Is The Noscript Tag Even Valid Anymore?

Dev Zone Web Development
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This is a genuine question, if not a debate, is the noscript tag even useful anymore? I mean seriously? I was just messing around with a website I was working on, thought it would be funny to scare one of the lead developers by turning off javascript in my browser. Long story short, that was fun payback for a prank what they did to me, the new guy not too long ago, it was hilarious to be fair, even I found their prank funny. Yeah, I work in a pretty laid back and cool as f$!k environment, as long as you get the work done, and meet your deadlines, you can f$!k around all you like. It's pretty awesome! :smile:

Anyway, back to the point, I then went on to a big website, I mean a huge website, just to see what happens when a client tries to view the website while they have javascript disabled. So, good website to try out would be something like YouTube, I don't need to exaggerate how big YouTube is, literally, everyone ever knows of YouTube, at least to my knowledge.

Well, all jokes aside, I was amazed by the result, considering how HUGE YouTube actually is, I would've assumed they'd have some clever alternative page(s). Turns out even a huge a$! company like YouTube is basically saying go f$!k yourself if you have javascript disabled now.

image.jpg1918x940 9.35 KB

Literally, that image, that is all that loaded when I disabled javascript. I found that hilarious, not even the logo, just blank, a canvas of nothing.

So, does anyone else agree with me when I say that the noscript tag has reached it's final days? - I mean if the likes of YouTube don't give a f$!k, then realistically, who will? I'm actually kinda surprised it's still in use now.... I know it can be useful, but realistically, looking at average users, who actually disables javascript anymore?

The only people I know that DO disable javascript are really nerdy guys who're paranoid about cyber privacy, which is fair enough, each to their own. I personally just accept there's no way around it, they'll get some details somehow, I mean disabling javascript alone won't do much, obviously. I personally think the only real way to have 100% cyber privacy is by not using the internet, and not even using a network, the only way you can 100% ensure you've got cyber privacy now is to have a stand alone machine. But that's my personal opinion.

So yeah, what do you guys think about the noscript tag still being used? I think this could be interesting.

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That's not the only thing that reached end of life on the web...

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I disable Javascript all the time, because I hate all the third party garbage every site wants to load which contributes absolutely nothing to the pages functionality.

ScriptSafe on Chromium
or NoScript Security Suite on Firefox.

But even there, nobody uses the noscript tag in any meaningful way.
Usually pages just straight up break catastrophically until you've enabled the bare minimum of scripts.

It's a legacy tag that's primarily supported for legacy scenarios, it'll be here for ages, for X Y and Z reasons, until we forget about it, like most of the rest on here:

https://www.w3.org/TR/html5/obsolete.html

I also kind of really like of how the fedora page does it. No JS needed, looks exactly the same as with JS on.
Just a recent page I noticed it on. PS: Fedora 26 just released.

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We should start a movement or something and only write in obsolete code.

Could you not imagine the rage?

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Would be rather interesting. Probably really fast loading pages.
Bear in mind most of this stuff still works.

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Most definitely faster loading times, though it would be hindered severely when dealing with the occasional new feature that gets included and I'm sure the security flaws and boiler plate code necessary would be extensive

But then again, I use old languages all the time, ANSI C is my baby

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m.memegen.com/hxi97b.jpg

it won't load... sad

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Yup gotta put that in an iframe





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Kek, still no want do

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Well obviously, I mean iframes are filtered to prevent exploits.

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I know i just wanted to believe in something

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But there is some weird stuff happening.

I just nested a metric shit ton of iframes and it kept pushing the image further down.

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Huh that's weird, I wonder, it could be just discourse being... well discourse

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image.png702x679 68.6 KB

No <br/> tags there but discourse replaces every iframe close with one.

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Yep, that's prolly so that you can't do any weird voodoo with iframeception

Accidentally or purposely, it serves a purpose I guess

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Short answer: yes

Long answer(s):

It's usefuful if you want to tell your visitors that they really should be using JavaScript (or allow if using noscript/javascript-blocker addons).

Another usecase if for example if you're using piwik, you can add a tracking code there even if javascript is disabled (via php querystring in a noscript tag, though the tracking information is extremely limited with that). Obviously you don't want this execute this when JavaScript is enabled (because then you would get 2 visits per pagehit with differing stats).

If it's about actual content or even layout, using noscript is a bad idea. You're better off using the <html class="no-js"> approach. On the other hand everything non-essential can be had with this approach too (including the "You need JavaScript" warning).

It depends on usecase in the end, and is useful for anything that is supposed to be executed without javascript. You could even load different stylesheets with it I guess.

Basically noscript's relationship status with HTML5 is "It's complicated".

As for this:

I mean it's Google, they have statistics... They can probably see how many people use javascript, so they don't bother with the rest because it's not worth the effort.

A lot of privacy-weary people have no-script or similar installed. Some companies block certain scripts on a network level, etc.

PS: If you're asking if it is still valid, yes, it totally validates in the W3C validator :slight_smile: What I think you meant to ask is if it was still useful.

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Disabling JS is pretty much for criminals now. Sites on tor allow it, as do older forums.

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I like uMatrix, that way I can nitpick what shit I don't want running from 3rd parties. Lunduke was right "The World Wide Web Sucks".

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Is it written in Python?