Nyxblog

Please make websites work without JS (when possible)

296 words, 2 min read

Or at least, use a noscript tag.

On the Internet, we have a technology to make pages interactive called JavaScript. Sounds all good, right? It's not. JavaScript can reduce user privacy, slow down page loading, waste bandwidth, along with a ton of other things.

Reducing privacy

Most, if not all, methods of tracking users on the internet are JavaScript based. This includes things like reCAPTCHA and Turnstile too. Those are often ineffective at keeping out bots while old text and audio based CAPTCHAs work fine for almost all cases.

Slows down page loading

Usually, the majority of the time it takes to load a modern webpage is the JavaScript frameworks. Many things often done in JavaScript can be done with plain old XHTML. You can also do basic dynamic content with server-side rendering, for example the author's personal site, made in Flask. It doesn't have JavaScript, yet the visitor count and now playing status can change. So instead of the browser loading a ton of JavaScript, it loads just the HTML, CSS, and fonts.

Wastes bandwidth

Bandwidth is one of the largest problem. Going to a website like the homepage of Google that works just fine without JavaScrpt loads a whole 2.5MB of JavaScript. Now, caching improves this a lot for those on metered connections, however that doesn't make it perfect.

Alternatives

First, ask if the content actually needs to be dynamic. That's the first step. Next, ask if it needs to be updated in real time and then that data needs to be shown to the user. If yes, then JS is the only option. Make sure to include a <noscript> tag to tell the user that JavaScript is needed, explaning why if needed. However, if no, consider using server-side rendering as mentioned before.