That trend might reverse if vulnerabilities like these continue to surface.
I’m not saying that shouldn’t be done, but business wise its probably usually best to instead add design changes for the latest smartphone screen.
The web isn’t a hypertext graph anymore, it’s a large JavaScript program with a thin html front now.
Most sites did nothing like that, but they did use Javascript and would break in various ways without it. At that time, there were a lot of people admonishing web developers to test their applications with Javascript disabled. Sort of like now.
ETA: I had to look it up - XHR was first available in IE 5 as an ActiveX control. The internet at large couldn't really expect it to be available but I believe that is where we first used it.
Initial release: March 18, 1999; 18 years ago
A lot of sites rely on JS to function even at a basic level these days and I think the parent was saying it's unlikely that that's going to change.
As the other comments point out, though, the biggest problem is that this is economically irrational for most site owners. The figures on JS-disabled usage I had when I was still at Google (3+ years ago now) were at the lower end of TikiTDO's range. It generally doesn't make economic sense to spend developer time on an experience used by 0.1% of users, particularly if this requires compromises for the 99.9% of users who do have JS enabled.
If you have a web app there’s no point, but if you’re displaying text and images and your site doesn’t work without JS, you’ve over-egged a solved problem.
(... While increasing perceived latency, especially for mobile users.)
(it's the more advanced version of uBlock, from the same dev)
