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Comment by kjkjadksj | Hacker News Reader

Compatability is only better if you make the assumption that all your users need to be using javascript. I much prefer using the web without javascript, it impacts my laptops battery life by hours. Some sites, are not compatible with this and render a blank page or complain to me that they require javascript to render some text in windows. Meanwhile Amazon has a javascript free clone of their ecommerce site, showing that such herculean feats are possible without reaching for javascript.

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I think that is a pretty good assumption to make. The vast majority of websites are being made for the average person to use, and the average person is using one of the big browsers with more or less standard settings.

You could write a website that doesn’t use JavaScript, is meant to be accessed primarily through curl, etc but if it’s a business project then you’re going to end up with a product that your users (average people) will view as more janky than otherwise, and you’ll spend more time and money on it too, for the benefit of 0.01% of the population who would be slightly inconvenienced if you didn’t.

> you’ll spend more time and money on it too, for the benefit of 0.01% of the population who would be slightly inconvenienced if you didn’t.

The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Simple HTML:

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2021/01/the-unreasonable-effectiven...

> Compatability is only better if you make the assumption that all your users need to be using javascript

Are any companies foolish enough to assume otherwise? I understand there is a minuscule number of users who don't want to run JS in their browsers, but aside form Amazon and their near-unlimited resources, who is catering to that small number of users?

Battery life is the silent victim. Maybe browsers should name and shame websites that are heavy.

I would love to know how many milliwatts a page is using? Any way to find out?

I try to push for making websites without JavaScript but nobody wants to because it requires some forethought. TIL Amazon has a functional no-JS version, amazing!

Sites should work without javascript, but I think it's fine to demand a somewhat up to date browser in that case.

For features that have been very widespread for enough time, it's okay to have a javascript polyfill as the only fallback, in general.

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