Just started getting this now. Hopefully it’s some A/B testing that they’ll stop doing, but I’m not holding my breath

  • Skull giver@popplesburger.hilciferous.nl
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    3 months ago

    I’m just kind of surprised Google still worked without JS up until now. The people who don’t have Javascript enabled are such a tiny sliver of market share that Google may as well serve them a broken web page.

    I think Duckduckgo still supports searching without Javascript, though you may need to wait for a meta refresh when you use the standard search engine integration, so make sure you use the right URL in your search engine settings.

    • rtxn@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago
        <form method="GET" action="https://duckduckgo.com/">
          <input name="q" type="text"/>
          <button type="submit">Go</button>
        </form>
      

      This is a fully functional search bar. This is all it needs to be. It doesn’t need Javascript, only if you want suggestions.

      The last time I checked, Google still works if you simply pass your query in the URL using the q variable. Google has no need to enforce Javascript.

      • Skull giver@popplesburger.hilciferous.nl
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        3 months ago

        They need Javascript to serve users an experience that doesn’t look like it’s from the 90s. “You don’t need Javascript” is technically correct in the same way you don’t need Google because you can go look through an encyclopedia in the library.

        The kinds of people that disable Javascript probably don’t use Google anyway, and if they do, they’ll have their browsers so full of tracking protection that serving them costs more money than it earns.

        • rtxn@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          It’s not about looks, it’s about functionality. I could add a hundred lines of CSS to make it sparkle without touching Javascript. I could think of a dozen convenience features that would require Javascript, but none that, if disabled, would prevent the search bar from functioning as a search bar.

          • Skull giver@popplesburger.hilciferous.nl
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            3 months ago

            You’re not doing AJAX without Javascript, and that’s what the Google search site is optimised for. Plus, there’s no way to deal with the mandatory cookie consent popup without additional page loads either.

            You can do most of Google with CSS but you can’t do it easily without sacrificing functionality and Google doesn’t care about the people without Javascript anyway. Why invest time and effort into making this stuff work for customers that don’t earn you anything? It’s not an open source nonprofit that cares about its users, we’re talking about Google.

        • AA5B@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          Like lack of accessibility? I generally use reader mode, because it gives an actual good user experience rather than “one that doesn’t look like the 90s”. I’m not sure if it turns off JavaScript, but it clearly turns off the crap that it does. Maybe half of websites work that way, the rest I either skip or click to turn off reader mode.

          I just tried google, and reader mode is disabled, which is a problem for people with accessibility issues.

          Does EU have accessibility protections? Does google give the same ad filled, cluttered, crap as the rest of us? What if you try reader mode

    • x00za@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      3 months ago

      They don’t need javascript to serve their website, and their website hasn’t really been updated all that much. So there wasn’t really any reason to stop supporting it.

      This change is very likely meant to be against privacy respecting users.