I Turned Off JavaScript for a Week • Hacker News Board

Re: I Turned Off JavaScript for a Week

#51

Post by TeMPOraL » Thu, Nov 19, 2015, 9:28 AM UTC

RobotCaleb wrote: post #47

Guest192038 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep in mind Google is blocked in China, so if you include jQuery from Google, it's not going to work for over a billion people.

Is it really fair to include the total population of China in this statement?

As someone who currently lives and works in China, fuck yes. If you must, cut it down to the 1% that speaks English and thus has a reason to visit foreign sites, and you're still pissing off over 10 million people. Not to mention poor foreigners like me who try to get some work done here.

Re: I Turned Off JavaScript for a Week

#52

Post by andor » Thu, Nov 19, 2015, 9:28 AM UTC

bshimmin wrote: post #39

Two things that caught my eye in this article were "Many people have turned to ad blockers" and "A small but growing number of people, however, are taking ad-blocking a step further and just disabling JavaScript altogether". For the first quote, I know many people in tech who use ad blockers (but maybe still not a majority?), but I'm pretty sure they aren't all that prevalent outside of it (or why would advertisers b…

I found a study [0] from Q2 2015 -- before iOS 9 -- that reports ad blockers on 16% of devices in the US, and on 36.7% of devices, the highest value, in Greece.

I have Javascript turned off by default and sometimes enable it if pages don't work otherwise. Sometimes I just leave the page. I don't see it as ad blocking, but as a means of reducing attack surface, tracking, and improving page load times.

[0] http://downloads.pagefair.com/reports/2015_report-the_cost_o...

Re: I Turned Off JavaScript for a Week

#53

Post by dvdcxn » Thu, Nov 19, 2015, 9:32 AM UTC

pmlnr wrote: post #13

Zekio wrote: post #2

Tried turning off javascript completely for a time once, but then a lot(Edit: Don't actually keep count, maybe I should begin doing that) of pages are blank/white emptiness because they do all the html in the browser....

js;dr http://tantek.com/2015/069/t1/js-dr-javascript-required-dead

[[citation needed]]

Re: I Turned Off JavaScript for a Week

#54

Post by moonshinefe » Thu, Nov 19, 2015, 9:37 AM UTC

Whoa, this guy managed to uncheck "enable javascript" somehow? Glad to read such a cutting edge article.

In seriousness, disabling javascript (and enabling it selectively when things inevitably break when I was using NoScript) grew too tedious for me after a while.

There are simply too many sites that require JS to function properly. Others may disagree and enjoy clicking constantly to enable select javascripts to get pages to work properly (or maybe don't visit JS intensive sites), but in my experience it isn't worth it.

Re: I Turned Off JavaScript for a Week

#55

Post by groundCode » Thu, Nov 19, 2015, 9:38 AM UTC

pmlnr wrote: post #17

wired.com, please learn from your own article and don't try to load 22 3rd party javascripts. http://picpaste.com/wired_com-yt7ooXyu.png

Came here to say basically this. Would have been nice if they had the courtesy to disable their own javascript on an article about how disabling javascript gives a better user experience......

Re: I Turned Off JavaScript for a Week

#56

Post by yason » Thu, Nov 19, 2015, 9:38 AM UTC

I've disabled anything 3rd party and all scripting via uBlock. When I really need some site to work 100%, I'll just selectively enable the parts that are required for that site. The little button makes it easy to whitelist stuff case by case.

Re: I Turned Off JavaScript for a Week

#57

Post by moonshinefe » Thu, Nov 19, 2015, 9:39 AM UTC

oska wrote: post #50

> and I could browse the web with fewer distractions—all without the sense of guilt that comes with using an ad blocker Never felt the slightest skerrick of guilt for using an ad blocker. Instead I feel mildly virtuous in doing my own small part in helping the idea of an ad-supported internet die.

Just turning off JS doesn't stop flash ads, static ads, video ads before videos play on youtube, etc. as well... so to say the least this author is deluded if he thinks he's getting anything close to an adblocker experience.

Re: I Turned Off JavaScript for a Week

#58

Post by moonshinefe » Thu, Nov 19, 2015, 9:41 AM UTC

yason wrote: post #56

I've disabled anything 3rd party and all scripting via uBlock. When I really need some site to work 100%, I'll just selectively enable the parts that are required for that site. The little button makes it easy to whitelist stuff case by case.

uBlock doesn't disable all scripting at all, though.

Re: I Turned Off JavaScript for a Week

#59

Post by wizzzzzy » Thu, Nov 19, 2015, 9:42 AM UTC

Why not disable images too? I'd suspect they add most weight to the average site and are likely just as superfluous as all the javascript.

Re: I Turned Off JavaScript for a Week

#60

Post by joonoro » Thu, Nov 19, 2015, 9:42 AM UTC

moonshinefe wrote: post #54

Whoa, this guy managed to uncheck "enable javascript" somehow? Glad to read such a cutting edge article. In seriousness, disabling javascript (and enabling it selectively when things inevitably break when I was using NoScript) grew too tedious for me after a while. There are simply too many sites that require JS to function properly. Others may disagree and enjoy clicking constantly to enable select javascripts to ge…

>In seriousness, disabling javascript (and enabling it selectively when things inevitably break when I was using NoScript) grew too tedious for me after a while.

I'm sort of inclined to agree. I really want to like NoScript, but every now and then when I use NoScript for a couple of weeks I get frustrated with it and disable it. Sure, having it disabled is also frustrating, but it's a different kind of frustration and at least I can sort of use the site without having to put active effort into it. Now I just use uBlock Origin, it just works more or less.