Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by masfuerte 106 days ago
I've always browsed with javascript disabled but in the last few months (presumably in response to AI scraping) loads of sites that previously worked now don't. IMDB. Loads of open-source blogs, wikis and source repositories. Commenting on Wikipedia. Browsing job sites.

It's never been easier to create a great site that doesn't require javascript, but hardly anyone is.

2 comments

Google Search doesn't work without JS. I think we're actually moving in the opposite direction of what OP inferred. It's pretty difficult to reliably detect bots without using JS, and the vast majority of interesting client-side web applications are downright impossible without it. No amount of HATEOAS is going to make a usable version of Figma.
I think there’s a lot of good reasons to, but hardly any incentive to.

People who disable JS are probably a very tiny minority and of those who consume ads, an even smaller one.