If you wonder what Javascript is, it is what makes the pages in your web browser bounce around uncontrollably, loads and plays heavy films and images you never asked for and makes your browsing experience generally frustrating.
Javascript has some utility, but most websites use it more to annoy their users than to actually help them. A few websites require Javascript.
This blog, for example, sometimes works and sometimes doesn't work at all, if one disables Javascript. Unfortunately, it is not up to me, how this works. It is google's designers who determine whether the content is visible without Javascript. (I might have an option to change it, but then I risk breaking the blog for everyone, with or without the script.)
If you want a soothing browsing experience, you may want to switch off javascript completely. However, as there are such a lot of sites that require javascript, you should make sure you also have a javascript option. You can for example have one browser configured with javascript enabled and another one where it is disabled. If you encounter a site you actually need (but do you really need it, if you really think about it?) you can open it in the browser where javascript is enabled.
Here is how to disable javascript currently (May 2021) in some browsers. It may change in the future.
Firefox for MacOS or Windows:
- Click in the address bar (where you usually type URLs).
- Type "about:config" (without quotes) and enter.
- In the search field, type "javascript.enabled" (without quotes).
- Double-click on the value "true." It will turn to "false" and javascript is disabled for all new windows.
- Go to Settings > Privacy and Security > Site Settings > Content > Javascript.
- Switch off "Allowed."
- Optionally add individual sites with exceptions to Block or Allow.
- Go to Settings > Security.
- Disable javascript.
- Go to the device's global Settings app.
- Click on Safari > Advanced.
- Disable Javascript.
