I share your dream, brother. This is why I design for every browser, with progressive enhancement.
The browser you describe already exists, it's one with JS disabled, and you ignore the sites which don't work without it. This is how I browse every day.
I don't feel like I'm missing much.
I enable JS for reddit because I have to mod things, but I find myself visiting that site less and less now. HN works. Facebook works (good enough.) Gmail works. Google Search and DDG work. GitHub... meh.
I can already see my own apps work without Javascript support. I'll convert video streams into permanently loading gifs and add 2 million invisible pixel sized form buttons arranged in a grid on top of the entire website so that I can send pixel coordinates to my server. Oh, and there will be a virtual keyboard made out of a form element so that there is no need to listen to keyboard events. There will be a huge spike in users who disable Javascript and they will flood my servers until the site crashes from the massive load.
I'm working on web forum/community software which should be compatible with just about any Web-capable device, regardless of browser.
I've dedicated a lot of time to compatibility, and now it is usable and fully feature-accessible in IE4, IE5.5, IE8, Netscape 3, 4, Opera 3-12, Lynx, w3m, Chrome 1.0, old Safari versions, etc.
I'm still working on a few IE3 issues, will be fixed soon.
It's intended for time travelers, retro-computing enthusiasts, and post-apocalyptic users with whatever device they found in the closet of the abandoned building.
It's also intended as inspiration for Web lovers of all kind to show that that it is possible.
Do you actually deliver different versions of the site depending on browser, with more and fancier features for modern browsers, or does it look the same on everything (with different CSS/JS fixes for all the horrible old browsers)?
It's largely the same version, with a couple of .js files that get included or left out depending on feature checks. This is necessary because one is a library written in modern JS with syntax like ===, which causes syntax errors in older browsers.
Please, do check it out in Windows Phone. I have only tested it once so far. It worked, but it was a while ago.
The browser you describe already exists, it's one with JS disabled, and you ignore the sites which don't work without it. This is how I browse every day.
I don't feel like I'm missing much.
I enable JS for reddit because I have to mod things, but I find myself visiting that site less and less now. HN works. Facebook works (good enough.) Gmail works. Google Search and DDG work. GitHub... meh.