81–90 of 93 posts
> 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.
If not ads what do you want? Paywalls? Native content? Personally I want a robust and diverse web ecosystem, not just pay walls and people forced to alternative revenue sources.
> 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.
If not ads what do you want? Paywalls? Native content? Personally I want a robust and diverse web ecosystem, not just pay walls and people forced to alternative revenue sources.
Well, everything paid for by ads is the opposite of diverse. Pretending paywalls are the only alternative is disingenuous too. There's plenty of options, like donations, or Blende's "pay per article, get your money back if it sucks" model, which seems to work well
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!
While I understand the intent of your post, don't most people minify (obfuscate) their JS code to reduce bandwidth costs (on both ends, user and company)? Even in todays high bandwidth availability age we still use CDNs and the like to reduce such a cost. That said, it would definitely be nice to see non-minified versions of code we run in our browsers available as open source by the company serving it. It's not like…
On an iPad1, your best choice is indeed to disable JavaScript. (Note that the ipad1 has 256 MB of RAM. That sounds enough, but it is not! May be because of a poor optimization of Safari on iOS5)
I've disabled anything 3rd party and all scripting via uBlock. When I really need some site to work 100%, I'll just selectively enable the parts that are required for that site. The little button makes it easy to whitelist stuff case by case.
uBlock doesn't disable all scripting at all, though.
It's a common misconception that uBlock Origin is "just" an adblock plus replacement, but it's a lot more than that.
The one caveat is that there's no fine-grained GUI for white/blacklisting specific scripts. You can however white/blacklist scripts from domains using the GUI, and you can block / unblock individual scripts by writing rules.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think that simple content such as blogs, news and the equivalent should not be implemented in js-dependent web apps. Web browsers are a platform for sure, but the simple content should stay simple.
It have thought for a while now that the web and correspondingly the browser should be bifurcated into a content platform with no client side code and an application platform without the burden of the older technologies. The browser would provide all the interactivity and logic for the content platform through implementations of standard html tags. For the application platform, the browser could provide a more conven…
Developer: "Well, we can either build our website in document mode or in application mode."
Management: "What's the difference?"
Developer: "If we build it in document mode, it loads quickly and cleanly and..."
Management: "Does document mode let us put the modal popover window that got 5% of our visitors to join our newsletter last month?"
Developer: "Well, nope."
Management: "And the third party tracker?"
Developer: "Again, no."
Management: "So we can't monetize or track how many sticky eyeballs are consuming our content?"
Developer: "Nope."
Management: "App mode it is."
Developer: "But it isn't an app. It's just static pages."
Management: "APP APP APP APP APP APP. I hear you can go on a course to build apps in less than a week."
Developer: starts checking his LinkedIn for an employer who doesn't make him want to take a pickaxe to his own face
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!
While I understand the intent of your post, don't most people minify (obfuscate) their JS code to reduce bandwidth costs (on both ends, user and company)? Even in todays high bandwidth availability age we still use CDNs and the like to reduce such a cost. That said, it would definitely be nice to see non-minified versions of code we run in our browsers available as open source by the company serving it. It's not like…
Sourcemaps are great.
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 overwhelmi…
In one word: Frameworks.
In more words: Building HTML in two different places is typically not very DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself) and if you are assuming a lot of very dynamic content that want to update on the fly from the JS side of things all the way down to micromanaging the HTML generation at run time, well then all of your HTML building moves into JS to keep things DRY.
The hope for the future is so-called "Universal" JS (which is interesting in that its kind of circling back to the origins of JS (LiveScript Server) and ASP Classic): now that we have a somewhat standardized JS platform on the server side (NodeJS) we can use the same JS to build HTML on the server or in the client...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So, the answer to bojo's question is "Yes.". > After that it's loaded from the browser cache! Unless the resource changes, the UA's cache is cleared, the file is served with incorrect caching headers, the cache expiry time specified in the resource header is reached, the resource is loaded by a UA that doesn't cache...
Lets say your .js files takes up 5% of your total app size after gzip compression, and minification saves you around 20%. Then you have saved around 1% bandwidth at the cost of obfuscation and more difficult debugging. And If it's cached, witch all main-steam browsers does, you've saved around 0.01% at best. So if you pay $10,000 in bandwidth costs each month, that's $1 saved :P
2) There are many, many people in the world today who access the internet through what is effectively a 2G connection.
3) "...at the cost of obfuscation and more difficult debugging."
3a) Sometimes obfuscation is a desirable side-effect.
3b) Javascript source maps exist for a reason.
4) "And If it's cached, witch all main-steam browsers does..."
4a) It's almost as if you ignored the majority of the last sentence in my previous comment. :)