This works for some sites, but honestly it’s easier using the Firefox reading mode on those sites, it basically does the same thing. It only works if the page loads the full articles text behind the pay wall popup which unfortunately not many do.

I agree GNOME is resource heavy however that has nothing to do with Javascript being involved. The James Web Telescope uses Javascript for some of its core functionality (specifically managing its science modules), does that make it a web browser? I personally don’t like GNOME either, but most of it is written in C, it has its own GUI library which is written in C. The Javascript code likely just is used to simplify calling the underlying C functions and CSS is used for customizing the actual UI elements.