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The new Digg

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Re: The new Digg

#201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're free to browse the web with parts of it turned off. But you should expect that parts of it might not work, and if they don't work it should be immediately obvious why. Yes, it should be immediately obvious, but often it isn't, and that's my biggest complaint with sites that rely on scripting for basic behavior. Too many times I've filled in a form, hit the Submit button, only to find that proper form submissio…

Your final note is accurate, yes. But honestly, why should a web developer have to account for your niche-case decisions? Javascript is a perfectly valid language, and it's perfectly valid to assume that Javascript works in a browser since... it does. Normally. Why should I or anyone else have to add code specifically to tell users of NoScript that they need to be reasonable? You don't have to tell users of Mosaic th…

"Your site doesn't work with NoScript" means the same thing to me as "they don't speak German at the Chicago McDonald's".

Not by a long shot. More like a sign in Braille explaining how to get further assistance if needed because not every sign the place may be accessible to the sightless.

Why should I or anyone else have to add code specifically to tell users of NoScript that they need to be reasonable?

Because so many sites use unreasonable scripting. NoScript is a reasonable defensive move because of too much aggressive scripting.

Honestly, do you ever step back and wonder why NoScript even exists?

Bottom line, though, is nobody has to do much of anything for anyone, and it's entirely up to the site owner to decide how they treat people with NoScript and what it's worth to add an additional 20 character or so of boilerplate text to a page.

If nothing else it's a courtesy.

It's just like smiling at people you deal with in stores or holding doors open for strangers. Do it, don't do it, whatever you think is proper. Make the world you want to live in.

I get that my choices are niche, and that's OK. I can live with the downsides. There are very, very few sites I can't simply close a browser on if I don't care for how it's presented for me. No one loses any sleep.

I suspect most people with NoScript use default blocking and whitelist sites as needed. So if I get a clear sign that I need scripting before I start doing anything, and it looks worth it, it's easy to allow the domain. That doesn't require any real effort from a developer, and if that's considered catering then we're all screwed.

Re: The new Digg

#202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what I do. Most of my stuff degrades gracefully, but for the few things which can't (JS demos/game things), I generally do something like this: example.com is a HTML5/ES5/CSS3 3D graphics demo. Unfortunately, your user-agent doesn't seem to support ES5, sorry about that.

Or you could phrase without all the academically correct technical buzzwords, so normal people who are your real audience will understand what you're trying to communicate. Like using "JavaScript" instead of "ES5" and "web browser" instead of "user agent".

My target audience know what it means. Web devs.

For more general population-oriented sites, I have smiley faces and "JavaScript" and "Web browser".

Re: The new Digg

#203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does IE have anything to do with this? I was pointing out that from my perspective, the entitlement of web developers has gotten so out of control that disabling JavaScript is the best way of making the general web tolerable to browse.

IE has to be specifically coded for because it doesn't support modern web design fundamentals. NoScript users have to be specifically coded for because of the same reason. How often do you run into a website with Javascript that breaks your experience? Would it not be better to have a blacklist than a whitelist?

When I run into a website that breaks my experience, it slows down my computer, crashes the browser and takes away the comment I was about to write. No, thanks.

Re: The new Digg

#205
post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IE has to be specifically coded for because it doesn't support modern web design fundamentals. NoScript users have to be specifically coded for because of the same reason. How often do you run into a website with Javascript that breaks your experience? Would it not be better to have a blacklist than a whitelist?

When I run into a website that breaks my experience, it slows down my computer, crashes the browser and takes away the comment I was about to write. No, thanks.

So then we're back to the previous comment: what does IE have anything to do with this? If your browser crashes because of a misbehaving script... I'm not saying you're using IE, but you're surely not using a browser that fits your needs. Chrome simply crashes the tab, and Firefox hangs for a few seconds until it asks if you want to stop the script.

What you're looking for is browser sandboxing, and it exists.

Re: The new Digg

#206

From a technical point of view this "redesign" scares me a bit: All the old stories and user accounts 404 now. That is a major loss to their SEO. 14 million pages just thrown away and not passing any juice. They don't employ canonical or robots.txt. They have character encoding issues. ("'Superbird' Discovered") They use a meta keywords tag, and it contains "celebrity news", which doesn't appear anywhere on their sit…

The layout breaks without javascript on I see this bandied about on reviews of various sites, and I continue to believe it doesn't matter. If you have Javascript turned off and a page doesn't load, you should know why that page isn't loading. It's because you deliberately broke it for yourself.

Tell that to a blind user. Let's see how they react.

If you have a site that breaks without javascript, you are leaving a significant portion of your customer base on the table.

Re: The new Digg

#207
post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sticky page footer.

That requires a whopping 3 lines of trivial css, what are you talking about?

Not to mention, they're annoying as hell, especially on a 1366x768 screen. I wish I could get rid of them by simply turning off Javascript :)

Re: The new Digg

#208
post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not entirely true, there are hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people who use the Web only through a phone, usually a featurephone, and mobile phone Javascript is broken or nonexistent on many of these platforms. These are lower-revenue users, for sure, but there are a LOT of them.

In that situation, wouldn't it make more sense to show them a completely different site based on browser id? Not just one that doesn't rely on Javascript, but has a completely different layout entirely? I would still question the millions or billions of users who view the web only on their non-smart-phone who will be using social media like Digg.

I know from firsthand experience, ignoring Digg for the moment, that there are at least 500 million people who use a featurephone in India to check news, cricket scores, horoscopes, make payments, send emails, and send text messages. Their threshold for device frustration is much higher than mine.

Re: The new Digg

#209
post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sticky page footer.

That requires a whopping 3 lines of trivial css, what are you talking about?

Do tell.

Sticky footer - an element that sits at the bottom of either window or the content area, whichever is furtherest down.

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