Question

Is it possible to disable AJAX without disabling JavaScript completely?

Answer 1

If you are using Firefox, you could accomplish this with GreaseMonkey. (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/748)

GM is a framework for applying scripts to some or all of the pages you visit. I have GM scripts that disable google-analytics downloads (because they slow things down), and which disable google-click-tracking on google result pages (because it bothers me that they are doing that).

Here is my google-click disable script:

// ==UserScript== // @name           Google Clk // @namespace      googleclk // @description    Disable Google click tracking // @include        http://*google.com/* // ==/UserScript== // Override google's clk() function, which reports all clicks back to google unsafeWindow.clk = function(url) {} // { alert(url); } // I use this to test. 

By doing something similar with XMLHttpRequest (and other functions) you can effectively disable them. Of course, you may completely break the page by doing this, but you already knew that.