I'm surprised no one has posted this xkcd strip yet.
"Disable Javascript" option removed in Firefox 23
241–250 of 373 posts
Re: "Disable Javascript" option removed in Firefox 23
#242Earlier quoted context omitted.
That depends how large the subset is. If it's 2% or lower, then yes. Hell, I might even go as high as 10% depending on what the particular bit of behaviour is.
Do you think 2% of Excel users (or 10%) use Pivot tables? Do you think Excel would be the massively powerful tool it is today without that? Same for scatter plot, import csv files delimited with % marks, and the ipmt() function?
A fair point but misleading - they're not a simple checkbox which can break your everyday experience. In fact, none of them are UI relevant at all, really.
Re: "Disable Javascript" option removed in Firefox 23
#243Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually, it's possible to implement in it an unobtrusive way that makes users feel more comfortable. The huge popups usually comes from the same websites that do popover ads (that commonly end up invisible and blocking scrolling with adblock) and auto-play videos. Most of the time it's a small bar on the top or bottom of the screen. Stop whining.
Dumb lawers litter my web. Whining is the only thing I can do. Besides, even small bar often becomes huge bar on mobile.
Again, blame the web designers who don't even do enough diligence how others do the same. And demands of proper, obvious labeling is one of the better tools to stop companies from putting useless crap everywhere.
Re: "Disable Javascript" option removed in Firefox 23
#244It makes sense to me. You can't even do Internet banking these days without needing Javascript enabled and to disable it you'll always have the plethora of addons that allow you to disable Javascript anyway. I think this is a welcome removal from Firefox, it's 2013 not 1925, Javascript is everywhere.
Re: "Disable Javascript" option removed in Firefox 23
#245Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's a very arbitrary line to draw. Some "alternative browsers" exist that wrap the IE rendering engine in a different UI (and some of those include their own firebug-like functionality), does that mean IE is more customizable than firefox (which, after all, forces you to use GTK for your UI)?
Yes, Firefox is still more embeddable than IE (although that is changing, since almost no one does). And it doesn't force you to use GTK for your UI.
Mozilla is working on it. Firefox OS for example no longer uses XUL and they've got an awesome research project called Servo - a Gekko replacement that addresses its short-comings.
Re: "Disable Javascript" option removed in Firefox 23
#246Javascript is not required to read articles on the web. It's optional. That's why "Reader" mode is so handy, just show me the article so I can read it. Sometimes I don't like waiting for my browser to struggle with poorly written JS. It sounds like a classic noobie mistake... "Why are users able to turn off Javascript?" "No idea." "Remove the feature!" If anyone says Javascript is not optional, they are trying to sel…
I came here to wax rhapsodic about Reader mode too. It's my favorite web browser feature in half a decade. The fact is that most web sites use JavaScript _and_ CSS in a user-hostile manner. CSS is used to draw the eye towards advertising or other content on the site, with the hope of distracting me from what I came to read. Many sites even use CSS to create a faux-popup overlay "window" that has to be dismissed befor…
Ghostery is great at getting rid of most of that stuff and Adblock removes the rest; one can also disable Adblock per domain.
Click to play on plugins is great, Firefox should also have it builtin (as Chrome does).
Re: "Disable Javascript" option removed in Firefox 23
#247I'm surprised no one has posted this xkcd strip yet. http://xkcd.com/1172/
Oh, and I didn't post this to bash the sincere concern about discoverable options. They could disable JS, and they still can, using an extension or going through a menu which clearly states that those configurations may break the 99% of the web.
Every change is prone to break someone's workflow. But if there is a good enough alternative and if the change is better for everyone, I think that should be left alone. If there was no way to disable JS after this update, I'd be pretty mad as well. But having an option deep enough to keep away from unsuspecting eyes is only sane.
Re: "Disable Javascript" option removed in Firefox 23
#248Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is there any empirical evidence that suggests that people accidentally disabling JavaScript and then being confused as to why websites don't look right is a significant problem? The author of that article says: "Is it really worth having a preference panel that benefits fewer than 2% of users overall? — obvious spoiler alert: The answer is no." The answer is yes . If 2% of users have a purpose for it, perhaps it woul…
I don't know of any empirical evidence, but the story normally goes: There is a new Java exploit, and recommendations to remove/disable Java hit the wild. Then while people try to find out how to disable "Java" Find "Disable Javascript" and assume it's related. Perhaps this would be solved by renaming it "Disable Ecmascript" however. I really have no idea how common this is, but have seen it once, from a user that's…
It's a shame that they didn't push "ecmascript" as the name ~15 years ago back when it was new. Now we're stuck with problems like this...
Re: "Disable Javascript" option removed in Firefox 23
#249Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I simply don't understand why you would want to browse the web without JS enabled It's faster. Much faster. Every time I disable noscript to use some website (90% of the time it's video that doesn't work) I'm always astonished how much GARBAGE most website have. Totally useless stuff. Popup boxes, annoying underlining with mouse overs, certificate verifiers, bookmarks, social network promoters, chat boxes, and help…
But that stuff is all important for the website owner. Advertising for paying the bills, analytics tracking to work out who is using their site, chat/comments boxes for social interaction.
> But that stuff is all important for the website owner.
Correct. However, this is not true for the the browser owner who owns the computer that the javascript executes on. What rights to my hardware, my electricity, and my bandwidth should the website owner actually have?
For the minority that do click on advertising, or do not get a instant distaste for any company displayed on advertising that are forcible pushed into ones face, I suggest using a opt-in system. Same goes for tracking, or the constant push for integrating different companies websites with ones personal social network profile.
Last, the golden days of pay-with-your-eyeballs or pay-with-your-personal-data supported services might be counting down. Sooner or later, tax officers will start consider those as transaction as any other, and thus enforce taxes on them.
Re: "Disable Javascript" option removed in Firefox 23
#250Earlier quoted context omitted.
Software needs to empower the user. Writing arbitrary limitations in to code to make certain functionality harder to achieve is a seriously repulsive attitude for developers to have. The current trend in removing features from software seems like a great way to have a dire shortage of engineers in 50 years time. The attitude that "software is a magic and untouchable black box, you can only use it to do the specific t…
Have you ever actually met any normal users? They have work they need to do, and the software is just a means to an end. They don't want to be 'empowered' by developers, and they definitely don't want to have to deal with arranging a bunch of poorly documented modules that make no sense if you are not familiar with the underlying architecture.
Then have another checkbox, something like "enable advanced settings (warning: if you don't know anything about cars, would you really mess with your car's breaks?)", that toggles the availability of these kinds of settings. Everybody wins.