If you cripple your browser some websites will break. Don't expect site owners to make them work just for you.
Fail gracefully was over the moment the "disable javascript" checkbox was removed from the options menu in every major browser.
Fail gracefully was over the moment the "disable javascript" checkbox was removed from the options menu in every major browser.
There's a distinction to be made between content sites and application sites. It's really just too much work to try to make an application fall back to plain HTML, but for a content-centered site, like a blog, a news site, etc, it's not that hard to do things right and not require JS.
A browser which doesn't implement JavaScript is not crippled; it is 100% functional. A web page which requires JavaScript is crippled, because JavaScript is not required in order to display text and images.