Switching off JavaScript makes me love the internet all over again | Hacker News Reader

Switching off JavaScript makes me love the internet all over again

25 pointsilrwbwrkhv10 comments

Things are so fast and zippy. Things don't jump up and down as you go to tap. On mobile web the differences are even starker. Has anyone tried switching it off? How has your experience been?

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Definitely look into one of the browser extensions that lets you whitelist JavaScript for individual domains. There's always going to be something that you'll need to use that requires JavaScript.

Otherwise, yeah, it's awesome.

Yes, I use Firefox with uMatrix and JavaScript disabled, except for some hand-picked sites where I have JS enabled.

So if a website I open doesn't work without JS and also doesn't show anything when disabling its stylesheet, I simply ignore it and move on. I have no mercy for websites spinning up my laptop's fan.

It gets tedious as you need to keep enabling JS on sites that require them, which is quite a bit. Some sites don't even show anything with JS disabled, worse, still nothing until cookies/local storage is allowed.

You'd have a better experience using ad blocker than killing JS.

I guess you’ll hit a lot of SPAs that don’t work at all, but then again you can always opt in on those.

Switching off my CPU makes me love my computer all over again.

Amen! Absence makes the heart grow fonder.

I use Brave for Android for this reason. It's great!

I should try it on my beefy Windows laptop, too. Browsing with JavaScript and ads makes my CPU go insane.

What a tangled web we've woven.

How is Brave relevant to no javascript on mobile (or otherwise)? Any more than any other browser.

For no ads (not that Brave actually blocks all ads. It’s good but not great), there’s different ways to accomplish that on mobile.

Brave allows you to block scripts with 2 taps [0]. I can't even count how many taps it takes on Chrome for Android--at least 6, then you have to type in the URL, etc. [1] And Google's own help site doesn't explain how--hmm, I wonder why.

[0] https://support.brave.com/hc/en-us/articles/360022806212-How...

[1] https://www.digitional.com/how-to-disable-javascript-ads-in-...

There are very few websites I allow to run javascript. I'm against the entire idea of running remote code for the privelage of having paywalls, cookie pop-ups, newsletter invites, scrolljacking, and spyware. Javascript was a mistake.

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