== Blocking JavaScript by default is not an easy path

I'll start with [[my toot
https://mastodon.social/@cks/100680817294453146]], slightly shorn
of context:

> Every so often I wind up viewing a version of the web that isn't
> filtered by uBlock Origin and my 'allow basically no JS' settings (in
> my default browser) and oh ow ow ow.
>
> (But 'allow no JS' is basically the crazy person setting and it's
> only tolerable because I keep a second browser just for JS-required
> sites. Which throws away all my cookies & stuff every time it shuts
> down, because my trust is very low once JS is in the picture)

I'm a long time proponent of not allowing JavaScript in your browser,
along with other measures to increase your online privacy as much
as possible (for example, [[not being logged in to places NotLoggedIn]]
unless you trust them a great deal). Periodically I run across other
people advocating this too, and talking about their experiences, and
I'm all for this.

But, at the same time, I want to explicitly admit that ~~blocking
JavaScript by default in your normal browser makes your life hard~~,
hard enough that you have to be a bit crazy and stubborn to do it.
I'm doing things the extra hard way by using [[uMatrix
https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix]] with a lot of blocks, but even
[[using uBlock Origin to block JavaScript by default
UBlockJavascriptBlocking]] will leave you with a lot of work and
annoyance on the occasions when a particular site needs JavaScript
in order to work acceptably. The annoyance and work is not just
turning things on; it's figuring out *what* to turn on. Any time I
want to make a site work, it's a whole exercise in enabling some
things in uMatrix, refreshing the site, seeing if it works now,
then enabling some more things and so on. Using uBlock Origin would
result in fewer cycles of this, but I don't think it would be only
one (unless you want to basically stop protecting yourself from the
site entirely).

What makes this whole process tolerable for me is that I mostly
don't do it. Instead, I go to the effort of maintaining an entirely
separate browser that has JavaScript fully enabled but that throws
out all cookies and history when I close it, so that most of the
bad stuff that people use JavaScript for is neutered. I also have
a bunch of magic things in my personal desktop environment that
make it relatively easy to start with a link or URL from one browser
and open it in the other.

(The other thing that makes the whole situation more tolerable is
that most websites that I go to work fine without JavaScript, or
at least well enough to make me happy. Some of them work better;
very few newspaper websites nag me about 'only X articles a month',
for example.)

Having two browsers is reasonably easy (provided that you're willing
to use both Chrome and Firefox; [[these days I instead have two
instances of Firefox ChromeWalkingAwayII]]). Arranging to be able
to move URLs and links easily back and forth is probably not for
most people in most desktop environments. I'm the kind of person
who writes scripts and runs a custom window manager environment,
so I can blithely describe this as 'not too much work (for me)'.

(You can always select a link in one browser and do 'Copy link
location', then start the other browser and paste it into the URL
bar. But this is not a fast and fluid approach.)

I still encourage you to try a non-JavaScript web (I'd suggest
[[starting with uBlock Origin for this UBlockJavascriptBlocking]]),
but only if you're willing to do some work and undergo some pain.
Blocking JavaScript by default is nowhere near effortless and
sometimes it will cause even perfectly straightforward websites
(ones that are basically just text) to completely not work. Perhaps
it will be someday in the future, but probably I'm dreaming there.

(People keep writing about 'progressive enhancement' and pointing
out that people on bad wifi or cellular connections don't necessarily
get your JavaScript and anyways it's very slow to start on their
lower end smartphones. But the people who actually put together
websites keep not caring, judging from the end results, which are the
only thing that matters.)