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I Turned Off JavaScript for a Week

wired.com

41–50 of 93 posts

Re: I Turned Off JavaScript for a Week

#41

Sure. If you believe that the browser should only be a document reader and not an application platform then go ahead. It's kinda like buying a smartphone and then using it exclusively as a phone though.... I think the real point of irritation here is all the 3rd party junk that gets loaded in that has nothing to do with the main functionality of the site that you are on.

> I think the real point of irritation here is all the 3rd party junk that gets loaded in that has nothing to do with the main functionality of the site that you are on.

First, while I agree with this being the biggest issue, there is a little bit of nuance to your other point.

> If you believe that the browser should only be a document reader and not an application platform then go ahead

The thing is, the overwhelming majority of those applications are glorified document readers, with a bit of social media plug ins thrown in. It features rich media perhaps, but you don't need JavaScript for an image or video tag. Of the remaining applications, the majority of use-cases is forms to send over the web. This can often be enhanced by JavaScript, but is also not that insane in terms of needs. Then we get to the remaining use-cases of the "application platform".

There's also the part where most websites are just plain badly designed. For example, many sites that have a video that auto-plays when you open it, even if you open a text article and the video is totally unrelated to what you were watching. Worse, some of them even tend to autoplay to a new video, often redirecting your webpage, interrupting the reading experience. Sure, I can pause. It still downloads and buffers a video I never intend to watch. Similarly, whatever happened to progressive enhancement? Websites that give you a blank page unless you download three megabytes of JavaScript. WTH.

Re: I Turned Off JavaScript for a Week

#42

Spoiler: Author found that because the experience was so great, they turned JavaScript back on immediately after the experiment ended.

He ended up wanting more control but acknowledged that some elements of the modern web require a scripting language. I don't know why he didn't just install noscript.

Re: I Turned Off JavaScript for a Week

#43
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you run any application which you downloaded from the internet? Database Administration tool, messaging app, or similar? They are mostly written in code you cannot access or view in any way, yet you still trust the publisher.

And they are rarely sandboxed (as opposed to javascript in browsers).

But the web ones are different everytime you visit. With desktop apps you can install updated versions at your leisure. With a web app if someone managed to inject something nasty into gmail -- we all be hosed.

Re: I Turned Off JavaScript for a Week

#45
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And they are rarely sandboxed (as opposed to javascript in browsers).

But the web ones are different everytime you visit. With desktop apps you can install updated versions at your leisure. With a web app if someone managed to inject something nasty into gmail -- we all be hosed.

You beat me to it.

I was going to say that clicking a link is supposed to be a natural thing to do, while installing software requires some degree of trust in who you are downloading it from.

Re: I Turned Off JavaScript for a Week

#46
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why I didn't believe parts of the article. Yes the web loads faster, nothing can load faster than a blank page from blogger.com. I now browse the web with curl | less

There are a lot of cases where turning off JS is impractical, and I don't do it myself. But, to me, Blogger is a great example of a site that is poisoned by its reliance on JS. Blogger is so bad at showing a page of text that it needs a splash screen .

Only because Google neglected it. When blogger redesign landed it was exactly what was trendy, heavy js, dynamic layouting. It was slow but at least I thought it was worth the wait / the cost / the latency. A tech demo. Not anymore, I want to read something more than be amazed and don't want to shop for a core i5 to do so and now blogger looks dumb. Google could totally fix it but they had other horses to ride. Maybe one day.

Re: I Turned Off JavaScript for a Week

#47
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't know about policeman and looks really, really, nice. Will definitely give it a try! I love the idea of writing my own rules. As for including jquery from google, of course and for good reasons, even from the user's perspective. The main one, of course is that chances are that your browser already has it cached (from other site that uses it), so retrieving it and loading it is (almost) instant.

Keep in mind Google is blocked in China, so if you include jQuery from Google, it's not going to work for over a billion people.

Is it really fair to include the total population of China in this statement?

Re: I Turned Off JavaScript for a Week

#48
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a lot of cases where turning off JS is impractical, and I don't do it myself. But, to me, Blogger is a great example of a site that is poisoned by its reliance on JS. Blogger is so bad at showing a page of text that it needs a splash screen .

Only because Google neglected it. When blogger redesign landed it was exactly what was trendy, heavy js, dynamic layouting. It was slow but at least I thought it was worth the wait / the cost / the latency. A tech demo. Not anymore, I want to read something more than be amazed and don't want to shop for a core i5 to do so and now blogger looks dumb. Google could totally fix it but they had other horses to ride. Maybe…

Neglected? It takes a special amount of skill and a lot of work to screw it up so badly in the first place. The Web is designed to display text by default, and Blogger fails at that.

Re: I Turned Off JavaScript for a Week

#49
post #24

Sadly JavaScript or "the language of the web" is going towards binary rather then openness. The big sites like Google already obfuscate their code so it's hard to see what it does. I learned JavaScript by viewing other peoples source code, witch was as easy as right clicking and selecting view source. Unless we want more people to disable JavaScript, we need to keep it open source and transparent!

Sourcemaps make this a non-issue

Re: I Turned Off JavaScript for a Week

#50
> and I could browse the web with fewer distractions—all without the sense of guilt that comes with using an ad blocker

Never felt the slightest skerrick of guilt for using an ad blocker.

Instead I feel mildly virtuous in doing my own small part in helping the idea of an ad-supported internet die.

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