Any chance could disclose the ones that "simply don't exist w/o Javascript". (Assuming they are information sources, not online games or otherwise purely interactive.) I have had reasonably consistent success finding workarounds for sites that gratuitously use Javascript to present information.
And of course Google really really wants JS to make it easier for them to spy on you. Youtube isn't useful w/o JS (but IIRC it used to at least somewhat function): https://www.youtube.com/ Fortunately search still works.
Twitter are twats and broke all functionality w/o JS, but nitter.net is a workaround! Just replace twitter.com with nitter.net to see the tweet.
Fortunately many sites that start out blank are quite functional w/o JS, just need to View -> Page Style -> No Styles. E.g. this one: https://www.politico.com/ ugly but readable.
However when I checked archive.org I noticed their archived page was different. It appeared to require Javascript.
YouTube
I use YouTube without any JS.^1 I search from the command line using a tiny shell script. I download from the command line using a tiny shell script. With few exceptions I do not use youtube-dl.^1
1. Only exceptions are videos with a dynamic sig value in their googlevideo.com URL. Most videos I watch have static sig values in their googlevideo.com URL. Alternatively, I can use a "modern browser" to get the googlevideo.com URLs to download these videos, with all the tracking and other non-essential URLs blocked (no ads), instead of youtube-dl.
Twitter
I read Twitter without any JS. It currently works fine for me using links(1). I have a tiny shell script to download an entire feed if I need to find some historical tweet. Twitter does make changes from time to time. Previously I had to use the GraphQL API. Not anymore.
I agree 100% that the web of gratuitous JS sucks, but even with TCP clients and a text-only browser that do not run Javascript, I encounter few problems reading the textual information and/or downloading the binary files (resources) that websites provide.
Comments
Any chance could disclose the ones that "simply don't exist w/o Javascript". (Assuming they are information sources, not online games or otherwise purely interactive.) I have had reasonably consistent success finding workarounds for sites that gratuitously use Javascript to present information.
So many sites.
For example much of MSN is totally non-functional w/o Javascript. E.g. this brings up a totally blank page: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/they-had-covid-19-once-the...
And of course Google really really wants JS to make it easier for them to spy on you. Youtube isn't useful w/o JS (but IIRC it used to at least somewhat function): https://www.youtube.com/ Fortunately search still works.
Twitter are twats and broke all functionality w/o JS, but nitter.net is a workaround! Just replace twitter.com with nitter.net to see the tweet.
Fortunately many sites that start out blank are quite functional w/o JS, just need to View -> Page Style -> No Styles. E.g. this one: https://www.politico.com/ ugly but readable.
MSN
Hmmm, I got the full text of the article, immediately readable with links(1), no problem using netcat or, e.g., curl.
NB. Unless required, I never send a user-agent header. Here, as is the case with 99% of the sites I visit, it was not required.
To watch the video, I used ffmpeg to save to an MP4 file:
However when I checked archive.org I noticed their archived page was different. It appeared to require Javascript.YouTube
I use YouTube without any JS.^1 I search from the command line using a tiny shell script. I download from the command line using a tiny shell script. With few exceptions I do not use youtube-dl.^1
1. Only exceptions are videos with a dynamic sig value in their googlevideo.com URL. Most videos I watch have static sig values in their googlevideo.com URL. Alternatively, I can use a "modern browser" to get the googlevideo.com URLs to download these videos, with all the tracking and other non-essential URLs blocked (no ads), instead of youtube-dl.
Twitter
I read Twitter without any JS. It currently works fine for me using links(1). I have a tiny shell script to download an entire feed if I need to find some historical tweet. Twitter does make changes from time to time. Previously I had to use the GraphQL API. Not anymore.
I agree 100% that the web of gratuitous JS sucks, but even with TCP clients and a text-only browser that do not run Javascript, I encounter few problems reading the textual information and/or downloading the binary files (resources) that websites provide.