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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I hate how these kinds of messages never explain WHY. It’s just “Do it. Do what we tell you.” 💀
BOW TO YOUR MASTERS, AND SUCK OUR DICK!!!
I remember 10 years ago looking at a calculator app in the android app store, and seeing the permissions. And thinking “WHY THE FUCK DOES A CALCULATOR NEED MY LOCATION, AND ACCESS TO MY PHONE CONTACTS???”
Fuck THAT.
What dick? pretty sure it’s fallen off from all the STD’s.
For ads, tracking and spying of course.
Probably because 99.999% of users already use JS and dedicating a web page to it is already more work than they needed to put into it
I think it’s just to avoid explaining why, and how they harvest your data. That said, I also hate how a lot of errors of the big corpo are just like “This site has an error” no error-code, no further feedback what to do etc.
It probably logs the error automatically. There’s nothing you can do on your end to fix their code problem in most cases which is why there is no feedback on what you should do…
No no it’s more interesting if it’s for evil corporate reasons! Lmao
A lot of websites are react which doesn’t function without JavaScript. It’s a more powerful tool for web dev and can be a better experience for the user if used right.
Great. If that was their reason, they could explain that. But they didn’t and that’s my beef.
But since you seem to be tech savvy, you also already know why they don’t explain which great features of react they want to use on this page. And we all already know it’s not for the user’s benefit. It’s for money they receive from data mining every minute of our lives.
In google’s case, you might be right. However in general what are you expecting the website to say? An explanation of why react was chosen over other languages? Otherwise the reason you have to enable JavaScript on a react website is because the site doesn’t work without it. I see that like complaining that your gas light on your car doesn’t provide an explanation as to why gas is required for it to run.
If you are curious why a lot of sites use languages like react instead of plain html, there are a few reasons. Prior to react like languages, web servers would generate the page, send it to you, and then anytime you interacted with the site it would send you a whole new page to display. I.e. if you opened a popup for uploading a file, it would send you a whole new page to display which is why older sites flicker on basically any interaction. Newer sites that use things like React are downloaded once. It basically downloads the code to make the website and then runs entirely on your machine. The benefit to this is that if you sort a list, open a drop-down, open a popup to download a file, etc. it all happens on your computer instead of some remote server. No need to wait for a server to respond or download a new page, it can update that specific part of the page instead. Some sites are even fully functional offline because of this which is really cool in my opinion.
This makes a far better user experience because everything is instant and doesn’t trigger page reloads on every interaction with the site.
It’s good for developers because it allows code reusability and vastly increases what you can do. Many of the critical features I have on my site are not possible without JavaScript/React. I actually first developed the site using the old style and changed it over to React because of those limitations.
Google could have updated their site to one of these languages to open up new possibilities in what they can do on their site. That or they might be making it more consistent with their other products for maintainability reasons. I find it unlikely that the people who have JavaScript turned off are a large enough portion of the population for them to care about their data but I could be wrong.
Because if they typed out an honest reason why, you would avoid them like the plague.
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
It wasn’t required, but id wager 99% of website that exist currently run JS in some form or another for something.
Id wager its impossible to have anything dynamic on a webpage without JS (minus visual dynamics which can be handled with css), at that point you have to replace it with a different programming language and every browser needs to completely change gears to allow other code to run instead. But what advantage is gained by changing to another programming language? Cleaner code w/ less jankyness? Sure I guess, but we would be moving mountains to accomplish a silly thing.
I’m wondering if many people in this thread understand what JS is and does.
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.
You should still be able to use something like Lynx to browse and search. There’s no reason to block basic functionality except that you can and don’t care.
I love that society is basically stratifying into groups based on tech knowledge - it all seems very Cyberpunk.
As someone with technical knowledge sometimes I get locked out of things because I block ads or refuse Javascript. For instance, I had to turn off my pihole so I could sign into my Microsoft account to play Minecraft. Or the times I encounter a website that breaks on Firefox.
The Microsoft Minecraft login thing is getting pretty insane.
The worst part was that it just showed a black window, with no controls or indication of what was wrong. Thankfully this sort of thing happens so often my first reaction is to turn off my pihole for a few minutes.
The more technology pervades society the more pronounced this will get. The sheer helplessness of people when faced with problems that seem trivial to some is scary. Especially when you see people losing final theses or critical work related data because they never learned about backups.
Add to that tech companies trying to hide the concept of a file system, and it seems like this is by design to sell more shit.
Yeah, obscuring and abstracting away the atomic units of the system is a classic.
On the other hand self-education has never been easier, and there are open source alternatives of pretty much everything.
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?
Who still uses Google? DDG has been way better for a long while now. Join the duck side.
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…and who also has JS off? That seems like a weird combination.
Uses Bing results.
So that’s why it’s so good at finding porn.
Kagi is also good. Better imo really
Love how you’re getting downvoted for suggesting a great search engine which doesn’t require JavaScript. Stay classy, everyone.
Probably because they didn’t mention that it’s not free.
Nobody asked. We were talking about g about good search engines, of which Kagi is one.
Brave search 🤙
Edit: I forgot that Lemmy hates Brave and doesn’t want anyone to use it. Be warned, there are some concerns people have about the organisation.
Just use SearXNG.
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
It’s open source and can be self-hosted. I use something similar called Whoogle that I run in a local Docker container. Strips ads, javascript, tracking, and amp links
I think they were just referring to the X in the name.
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.
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A lot of the web is powered by JS, but much less of it needs to be. Here’s a couple of sites that are part of a trend to not unnecessarily introduce it:
The negative implications for Google requiring JS is that they will use it to track everything possible about you that they can, even down to how you move your cursor, or how much battery you have left on your phone in order to jack up prices, or any other number of shitty things.
Htmx does use javascript under the hood, but just makes it so the developer can use html markdown for more a more interactive environment that’s driven sever side. So the initial page load should render, but UI elements might not work as intended.
htmx is more a move back to REST as it was originally defined (aka not json backend).
They’re also working with browser developers to push htmx into web standards, so that hopefully soon you won’t even need htmx/JS/etc, it’ll just be what your browser does by default
Jesus Christ no.
As a web developer, nooooooo.
JS is like a disease where it does not need to be. I would honestly welcome an Internet alternative that was all web 1.0 (with up-to-date security updates and methods). There’s good uses for it in interactive websites that provide cloud services, but most of it is fud and breaks the whole notion of HTTP GET URLs you can just share and cache.
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A large majority of modern web applications are built with Javascript… Both frontend and backend. You do still have a large majority of websites using plain HTML or PHP, with some features requiring JS to function (modals, realtime stats, data input, etc).
You also have alternative languages like Java or C# (and more), but also may use bits of JS on the frontend to drive functionality.
You can bet that the majority of websites you visit nowadays will use some form of JS, unless it’s a static webpage to display basic information.
I’ve been happy with Qwant lately, they have their own index so using them doesn’t support the Google + Bing hegemony. They’re also EU based and regulated by the gdpr.
AFAIK Startpage gives you google results with your privacy intact and less ads.
Didn’t they get bought by an ad company?
When they were purchased it was with the understanding that they would get no user data and that Startpage does not collect it, and it has the same CEO who started the company so I believe him.
I think they switched to usually using bing results last year. Their support site mentions they use both backends. I’d guess which one you get depends on which API is cheaper for each country.
It turns out it went multi-engine, probably to prevent getting cut off of Google’s Results. It probably mixes results from multiple engines like the old multi engine search engines in the old days of the internet.
W search engine fr
lol. nope. not happening. that’s not how to get me to even think about using your search again (having quit over a decade ago).
why are you using google in 2024 grandpa
they def wanna maximize data collection with javascript
I just disabled Javascript and Google still works fine. It might be only Google’s mobile site that requires it.
Could very well be a mobile thing. I was pretty annoyed recently when logging into gcal for work on my phone, it refused to let me sign in without giving them my cell phone number. When I switched to wifi, it stopped bugging me, so clearly they pay attention to that sort of signal.
Where are you? The JavaScript block also seems to disable reader mode, so maybe they serve a different page in places with accessibility requirements
California.
