What the web looks like without JavaScript

Google Maps when you turn off JavaScript

A Berlin-based web developer — who codes JavaScript for a living — decided to go an entire day without JavaScript.

Let’s face it — in an insane world where the average webpage is 2.4 megabytes — the same size as the 1993 game Doom — turning off JavaScript completely can seem like a sane thing to do.

Well, here are her main observations after disabling JavaScript in the browser for a day:

• The web is really fast without JavaScript
• There aren’t any ads. No auto-playing videos or “tell us your email address” pop-ups.
• But… a lot of websites don’t work at all. Images don’t load, and forms can’t be submitted.

Here’s what several popular websites she visited looked like with JavaScript disabled:

YouTube’s videos and thumbnails don’t load.

Netflix doesn’t load anything except for its logo in the upper left hand corner.

Amazon looks a bit odd, but it still works.

Wikipedia still works great.

You can read her full thoughts on her day without JavaScript experiment here: (6 minute read)

Here are three other links worth your time:

1. How to travel the world as a developer (8 minute read)
2. Going Serverless: how to run your first AWS Lambda function in the cloud (8 minute read)
3. Between the Wires: An interview with core contributors to MooTools (20 minute read)

Thought of the day:

“Any application that can be written in JavaScript, will eventually be written in JavaScript.” — Atwood’s Law

Funny of the day:

The Stack Overflow keyboard

Study group of the day:

freeCodeCamp Berlin

Happy coding!

– Quincy Larson, teacher at freeCodeCamp

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