Nowadays you can't realistically expect to browse the internet with Javascript disabled.

You have no idea how nice the majority of web is that way. Sites load fast, they don't spawn annoying rubbish, tracking is mostly broken, cpu usage is low, etc etc. Maybe I should write about it some day.

Please do write about it.

I used noscript for a while in blocking everything mode, then requestpolicy for better filtering, but got tired of having to allow stuff for most of my browsing (now I'm on adblock privacy + ghostery + privacy badger + cookie monster + biscuit + self-destructing cookie + smart referer).

I'd love to read about what others do and their usage, how they get around.

I use NoScript but have enabled the option "Temporarily allow top-level sites by default". That means any site I directly visit is allowed to run JS. But any references to scripts on other domains are blocked. That makes the web pretty usable but more secure.

That's not fair to say. A vast majority of drive-by attacks happen because of java/javascript/flash

I should be able to browse the internet without scripts if I want to for my safety's sake.

You can if you want, but you shouldn't expect everything to work. If you disable something, you can't complain when sites try to use something that's, more often than not, enabled.

You can use them without javascript too, if you know the shortcut. e.g. https://duckduckgo.com/html/?q=qrcode%20http%3A%2F%2Fddg.gg%...

So enable Javascript.

It also doesn't work well if you have HTML disabled.