wild thing is that with modern css and local fonts (nerdfonts, etc), you can make a simple page with a modern grid and nested css without requiring a single third party library or js.

devs are just lazy.

It's not about using js or not, it's about failing gracefully. An empty page instead of a simple written article is not acceptable.

Stop, can only get so erect. Give me that please than the bullshit I have to wade trough today to find information. When is the store open. E-mailadress/phone. Like fuck if I want to engage

That site is literally just static content. Yes JS is needed for interactivity, but there's none here

I would argue that a lot it scripting can and should be done server side.

A lot of this interactivity is complete bullshit, especially on sites that are mostly just for static data like news articles or blog posts, the JS is there for advertisement and analytics and social media, tracking and other bullshit.

The fastest and smoothest websites are usually personal blogs of software engineers, no ads, no social media, no tracking, no pointless comments threads and no gimmicky UI animations, just text and images and if they do add interactive components it's usually done in a good way

I'll take an API and a curl call over JavaScript any day of the week.

I flip back and forth between Brave and Tor Browser, depending on which one appears less fingerprintable; and I've disabled all of the analytics.

I'm a webdev. I agree. I like react.

because ~~modern~~ young/unskilled webdevs cant do anything without react

Said it on a top-level comment as well, but I use "medium mode" on uBlock (weirdly not advertised, but easy enough to enable: https://github.com/gorhill/ublock/wiki/Blocking-mode:-medium-mode). I've found it to be a good middle ground between expert mode which is basically noscript, and rawdogging it.

If I encounter a site that I can't visit unless I enable JS, then I leave.

https://lyra.horse/blog/2025/08/you-dont-need-js/

If your motivation is to see old html pages, with minimal style

Huh? i just want to see a web page. Usually a news article, i.e. text with few styling elements. In other words, HTML.
For most use cases JS is not required.

well it’s impossible to do them reliably

Huh again? Why?

If you are worried about closed-source js.

Isn't it always open, i.e. one can read the script the browser loads if one is so inclined? No, that's not the point at all. JS increases the likelihood of data mining, by ordes of magnitude. And most addons that block js also block 3rd party requests generally.

Use as much js as you like (most third party stuff is not really up to the web dev anyhow), but the page must always fail gracefully for those who do not like it, or browse the web in some non-standard way. An empty page is not an option.

Please also read some of the other (top level) comments here.

As a web dev, and primarily user, I like my phone having some juice left in it.

The largest battery hog on my phone is the browser. I can't help wonder why.

I'd much rather wait a second or two rather than have my phone initialize some js framework 50 times per day.

Dynamic HTML can be done - and is - server-side. Of course, not using a framework is harder, and all the current ones are client-side.

Saying making unbloated pages is impossible to do right just makes it seem like you're ill informed.

On that note - "Closed-source" JS doesn't really exist (at least client-side) - all JS is source-availiable in-browser - some may obfuscate, but it isn't a privacy concern.

The problem is that my phone does something it doesn't have to.

Having my phone fetch potentially 50 MB (usually 5-15) for each new website is a battery hog. And on a slow connection - to quote your words, "great UX".

The alternative is a few KB for the HTML, CSS and a small amount of tailor-made JS.

A few KB's which load a hundered times faster, don't waste exorbitant amounts of computing power - while in essence losing nothing over your alternative.

"Old pages with minima style" is a non-sequitur. Need I remind you, CSS is a thing. In fact, it may be more reliable than JS, since it isn't turing-complete, it's much simpler for browser interpreters to not fuck it up. Also, not nearly the vulnerability vector JS is.

And your message for me and people like me, wanting websites not to outsource their power-hogging frameworks to my poor phone?

Go build your own browser.

What a joke.

even in the PHP era disabling jQuery could cause problems.

WTF. Do you think jQuery is what JavaScript used to be called or something? Pretty much everything you wrote is insane, and I specifically think that because I've been building webpages for 25 years. You sure never heard of progressive enhancement.