"Disable Javascript" option removed in Firefox 23 • Hacker News Board

Re: "Disable Javascript" option removed in Firefox 23

#71

Post by gavinpc » Mon, Jul 01, 2013, 3:59 AM UTC

gkoberger wrote: post #22

Here's a very relevant blog post by Alex Limi of Mozilla: http://limi.net/checkboxes-that-kill/ Most sites these days that aren’t just displaying content will fail in interesting & mysterious ways if you don’t have JavaScript enabled. For the general population, Firefox will appear broken. And yes, I know that some people have reasons (privacy, web development) to turn off JavaScript. There are many add-ons that can…

Try disabling cookies. This exactly describes the effect, except that it's not mysterious once you're used to it. If something doesn't work, I open it in Chrome (where I have cookies enabled), and it works.

In many cases, I suppose the developer doesn't know about the cookie dependency (because of a framework or some other dependency). In other cases, I guess they don't care. Rarely does the page actually tell you that cookies are required.

Re: "Disable Javascript" option removed in Firefox 23

#72

Post by dmpk2k » Mon, Jul 01, 2013, 4:01 AM UTC

asnyder wrote: post #61

PavlovsCat wrote: post #59

Okay, since Opera seems to have gone the way of the dodo: Is there a browser for power users? I mean, good luck to Firefox and Chrome, but considering I rarely use flashy websites, I really would rather use something that only works with half the sites, but has the experimentation and hunger for ideas for the sake of ideas more than for the sake of market share these so sorely lack.

Why do you think Opera has gone the way of the dodo? It's an excellent browser, by far the best browser in my opinion. Furthermore, they're changing their renderer to webkit which will ensure no more Opera incompatibility. If anything, Opera just keeps getting better.

The newest version of Opera strips away most of the tools power users like. It's one step away from Chrome's UI.

They'll probably add most of it back, but it'll take a long time.

Re: "Disable Javascript" option removed in Firefox 23

#73

Post by dman » Mon, Jul 01, 2013, 4:03 AM UTC

kondro wrote: post #27

I can't remember the last time I wrote an application that didn't rely on Javascript for even parts of its basic functionality. I simply don't understand why you would want to browse the web without JS enabled and the average user definitely would never turn it off except in error, causing them to think the browser is broken. Every single common-use browser on the Internet supports Javascript, there is no reason to a…

Speed. Try loading theverge.com or cnn.com with / without javascript.

Re: "Disable Javascript" option removed in Firefox 23

#74

Post by dbaupp » Mon, Jul 01, 2013, 4:05 AM UTC

straight_talk wrote: post #35

kondro wrote: post #27

I can't remember the last time I wrote an application that didn't rely on Javascript for even parts of its basic functionality. I simply don't understand why you would want to browse the web without JS enabled and the average user definitely would never turn it off except in error, causing them to think the browser is broken. Every single common-use browser on the Internet supports Javascript, there is no reason to a…

>> I simply don't understand why you would want to browse the web without JS enabled Security, performance, JS ads ... >> Every single common-use browser on the Internet supports Javascript My company provides a web based app to Fortune 500 banks, around 15% of the browsers we see have JS disabled.

> around 15% of the browsers we see have JS disabled

How many are bots/scrapers?

Re: "Disable Javascript" option removed in Firefox 23

#75

Post by Ankaios » Mon, Jul 01, 2013, 4:06 AM UTC

If Firefox's developers are worried about people not understanding why a page doesn't work, another potential solution would be to provide users with some feedback. For instance, if Javascript is disabled but present in a page, perhaps show a (simplified?) small debugger box showing the next lines of Javascript which would have been executed and some sort of an obvious Run / Play button to start the script.

I'd prefer if browsers treated the Web as less of a black box, and if they erred more toward helping users understand the world they are exploring.

Re: "Disable Javascript" option removed in Firefox 23

#76

Post by zanny » Mon, Jul 01, 2013, 4:08 AM UTC

ilaksh wrote: post #67

One aspect of this that I haven't heard people get into very much: the idea that a lot of people have, including (probably) most developers at Mozilla and many web developers such as myself, is for the web platform to be a ubiquitous way to deploy applications. The idea is that JavaScript allows a relatively safe way to do that in a sandboxed environment (the browser) that is available on almost every computer. The d…

I just want to mention that the order of operations here was that the web took the world by storm overnight and application developers said "there is a turning complete language in the standard, lets use it for programs rather than document scripting".

It didn't start out as lets make an application platform that can be accessed via url, it was make a document format (html) and share them over a network protocol (http) and provide scripting with javascript, and when everyone and their moms PC had that, developers started saying "can't we make that into a full blown application platform?" (besides failed experiments like java plugins or flash as an application framework)

I really wish we had just let html be documents and made a real remote-access application framework to work along side it, rather than having your program be 2 - 3 tags of html and 5MB of js. I'd much rather be sharing a qml application than an html5 one, because the latter was ground up designed to be a full featured interactive graphical interface program.

That would actually be neat, if browser engines included a qml parser and could load qml files as programs in the browser window frame. It is just extended javascript after all.

Re: "Disable Javascript" option removed in Firefox 23

#77

Post by slaxman » Mon, Jul 01, 2013, 4:09 AM UTC

gnosis wrote: post #63

camus wrote: post #53

I exclusively surf with javascript disabled by default. I only turn javascript on on websites that i trust or the site has to give a good reason to do so. i wont turn on javascript to display your crappy jquery menu or slideshow. So many pages are totally broken without javascript. You dont need javascript to have a good layout, a complexe menu or display images. Yet some "professional" sites dont even work without j…

Javascript, Flash, HTML 5, and virtually all the rest of the HTML "enhancements" are a cancer on the web. Honestly, the only website that I can think of where using Javascript actually does something useful that I'd have a hard time doing better on a standalone app on my own machine is Google Maps, where it's nice to be able to scroll around by dragging the map with the mouse. But even there, I'd gladly sacrifice tha…

May be that works for you. But a significant number of web developers are moving on JS frameworks for web development such Angular, Meteor, Node, etc. Most sites built on these frameworks will break is javascript is disabled. As an end user, that is the worst user experience you can ask for.

Re: "Disable Javascript" option removed in Firefox 23

#78

Post by PavlovsCat » Mon, Jul 01, 2013, 4:09 AM UTC

asnyder wrote: post #61

PavlovsCat wrote: post #59

Okay, since Opera seems to have gone the way of the dodo: Is there a browser for power users? I mean, good luck to Firefox and Chrome, but considering I rarely use flashy websites, I really would rather use something that only works with half the sites, but has the experimentation and hunger for ideas for the sake of ideas more than for the sake of market share these so sorely lack.

Why do you think Opera has gone the way of the dodo? It's an excellent browser, by far the best browser in my opinion. Furthermore, they're changing their renderer to webkit which will ensure no more Opera incompatibility. If anything, Opera just keeps getting better.

I know it's the best, I am using it was we speak and have been doing so since 2000. The last time I tried it Opera Next after the switch to blink, I couldn't install it -- so I read the comments instead, and it sounded like a gazillion of features were missing. If those get all transferred, I am happy and you can strike that comment. But if they only transfer the shiny stuff "most people need", I'd love to move on, just because all of this is sad and I don't wanna see it anymore.

Don't get me wrong, I always wished Opera mainstream success. But I think there is also something to be said for niches, and the desire to appease the existing average just because the balance book says that's the best, needs to be called out on sight. Imagine authors only writing books 98% of the people agreed with or cared about. We'd still be in caves with that attitude.

I know making tools isn't exactly the same, but it's also not totally different, IMHO. We need to aim higher than were we are. Every sports fan knows more and more complicated facts than even using all features of Opera would require. Riding a bicycle, much less driving a car, is more complicated than being aware of what option you just clicked - ffs!

If even Firefox can't help but caving in like that, I simply won't dare to hope Opera does better, until I actually see that happening.

I am sorry for ranting, this topic is a huge pet peeve of me. Like when Apple talked about how folder hierarchies are "too complicated", gah. I know I'm expecting too much of people, but I really would rather err on the side of that, than on the side of expecting too little, and then getting exactly that.

Re: "Disable Javascript" option removed in Firefox 23

#79

Post by steve-howard » Mon, Jul 01, 2013, 4:11 AM UTC

x0x0 wrote: post #70

x0x0 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other thing Alex posted is firefox really gives you no indication of why the internet looks weird and is breaking left and right. So you can disable js or images or ssl and unless you're lucky enough to know a programmer or IT person really have no guide to undoing whatever happened.

replying to myself: one more way apple simply makes better software: safari offers a simple reset option that seems to reset all browser settings. Now, this doesn't help in the case of a user not understanding what went wrong, but I can tell someone over the phone "click on safari -> reset safari" far more easily than walking someone through deleting a firefox profile while saving bookmarks or reinstalling firefox an…

In firefox, go to "about:support", "reset firefox." Probably not exactly the same (and it's not exposed as easily) but it's there.

Re: "Disable Javascript" option removed in Firefox 23

#80

Post by scotty79 » Mon, Jul 01, 2013, 4:13 AM UTC

gavinpc wrote: post #71

gkoberger wrote: post #22

Here's a very relevant blog post by Alex Limi of Mozilla: http://limi.net/checkboxes-that-kill/ Most sites these days that aren’t just displaying content will fail in interesting & mysterious ways if you don’t have JavaScript enabled. For the general population, Firefox will appear broken. And yes, I know that some people have reasons (privacy, web development) to turn off JavaScript. There are many add-ons that can…

Try disabling cookies. This exactly describes the effect, except that it's not mysterious once you're used to it. If something doesn't work, I open it in Chrome (where I have cookies enabled), and it works. In many cases, I suppose the developer doesn't know about the cookie dependency (because of a framework or some other dependency). In other cases, I guess they don't care. Rarely does the page actually tell you th…

Thanks to recent legislation in Poland webpages should inform user if they are using cookies. Result? Web littered with annoying popups that everybody closes without reading.