JavaScript is now required to sign in to Google • Hacker News Board

Re: JavaScript is now required to sign in to Google

#21

Post by goatsi » Wed, Oct 31, 2018, 11:39 PM UTC

amanzi wrote: post #6

For about a month or so I tried browsing with JavaScript turned off but gave up after having to modify settings for just about every single site I visited to get pages working, often with them silently failing in the background leaving me wondering what was going on. Sometimes I'd get halfway through a payment transaction before realising that the lack of JavaScript was preventing it from going through and then chang…

I browse with javascript blocked by default and also often need to enable a script for proper functionality. However when I enable that one script, I will almost always see numerous other blocked scripts that can remain suppressed without a problem for me. Most of these are related to tracking/advertising. For me blocking the rest of the scripts is well worth having to play around a bit when I first visit a new website.

Re: JavaScript is now required to sign in to Google

#22

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Oct 31, 2018, 11:39 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: JavaScript is now required to sign in to Google

#23

Post by dredmorbius » Wed, Oct 31, 2018, 11:42 PM UTC

ddoolin wrote: post #4

0.1% of Google's users is still quite a lot of users, is it not? Somewhere over a billion, perhaps, which would mean 1 million+ with JS off.

0.1% of roughly 4 billion would be about 4 million. Somewhat more in pageviews.

Of course, this fails to account for self-selection, a beehaviour has encountered before, in which increasing Youtube performance slowed average load times ... because users who'd previously found the site intolerably slow now found it slow, but tolerable.

(I've looked for the story, can't find it.)

Much as those who prefer to avoid use of Google won't appear in site use metrics. And enforced JS could well prove a deterrant.

Re: JavaScript is now required to sign in to Google

#24

Post by superkuh » Wed, Oct 31, 2018, 11:44 PM UTC

amanzi wrote: post #6

For about a month or so I tried browsing with JavaScript turned off but gave up after having to modify settings for just about every single site I visited to get pages working, often with them silently failing in the background leaving me wondering what was going on. Sometimes I'd get halfway through a payment transaction before realising that the lack of JavaScript was preventing it from going through and then chang…

I'm on ~5 years of temp-whitelist only for JS domains. I have acquired a third sense for which CDN and assort domains are really required for what.

Sure, it does take some back and forth testing, and some sites like wix.com sites are terrible no matter what, but in general it's a better browsing experience.

Re: JavaScript is now required to sign in to Google

#25

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Oct 31, 2018, 11:45 PM UTC

amanzi wrote: post #6

For about a month or so I tried browsing with JavaScript turned off but gave up after having to modify settings for just about every single site I visited to get pages working, often with them silently failing in the background leaving me wondering what was going on. Sometimes I'd get halfway through a payment transaction before realising that the lack of JavaScript was preventing it from going through and then chang…

[deleted]

Re: JavaScript is now required to sign in to Google

#26

Post by tree_of_item » Wed, Oct 31, 2018, 11:45 PM UTC

bluetidepro wrote: post #10

I'm genuinely curious who actually browses the web in 2018 with JS disabled, though. Wouldn't 99.9999% of the web basically break? Like, if you do, do you only stick to a few basic sites, or?

You're misunderstanding: you browse with JS disabled by default. Random sites shouldn't be running programs on your computer. If you trust the site, you whitelist it.

Re: JavaScript is now required to sign in to Google

#27

Post by Crontab » Wed, Oct 31, 2018, 11:46 PM UTC

c487bd62 wrote: post #9

This is coming right after the reCAPTCHA v3 announcement https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18331159 Sorry, you don't have enough Google Points to browse the web. Please enable JavaScript and install Google Chrome.

Google has becoming increasingly annoying. Every time I browse from work, where I have to use Internet Explorer, I have to suffer Chrome ads. They also require me to solve a Captcha every time I change the number of results per page via the search settings.

Re: JavaScript is now required to sign in to Google

#28

Post by todd3834 » Wed, Oct 31, 2018, 11:47 PM UTC

This seems reasonable to me. JavaScript is being used everywhere and most people are okay with it. As a business decision I don’t see why Google would support such a small edge case. That being said, if they feel like explaing why they should maybe try a little harder. I assume most people with JavaScript turned off might appreciate more details so they can decide how to respond to the requirement. Then again, their current approach actually seems reasonable to me.

Re: JavaScript is now required to sign in to Google

#29

Post by ordu » Wed, Oct 31, 2018, 11:47 PM UTC

amanzi wrote: post #6

For about a month or so I tried browsing with JavaScript turned off but gave up after having to modify settings for just about every single site I visited to get pages working, often with them silently failing in the background leaving me wondering what was going on. Sometimes I'd get halfway through a payment transaction before realising that the lack of JavaScript was preventing it from going through and then chang…

I use two profiles of browser. One with uMatrix, which is allowing only first-party js, other without addons for special cases like banking. I do not browse random pages with the second profile, just those which I decided to be trusted ones.

Re: JavaScript is now required to sign in to Google

#30

Post by smadge » Wed, Oct 31, 2018, 11:47 PM UTC

bluetidepro wrote: post #10

I'm genuinely curious who actually browses the web in 2018 with JS disabled, though. Wouldn't 99.9999% of the web basically break? Like, if you do, do you only stick to a few basic sites, or?

I have JavaScript disabled by default (incidentally I also disable cookies). I do this for page load speeds, security from malicious JavaScript, disabling of most advertisements, and privacy from ad tracking networks. Best practices is to serve static content and then progressively enhance that content with browser features like JavaScript. Unfortunately many sites disregard this. I routinely encounter things like an entirely blank page, missing images, broken forms (of course if I am logging on to a site I will re-enable cookies). If I think the site is trustworthy enough and I really am interested in the content I will whitelist that site. Otherwise I just hit back.