Just started getting this now. Hopefully it’s some A/B testing that they’ll stop doing, but I’m not holding my breath
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Just use SearXNG.
Yep. I use Noscript and DDG Lite by default. Just putting into duckduckgo: !g <your search goes here> will search google without having to turn JS on…looks like Duckduckgo wins again, even when it comes to using google, lol.
So like !g <squirrels holding nuts> and I’ll get googled?
Yes, the brackets were just there to emphasize it was a search query. Apologies if that was confusing.
No need to apologize, mate. Your comment was super helpful.
If you ever need a search engine without JavaScript or https, give http://frogfind.com/ a try. Works great on ancient browsers and operating systems.
Thanks… But no HTTPS?
Yes, it targets old operating systems. Old browsers don’t have the right certificates installed, nor do they support current encryption algorithms and protocols.
Use LibreX or a fork called LibreY, it’s a JS-free proxy for Google search
There’s a list of instances at https://librey.org/instances.php
Something similar exists for DuckDuckGo btw, it’s called 4get
Or you can just use SearXNG, a meta search engine that aggregates results from multiple sources
The comments I come to Lemmy for!
Use any of the following:
Who uses the internet without JavaScript? Must have so many broken websites
I run NoScript, which blocks all JavaScript. I manually allow websites as I need it. It blocks all kinds of annoying nonsense while I browse.
I installed NoScript just a few days ago, because I’m forced to use a really weak computer that struggles to even browse the modern web. I feel like NoScript improved it a lot, and while quite a few websites broke (including lemmy) (but most will still display the content), I just set the ones that I need working to trusted, but the performance is still good (I should note I’m also using it in conjunction with an automatic tab discarter).
I however also don’t directly use Google. Both SearX and Yandex don’t need javascript, so I’m unaffected by these news, despite being a bit mad about it as a reflection of the direction the web is going as a whole.
I started disabling JavaScript by default with uBlock Origin a few months ago. I am surprised to report that a bunch of sites work fine without JavaScript.
There are definitely some sites that actually need it, and for those, it’s just one click to permanently allow for that site. But most of the sites I need work better with just CSS and HTML because there are no stupid nags or social media sign-in buttons that pop-up anymore.
These are also just fun:
I also use Mojeek when I want a (serious) different set of results that I’m not getting from those pulling from google, bing, etc. It’s not the best but it’s getting better over time.
Oof ouch my Lynx.
Oh well, there’s always DDG and friends.
I like the SearX search engine. It gives old-school, relevant search results, not google ranked ones.
It’s also spread out over many separate instances, so you can pick the one that best suits your search needs:
Smells a bit Musky
Google is no longer a Search Engine. It is a commerce/purchase search. It’s nothing more than ads and corporate results to purchase goods & services. Google Shopping has taken over Google.
Back in the day it was the best at what it did, but there’s less demand these days for that kind of old fashioned search.
Its still better than the competition at finding the URL of a corporate or government entity. Its still helpful for searching other websites for particular content - for example, the wikis for some games have an obtuse layout and unhelpful search function, and google can be the best way to find a particular page in that wiki.
Before ChatGPT existed, and before the enshitifaction of Reddit reached the critical level its at today, google searching site:reddit.com was pretty good at finding organic human conversations that provide actual answers to your questions.
Today however, ChatGPT is better at providing useful answers to whatever questions you may have. And Bing is better at image search.
I guess ublock origin is doing wonders then, for me it’s still the same…
I don’t use Google, but with UBO it still very much is a viable search engine. People just aren’t very effective at SEO and search ineffective terms. That being said, fuck google.
Something I find annoying is that being effective at SEO means being in a constant war with people whose literal job it is to be good at SEO to trap me in useless crap.
No offense intended, but why are you still using Google? Startpage has anonyomized results from Google. DuckDuckGo is good enough for most people as well. Brave search also exists if you don’t mind supporting that shitty company.
I know this may come off as a surprise: but I imagine that requiring JS in 2024 isn’t a big deal to most people.
Now of course Lemmy skews more into that small crowd.
I don’t blame any website for requiring JS for full functionality in 2024.
All of the people replying to this saying you shouldn’t need JS are totally unaware how modern web development works.
Yes, you could do many sites without JS, but the entire workforce for web development is trained with JS frameworks. To do otherwise would slow development time down significantly, not allow for certain functionality to exist (functionality you would 100% be unhappy was missing).
Its not a question of possibility, its a question of feasibility.
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Even things like lazy loading and such require js though
A lot of features might not be obvious honestly
If you’re interested though, you could check the source which should be able to tell you immediately what they use it for
I love how Lemmy users just assume everyone is a coder… Just a funny observation, not being rude. Lol
Presumably… If you’re complaining about the use of Javascript, you have some coding knowledge. Otherwise it’s like complaining about the steering wheel in a car, when you can’t drive and don’t have a licence.
Either they have the knowledge to confirm your answer, or you’re just being a backseat driver
I wish JS would die and we get nice and simple websites back. I hate web dev so god damn much. The internet is pure enshittification
I don’t know how to tell you this, but removing JS doesn’t turn the internet into a wonderland. Capitalism is to blame for enshitification not JS
I’m a React dev. You can create server side websites, written in JS, that don’t require JS to be turned on in the browser. Granted, this just became a new official feature in React but has already been available with React frameworks like NextJS
That is insane! I’m wondering how they handle modifying the DOM w/ out JS, did HTML 5 get a significant update? I gotta look into this because that sound super interesting.
Any chance you know what version that went out with? I did a brief look at 18 and 17 and couldnt find it. Id really love to know how they are managing this.
It’s called Server Components. If you actually build a fully static website, there is no DOM modification going on. I would actually not recommend doing that with React because it kinda defeats the purpose. The goal of it is to have a mix of both. The initial render is super fast because it is prerendered once for everyone. Then dynamic data is being fetched if needed and elements are replaced. It also improves SEO.
React 19 is not yet officially released but you can read more about it here https://react.dev/blog/2024/04/25/react-19
So you’re offloading the JS processing onto the server? I cant be understanding this correctly because there is no way anyone wants to pay for the serverside cost of something that used to be an end user “cost”. Also this would add interaction latency.
There is no latency on static pages. They are rendered once as regular HTML and then saved on the server to be immediately ready for the user. The server is only processing that initial data fetching and rendering once per site. If needed, it can be retriggered. This is great for blogs and other regular pages.
Server pages on the other hand will do the initial fetch request every time but once the site is there, no data is missing and everything is there. It’s not for everyone. Regular dynamic pages still make sense. For every method there are use cases.
Disclaimer: I’m speaking from my experience with Next.js which did the same thing long before and React now aims to make that easier. But I’m not sure if React has the distinction between static and server. It’s all new and I haven’t had a project to test it on yet.
Oh I see, its only for a static page. This makes so much more sense.
I can see why you mentioned this feature fits weird with react, and I have to agree, its contradictory to the entire purpose of React lol.
Google is a text input and a list of links. It should work without JS.
It’s far more than that. Even on a basic search page. Ever expanded the ‘Peaplo also ask’ section, for example? It loads more results based on your scroll position or interaction.
There’s loads of little things like this, you may just not notice or care about it - which is another discussion.This is an optional feature. The core search functionality does not require JS.
That’s not up to you, or any of us.
Not maintaining non-js version makes sense for the business, considering how few people are affected.All we can do is move away to something better.
Thank you for deciding what was better for us, we would have been so wrong without you. /s
For full functionality sure. For basic functionality no. Searching on Google is basic functionality I’d say.
Not really. Showing ads and gobbling up data is Google Search’s core functionality, and JS is indispensible for that.
Idk if you were around when Google popped up, but it was at a time where the internet was feeling increasingly “loaded” with thousands of info per page. One where the popular engines tried to serve you twenty different things along with your search. Here’s an example:
https://www.definitions-seo.com/images/altavista-3.jpg
Or another:
https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/uploaded/timeline/yahoo/yahoo-2003.png
This isn’t a search engine. This is an all you can eat buffet, where the smallest plate is two main courses and three sides. And users just wanted a candy bar.
So you see, a lot of us started to use Google because it was simple. It was decluttered. It was a text input with a ‘submit’ button, and that’s all we wanted. THAT is, and was, google’s core functionality, and I think it’d do them well to remember that.
Now, if you wanna argue that’s changed, I can agree to that. But I don’t want morning news when I search for porn, that’s just gonna kill my boner. And I don’t want ads about coffee makers when I’ve just bought a coffee maker, that just means you’re incompetent. I want a search engine that searches things and provides results. That’s it. And just like Google caught momentum because they delivered this minimalistic facade that the users wanted, this is also how Google will die - at the hands of the next lightweight engine without corporate bullshit. Because the users will gobble it up.
There are so many alternatives
Btw it’s possible to fingerprint people with JavaScript disabled. I found this article explaining and demonstrating if you’re curious.
Yeah, it’s not impossible, but it’s much harder and you get a lot less info. You can also counteract the JS-less tracking with Firefox’s privacy.resistFingerprinting, or by using the Tor Browser, which enables a lot of anti-surveillance measures by default. Here’s also another good site for discovering how trackable you are: https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/
It’s been a year or so since I’ve gone down this rabbit hole, but what I remember, the more you block ads and tracker, the more unique your browser becomes, and the more fingerprintable it is.
Tor’s approach is to make every instance if the tor browser look as identical as possible to websites. But Tor is pretty niche. If Apple did the same with Safari, you would be an identical device in a match larger pool of devices.
I think Apple has taken some measures, but not as well as Tot has.
Can’t tell if because of spyware or because the poor intern they hired to maintain the site for the next month only knows JS frontends lol
