My modern version of this is browsing with JavaScript disabled. Most of the sites that don’t work weren’t worth my time anyway.
Yeah, who needs google maps anyway? Just use the Xerox PARC Map Viewer.
Why I Don't Use Netscape (1999)
31–40 of 285 posts
Re: Why I Don't Use Netscape (1999)
#32I was at a startup from 2000-2003 where the chief scientist was a security wonk and demanded that our product worked with and without JavaScript enabled. No wonder the startup failed. Imagine trying to make a useful product with one hand tied behind your back!
It can go the other way, the CEO at one company I worked at demanded that we have a rich, dynamic user experience with real time editing AND we fully support all the browsers that had visited the site in the last 6 months. We had people using Blackberry, IE6, Opera, Konqueror and stuff you've never heard of.
They were happy to force javascript but wanted it to work on early smart phones.
The VP product was losing her mind fighting the CEO over this.
Re: Why I Don't Use Netscape (1999)
#33On-topic: It's true, basic design often correlates with better content.
Off-topic: The author is one of the orignal authors of Gforth, one of the main Forth implementations.
Re: Why I Don't Use Netscape (1999)
#34My modern version of this is browsing with JavaScript disabled. Most of the sites that don’t work weren’t worth my time anyway.
Yeah, who needs google maps anyway? Just use the Xerox PARC Map Viewer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox_PARC_Map_Viewer
Yeah, well. There are a few things that are worth whitelisting.
Re: Why I Don't Use Netscape (1999)
#35I was at a startup from 2000-2003 where the chief scientist was a security wonk and demanded that our product worked with and without JavaScript enabled. No wonder the startup failed. Imagine trying to make a useful product with one hand tied behind your back!
I just checked, Google and Amazon still work flawlessly without JS. And many other "useful products" too.
The question is, if a startup can't make a site that works without JS, are they actually focused on the product? Assuming it's not a webapp, of course.
Re: Why I Don't Use Netscape (1999)
#36So the "movement" against modern browser features is not a movement and has nothing to do with these features but its simply a version of "kids these days lost their ways" thinking. A version of conservatism, I guess. "Everything was better in the good old days" and "The new generation is horrible, the humanity is doomed" kind of thoughts are probably a manifestation of fading youth.
This article is from 1999, what do you mean?
Re: Why I Don't Use Netscape (1999)
#37Considering all the discussions about JavaScript and sites with primarily text requiring it, this looks like the more things change, the more they remain the same :-P. Also see Wirth's Plea for Lean Software[0] from 1995 for another "timeless" issue. I did find this bit interesting too... > Apart from this practical reason, there's a principal one: The first time I invoked Netscape, it said that it is obsolete and re…
Firefox on Ubuntu (which I'm not using anymore for these and other reasons) and presumably on other OSs does exactly that: refuse to open new tabs/sites once every two weeks or so, telling me "one more thing we need to do" ie self-update. So you're loosing all your browsing context, though FF does a better job restoring it after restart than it used to, but still that's user-hostile and self-important as fuck. And th…
This is infuriating to me as well. And the stupid Firefox restart dinosaur always comes up at the worst possible time. I would have switched to a new browser years ago, but Firefox seems to be the only one that supports vertical tabs.
Re: Why I Don't Use Netscape (1999)
#38So the "movement" against modern browser features is not a movement and has nothing to do with these features but its simply a version of "kids these days lost their ways" thinking. A version of conservatism, I guess. "Everything was better in the good old days" and "The new generation is horrible, the humanity is doomed" kind of thoughts are probably a manifestation of fading youth.
It is also possible that stuff are getting worse though. After all i remember friends of mine who were in university raging on how bloated the web was around 2000 and i'm 99% certain they weren't middle-aged men disguised as teenagers :-P. If anything i don't remember knowing anyone above 25y back then who even cared about web stuff.
After all having some people see and complain about things getting worse doesn't mean that said things will stop getting worse if most people don't care or even noticing them getting worse to do something about it.
Re: Why I Don't Use Netscape (1999)
#39Considering all the discussions about JavaScript and sites with primarily text requiring it, this looks like the more things change, the more they remain the same :-P. Also see Wirth's Plea for Lean Software[0] from 1995 for another "timeless" issue. I did find this bit interesting too... > Apart from this practical reason, there's a principal one: The first time I invoked Netscape, it said that it is obsolete and re…
Firefox on Ubuntu (which I'm not using anymore for these and other reasons) and presumably on other OSs does exactly that: refuse to open new tabs/sites once every two weeks or so, telling me "one more thing we need to do" ie self-update. So you're loosing all your browsing context, though FF does a better job restoring it after restart than it used to, but still that's user-hostile and self-important as fuck. And th…
> and presumably on other OSs
Nope, it only happens when something outside changed Firefox's files (in this case when Ubuntu swapped files because dpkg updated Firefox). This never happens* in Windows and macOS (it might nag, but you can definitely dismiss it). It seems that johnchristopher has a suggestion to disable auto-updates on a specific application in Debian and Ubuntu (haven't tested it though): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33202052
* At least using their official installers. I'm specifically excluding using Chocolatey/brew/other loose-file update mechanism or your bonkers enterprise solution insists on using loose files and not rely on *.msi/*.app/*.pkg.
Re: Why I Don't Use Netscape (1999)
#40How do you know that someone chooses to disable JavaScript in their browser?
Answer: Don't worry, they'll tell you about it.