Congratulations, you have free will. Of course so does the creator of the site, and they have chosen (a choice I would make also, FYI) to construct the game this way, so you have to part ways.
I browse with JS switched off. I don't mind a web site using JS, if it's needed. Clearly, here it is needed.
The main beef I have with this site is that when I go to it with JS switched off, all I get is a message telling me to switch it on. There's no information about why I should switch it on - what will I get in return for switching it on, and what will the site take as a result of me switching it on. What am I missing by having JS switched off.
So, instead of the site just saying "JavaScript is required. Please enable it to continue." instead it should say something like "This web page contains an interactive game that requires JavaScript to function. Please enable it to continue." Then I know that there's actually something interesting being done with the JS, and not just a lazy webmaster who can't be bothered to display a blog post correctly.
Also for sites where JS is not required but is used to enhance interactivity a note to say that the difference is with/without JS would be useful ("without JS this site will work, but be slower due to more round-trips to the server" or "without JS this site will be less pretty") then you can choose if you care enough about the difference.
It is a new little toy that appeals to hackers.
That makes it valid "hacker news" IMO.
Not earth-shattering by any account, but not everything has to be.
As a side note: the question isn't relevant to the comment you replied to, your reply would have been better posted at top level where the people seeing it is not filtered by taking out those who have decided to skip the thread about JS complaint complaints.
I agree. There are things websites shouldn’t do - like non-consentually collecting and selling user data. Asking users to send private details over unencrypted http. Being inaccessible to screen readers. That sort of thing.
Having content that requires javascript? Eeehhhhhh. When static content like blog posts and news articles require JS it’s annoying. But for a little game like this the dev’s choice makes sense. Losing a few % of their audience is a reasonable trade in exchange for not needing to implement the whole thing twice. It’s really hard to get worked up about server side rendering for toys like this.
I suggest you pick your battles differently. This is a silly hill to die on.
What responsibility are you wanting the site to be held to here?
Accessibility could be a valid concern, though many accessibility tools cope with common JS patterns so if your concern really is accessibility (rather than "jcelerier is entitled to have all content without running JS") then please show what you think the problem is there.
