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Why I'm turning JavaScript off by default

tommorris.org

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Re: Why I'm turning JavaScript off by default

#51

Post by narag »

theorique wrote: post #10

(Many/most) Publishers want to be able to monetize and create complicated sales funnels and all that sort of stuff. (Many/most) Web users just want to "read a goddam text document". This tension is unlikely to be resolved. Of course, some useful things on the web truly are 'apps'. Text isn't, and probably never will be.

This tension is unlikely to be resolved.

For users, there are technical measures that are/could be implemented in the browser. White lists are inconvenient but their inconvenience is to be weighted against the scripting inconvenience. Also sandboxing.

With an easy and friendly interface, a growing number of people would turn to disable JS to browse all but their favourite sites. Attracting users (and thus making them white-list you) could be an incentive to develop accesible welcoming front pages.

That would press commercial sites more like apps and would des-incentivize personal or non-profit pages to be heavy.

So I believe there're ways to resolve tension, it depends on how inconvenient and unsafe web scripting becomes.

Re: Why I'm turning JavaScript off by default

#52

Post by marrs »

spb wrote: post #40

Everything about this article reads like it was written in 2011. "elements that aren’t div exist primarily as a nostalgic throwback to a gentler era." Um, have you looked at the HTML5 spec lately? Or used Bootstrap? Or any other significant CSS framework developed in the last 2 years? It's div/span class adornments for structure that's on its way out. And this, incidentally, is why NoScript is a terrible idea: the we…

  JavaScript polyfills to support new baseline HTML/CSS
  features are a necessity for sustainable future-and-past-proof
  development in the modern Web ecosystem.
They're very important, but your site should still be usable without them.

  Turning off JavaScript everywhere because you don't like
  experimentation and want to pretend the world froze in your
  golden years is narrow-minded and bullheaded.
More like the other way round: abandoning best practices so that you can play with a shiny new framework is what is bullheaded.

If you want to play, do it on a side project or in your spare time. Don't do it in production code unless you can truly justify it.

Every public facing site that I write works reliably in IE8 without JS. From that base line the experience only gets better until it's every bit as good as the site that abandons IE or no-script agents.

Now, guess whose site is search engine friendly from the outset; guess whose is more user friendly because it more closely aligns to expected browser behaviour; guess whose has a lower load time because the server can deliver a pre-rendered HTML page to the browser; guess which one doesn't just die because ad-block was installed?

Re: Why I'm turning JavaScript off by default

#53

Post by narag »

mike-cardwell wrote: post #42

Cross domain requests are the real problem. Usually, allowing "example.com" to run javascript fetched from "example.com" is not a problem. It's when "example.com" fetches javascript from 10 other domains that the web starts to behave horribly. RequestPolicy for Firefox blocks all cross-domain requests. Even fetching images and css from different domains. It has a blacklist/whitelist system very similar to NoScripts,…

Thank you for mentioning the RequestPolicy, I didn't know the extension. Blocking/allowing access "from x to y" seems very useful.

Re: Why I'm turning JavaScript off by default

#54

Post by tommorris »

theorique wrote: post #10

(Many/most) Publishers want to be able to monetize and create complicated sales funnels and all that sort of stuff. (Many/most) Web users just want to "read a goddam text document". This tension is unlikely to be resolved. Of course, some useful things on the web truly are 'apps'. Text isn't, and probably never will be.

Adblock solved a lot of previous "tensions". ;)

Re: Why I'm turning JavaScript off by default

#55

Post by jeff558 »

Basically, if your news/informational/blog site doesn't work without JavaScript: kill yourself now before you reproduce.

Also, there are fleetingly few applications whose best implementation is a "web app". Why go over the network for an effing todo list (and give the NSA this weeks shopping list in the process)?

Web sites should NEVER require any JavaScript to display correctly. End of story.

Re: Why I'm turning JavaScript off by default

#56

Post by tommorris »

daemonk wrote: post #37

You are against pointless UI decisions spurred on by javascript. That doesn't mean all UI decisions are pointless. Instead of advocating getting rid of javascript, perhaps it is more sensible to advocate using javascript reasonably. I don't think the all or nothing mentality applies here.

Make something compelling. Build it non-crappily. Congratulations, you'll get on the whitelist.

Fill my browser with pseudo-popups, craptastic infinite scrolling and other awful things and you won't.

Re: Why I'm turning JavaScript off by default

#57

Post by jeff558 »

macspoofing wrote: post #47

The entire posts reads like an old man complaining about kids on his lawn. The justification is just .. dumb. First because the debate is over. People want to build web apps, and they want to consume web apps. You can certainly stay on the side-lines, complain and yearn for the 90s and those glorious days of geocities and 'proper' web pages, but the world has moved on. Second, there is this arbitrary expectation of w…

Actually, people positively DO NOT want to "consume web apps". They just want something that works and is convenient. Thanks to every other platform being highly anti-competitive, the web platform has edged them out. It's a shame though, because web apps are generally mediocre garbage running on a deeply flawed, slow, largely insecure platform worked on by barely-competent hipsters.

Re: Why I'm turning JavaScript off by default

#58

Post by jeff558 »

ryanbrunner wrote: post #48
CmonDev wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spotify desktop app is awesome. There is no real need for a web app.

Except that web apps offer a lot of conveniences for both end users and developers. You never need to update your software on an end-users machine (or write complicated auto-update code) and you can be guaranteed that it will work on any random computer you come across without needing to install anything.

"you can be guaranteed that it will work on any random computer you come across without needing to install anything"

Hah. I call bullshit on that.

Also, most apps worth a damn are long-lived and become quite stable after a while. Most web apps are trend-driven garbage that gets turned over every 12 months.

Re: Why I'm turning JavaScript off by default

#59

Post by jeff558 »

One horrible example of this is Google's obsession with JavaScript scrollbars. Their rationale for doing this was because apparently native scrollbars become unusable for very long "infinite scrolling" pages. Well duh, infinite scrolling pages are a fucking moronic idea too.

Re: Why I'm turning JavaScript off by default

#60

Post by marrs »

macspoofing wrote: post #47

The entire posts reads like an old man complaining about kids on his lawn. The justification is just .. dumb. First because the debate is over. People want to build web apps, and they want to consume web apps. You can certainly stay on the side-lines, complain and yearn for the 90s and those glorious days of geocities and 'proper' web pages, but the world has moved on. Second, there is this arbitrary expectation of w…

  The justification is just .. dumb.
Arrogant, unnecessary opening. Your reasons had better be good.

  First because the debate is over.
Clearly it isn't.

  People want to build web apps, and they want to consume
  web apps.
"People" don't want to build anything; it's devs who want to do that. People want to do all kinds of things on the web. Often, they want to spend as little time on your site as possible so they can get back to whatever they were doing before. They want consistency, predictability, familiarity. They want their browser to work the same on your site as it does any other site they visit.

We had the same debate with Flash. All designers loved it and couldn't help but do "cool" stuff with it. The general public mostly just complained that it was annoying and didn't work as expected.

  You can certainly stay on the side-lines, complain and
  yearn for the 90s and those glorious days of geocities
  and 'proper' web pages, but the world has moved on.
Hmm, were you blowing a raspberry as you wrote that

...I see the next point is more hand waving...

  >As Jeremy points out, a web app seems to be nothing but a
  web site that requires JavaScript.
  No, it's not. A web application is an application that runs
  in the browser
And this is why you don't get it. There is no binary here, it's a continuum. The kind of web app you're talking about is the kind of site that would require JS and the kind of site that the author would whitelist. Incidentally, it's also the kind of site I write for a living.

Those aren't the sites the author is talking about.

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