A few weeks back, individual files were no longer readable with Javascript off and a much worse browsing experience with JS on. Now its main repo pages too.
I've not seen any announcement about these changes.
Tell HN: GitHub no longer readable without JavaScript
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Re: Tell HN: GitHub no longer readable without JavaScript
#2I've given up disabling JS for my most visited pages, but you can still disable JIT if you want to drop a million LOC of attack surface. The slow-down is barely noticeable. At least not on the sites I visit, including GitHub. I still use NoScript, of course.
Re: Tell HN: GitHub no longer readable without JavaScript
#3Honest question and no pun intended: I don't understand people's desire to prevent JavaScript from being a language that runs in the browser.
Could someone shed some light on this?
Re: Tell HN: GitHub no longer readable without JavaScript
#4Can confirm, the header & sidebar do (mostly) load, but the file list and README contents are now loaded asynchronously via Javascript and with JS disabled it results in a broken page.
Re: Tell HN: GitHub no longer readable without JavaScript
#5Honest question and no pun intended: I don't understand people's desire to prevent JavaScript from being a language that runs in the browser. Could someone shed some light on this?
We love javascript running on the browser. We just want it to be optional. I'm not always using a machine or connection capable of handling today's (or even yesterday's) javascript frameworks. Sometimes I just have a machine that can read HTMl perfectly well, but that's about it.
We believe in hypermedia.
Re: Tell HN: GitHub no longer readable without JavaScript
#6Honest question and no pun intended: I don't understand people's desire to prevent JavaScript from being a language that runs in the browser. Could someone shed some light on this?
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Re: Tell HN: GitHub no longer readable without JavaScript
#7I think GitHub being an SPA is largely fine, it has good reasons to be in many situations, what I object to is when a shopping site or, even worse, a content site requires JS to work. This seems terrible when serving HTML is a much better experience for most users.
Re: Tell HN: GitHub no longer readable without JavaScript
#8Honest question and no pun intended: I don't understand people's desire to prevent JavaScript from being a language that runs in the browser. Could someone shed some light on this?
Personally I have nothing against it (or to be more exact - I've given up hope for a Javascript-optional web) but I see the argument of people who keep it disabled because:
– it consumes more battery and bandwidth (the latter still being expensive on mobile in some parts of the world;
– it's often used to track you (including tracking everything you do - mouse movement, things you type into forms without even submitting it, etc.), serve you ads, and so on;
– most security issues (XSS, browser-based 0-day exploits that escape the sandbox) rely on Javascript being turned on
– it overall slows down many pages with no tangible benefit to the user (this one is obviously not always the case, depends on the website).
Re: Tell HN: GitHub no longer readable without JavaScript
#9it's 2024. let's stop having this conversation
Re: Tell HN: GitHub no longer readable without JavaScript
#10At the end of the day GitHub is a web app. I don’t think it’s worth complaining about unless it’s something like Wikipedia that stops working.