become prevalent, so even Google has sunk to this sort of
silliness. Bizarrely, these pages are viewable without JavaScript via Google's
cache; I have to wonder if Google's cached pages are now some sort of DOM dump
(since Googlebot now runs JavaScript), meaning that Google is fixing Google's
broken web development practices.

Another irritant is demand-load images. All this means is the page has no
images when I view it. It's an inherently broken practice.

Unbelievably, Google's dubious "AMP" project seems to be trying to make people
use custom HTML tags to incorporate images, then load them using some AMP-
standard approved JavaScript script incorporated in the page. This design is
garbage from the very beginning for all of the same reasons.

Progressive optimization is the only sane design. And this isn't just about
browsers without JavaScript. Unreliable network connectivity can cause scripts
to fail to load, or be delayed. Why make basic functionality of the page
reliant on waiting for those scripts to load?

------
marssaxman
Usually I think very little about them, since a web site which doesn't work or
comes up blank isn't likely to hold my attention for long. I'll whitelist your
site if it's something I actually care about using, but if I'm just exploring,
I'm more likely to close it and move on.

------
iuguy
My preference is sites that don't need large volumes of extra files to
download to work, then sites that don't need Javascript, then sites that will
degrade gracefully when Javscript is disabled, then sites that don't work
without Javascript enabled.

HTML is for content. Javascript is for manipulating content client-side in a
way that can't be easily expressed in markup.

What I find more disturbing is the growing tendency to use Javascript as a
general hammer for browser frontend, backend and app client. In particular I
have a special dislike for electron apps that fulfill functions better suited
to native apps, such as terminals and file transfer clients.

I accept that there are many people here who think Javascript is brilliant,
but I assure you that while it has it's place, it isn't always the best tool
for the job.

------
pasbesoin
For me, the primary concerns are security and trust.

Every sandbox has holes. And the provenance of Javascript on the web is often
somewhere between lackadaisical to highly suspect. I wouldn't mind ad-
supported content, if the ads were secure, not annoying, and didn't per force
track me in ways I don't want.

And there's part of the trust aspect. I expect to know what my browser is
doing and what data it's sharing. Current scripting takes that way past my
comfort level.

I enable scripting selectively. And if some page/site seems to use it for no
other reason than to dump unvetted third-party content on me and to track me,
forgetaboutit.

------
bruxis
I think that actually for performance reasons (for an entire system, not just
a web page) it's reasonable to require JavaScript to be enabled.

For example, having a page that provides 90% of the information statically
(potentially to a level deemed functional without js) is great because you can
heavily cache user-unrelated content. Then use JavaScript to query for user-
specific content and fill out the page.

This functionality may be needed for important features (paywalls, adding to
favorites, etc). That said, if you really wanted to work around not having JS
enabled you could make it work -- but you need to optimize where you put your
efforts.

------
d0m
Do what's best for the business.. In an ideal world where everything is free,
then yes! make sure you support non-javascript browsers. Otherwise check the
market and decide if it's worth the investment.

------
codingdave
I don't think this is a question where we can give a universal answer. If you
are just publishing content, and JavaScript is not necessary for the core
purpose of the page/site, then adding it just for extra flavor is unwise. On
the other hand, if your site is a rich SPA, it would be foolish to go back to
the days of POSTing data on every click, and reloading an entirely new page
with whatever updates the app needs.

There are some pages on my personal web site that are plain HTML/CSS, but I
would not think twice about adding JS if I needed it.

------
jedberg
My feeling is that asking for a site that works without Javascript is like
asking for a car with a manual transmission. Sure, it's possible to get it,
but it costs more and a lot of models simply don't have it. Why? Because then
you have to double your testing time -- you have to test every operation with
and without (stickshift/javascript).

Almost no one wants a JS free website (or a car with a manual), so it just
isn't worth the development effort to effectively build two versions of your
car/site.

~~~
perilunar
Maybe in the US perhaps. In most of the world manual transmissions are cheaper
than auto and more common.

~~~
jedberg
That's true but it was just an example. There are many other technologies
where some people liked it the old way but most people are fine with the new
way.

My main point, possibly distracted by the auto/manual thing, was that testing
time is doubled for every feature you add, and "nojs" is a feature like any
other.

------
intralizee
The people whom disable javascript by default actually valuable enough to make
the app non javascript?

I haven't seen the recent percent of users that browse the web with javascript
turned off but I assume it's really small.

If the site has to be supporting Tor users, well that is one of the times you
can't really use javascript.

I'm guilty of not caring about non javascript users and I believe catering for
those users is a huge waste of my time.

~~~
tyingq
It's pretty small. The most in depth analysis, albeit from a single site, I
could find... [https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2013/10/21/how-many-people-are-
missi...](https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2013/10/21/how-many-people-are-missing-out-
on-javascript-enhancement/)

Do read past the short answer of 1.1% though.

------
tyingq
I don't like it, but at this point, the precedent is set. The percentage of
sites that won't work without it is only going to climb.

------
erlehmann_
Some of the web sites that only work with JavaScript manage to make even the
fastest computer slow to a crawl while it spins up its fans. No matter how
fast a computer, one badly written program can still manage to slow down or
hinder other tasks – even when that program is running on a web page.

------
voycey
I understand why people disable it, if they choose to then they should expect
a crappy experience. As long as the basics work (Forms submit etc), I am not
going to pander to ensure that everything degrades perfectly.

Likewise IE8 - fuck those guys

------
twhb
Note that you're pre-selecting respondents who are just fine with a bare-bones
JS-free website.

My opinion, refusing to use JavaScript is like driving a horse and buggy
because cars can crash. It's not productive.

------
destroyer666
JS is total bullshit as well as the entire web 2.0. All these new-fangled
technologies are just about hipsters and faggots. Believe me, you must avoid
it at all costs!

------
hoodoof
It's the somewhat extremist techno boffins who turn off JavaScript - there are
so few of them relative to the general Internet audience that IMO the "works
without JavaScript" goal is a waste of effort and should be completely
ignored.

~~~
mixmastamyk
There are few that turn it off, but many enthusiasts who use ad blockers and
ghostery/noscript for security and performance reasons.

If your site needs a half megabyte of JS from six domains to show an article,
they've already moved on, boffins or not.

------
intransigent
It doesn't matter what I think, because the inexorable tide has washed over
this question long ago.

Anybody willing to outspend their rivals with enough money to bury the world
in obfuscated asynchronous callback hell, just to lock people out of any hope
of understanding what their machines are actually doing, did exactly that over
the past decade.

------
ClayFerguson
These two facts tell you the answer:

1) The "Web Browser" (i.e. html+css+javascript) is the ONLY platform-
independent way of creating Apps. (despite you being addicted to your
particular phone)

2) Javascript is the ONLY language currently in wide support in all "Web
Browsers".

So obviously Javascript is needed. If we had a WWW that was only made up of
resources that are static and link to each other (static documents), then we
wouldn't need Javascript, but if you want actual APPS that run in the browser,
Javascript is the only way. People spend so much time being addicted to their
phones and the proprietary apps on those machines, that they for get that
isn't REALLY the web. The web is what WEB BROWSERS use. The three things that
are a must for a web app are HTML+CSS+JS. No getting around that.

Apple would LOVE to change this and make their proprietary browsers, apis,
languages, formats, hardware, store, ad nausium become the world wide standard
and kill off everything else, but luckily there aren't quite enough
brainwashed fanboys of apple to make that particular technology Apocalypse a
risk (yet).

~~~
na85
This seems to make a lot of sense if looked at from the perspective of a web
advertiser.

I can't fathom how it makes sense from the perspective as a user.

Speaking as a user, I found my experience to be much, much better back before
we had to download a megabyte of javascript just to asynchronously load some
text.

~~~
ClayFerguson
Javascript is what makes web "pages" essentially become "apps", and as
Javascript gets more popular more and more developers use it to build bigger
and bigger apps. So you might click a link and it starts downloading some
multi-megabyte JS files that you have to wait on unexpectedly. I totally get
that. Sites that do host apps (rather than static content) if designed well,
have it setup so that at least you only have to download "the app" (i.e. all
the JS files basically) only at the first visit, and it becomes cached (i.e.
essentially 'installed') in your browser. There are some challenges here, but
removing JS is the same as removing "apps" support, so it's not even a viable
option, unless you want to take the web back to where it was in 1994.

