What the web looks like without 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:

1. The web is really fast without JavaScript
2. There aren’t any ads. No auto-playing videos or “tell us your email address” pop-ups.
3. 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:

1. YouTube’s videos and thumbnails don’t load.
2. Netflix doesn’t load anything except for its logo in the upper left hand corner.
3. Amazon looks a bit odd, but it still works.
4. Wikipedia still works great.
5. Twitter shows the normal website (with full content) for a brief moment, then redirects to mobile.twitter.com (the old one, not the spanky new React one, of course)
6. The Google Chrome download page just fails completely, with no notice, only a blank white page.
7. Without JS, Google search still does what it’s best at: searching.