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"Disable Javascript" option removed in Firefox 23

bugzilla.mozilla.org

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Re: "Disable Javascript" option removed in Firefox 23

#91

Post by Gormo »

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…

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 wouldn't have been high up on the priority list to implement as a new feature, but it's already there, and removing it requires extra work. Is it really worth removing features from an application to deal with some hypothetical problem that's been posited under the assumption that most users are idiots?

If there really is a problem, it may be worthwhile to move it to an "advanced settings" panel, but removing it entirely is a terrible idea.

It's worth noting that Chrome - a browser that's far less configurable and customizable than Firefox, overall - not only offers the ability to disable JavaScript globally, but has it as an option in the domain-specific permissions menu.

Re: "Disable Javascript" option removed in Firefox 23

#92

Post by tracker1 »

mullingitover wrote: post #83
Osmose wrote: post #26

Here's the bug where the option was removed: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=851702 Limi's blog post "Checkboxes that kill your product" is cited in the bug as a good explanation of the motivation behind this: http://limi.net/checkboxes-that-kill/ The option has been added to the DevTools for developers who find it useful: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=864249 And of course addons like NoSc…

Sure, blame the 'checkboxes' and not your own failure to handle disabled js gracefully. I'd be mad about this, except I haven't used firefox in years. One less reason to go back I guess.

Guessing you don't use facebook, twitter or any major webmail provider like 99.99% of the users online do. For over 99% of users this is a feature that shouldn't be visible.. for the other 0.0x% there is about:config ... I don't bitch about having to go into about:config to change my cache settings for when I am testing...

Re: "Disable Javascript" option removed in Firefox 23

#94

Post by grannyg00se »

x0x0 wrote: post #34
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…

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.

If "the internet" is suddenly breaking left and right after you've disabled certain features wouldn't you try re-enabling the features?

Re: "Disable Javascript" option removed in Firefox 23

#95

Post by kondro »

ars wrote: post #52
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 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.

Re: "Disable Javascript" option removed in Firefox 23

#96

Post by ilaksh »

comefrom30 wrote: post #87
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…

In addition to traditional client-server webapps, what about making local-only apps that just happened to be written in HTML, JS, and CSS? Possibly with a package manager run by the browser?

http://diveintohtml5.info/offline.html

Re: "Disable Javascript" option removed in Firefox 23

#97

Post by gnosis »

jlgreco wrote: post #69
gnosis wrote: post #47

A few months ago, I switched to using w3m inside emacs as my primary browser. w3m is not capable of handling Javascript at all. And you know what, for 90% of the websites I visit, it doesn't matter. They function fine and look fine without Javascript. And if w3m could manage to make most websites look fine without Javascript, so could Firefox -- if its developers cared. As for non-technical users -- they're probably…

What is your take on w3m vs elinks?

I really haven't used it much, except as my default external HTML->Text converter (via wget + HTML::FormatText::Elinks), of which it does a good job.

Unfortunately, its main weakness is that (as far as I know) it's not integrated in to emacs as w3m is. If it was, I'd probably look to it as a serious contender. But since it's not, I'm afraid I'm stuck with w3m -- for better or for worse. (Right now, it's for better, as I'm quite satisfied with w3m -- except for my occasional Javascript needs, for which I fall back to Firefox, Opera, or Chromium).

Re: "Disable Javascript" option removed in Firefox 23

#98

Post by kondro »

aethr wrote: post #42
kondro wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But even Hacker News would be provide a better user experience if it made more use of Javascript to publish comments, etc. instead of all the jumping around with the current UI. Something only possible with JS.

This is my preferred use of js, providing additional functionality and usability improvements on top of things that already work perfectly well with js disabled. Users with js still get the "fuller" experience, but users who choose to disable js still have full access to the site.

But developers shouldn't have to implement extra functionality for the < 1% [citation needed] of people who browse without JS .

Re: "Disable Javascript" option removed in Firefox 23

#99

Post by grannyg00se »

Gormo wrote: post #91
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…

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…

"If there really is a problem, it may be worthwhile to move it to an "advanced settings" panel, but removing it entirely is a terrible idea."

I'd like to see the evidence as well. Perhaps there are dozens of bug reports coming in every week that can be traced back to disabled javascript.

They did leave it as an option in about:config though so at least it can still be disabled via javascript.enabled=false

Re: "Disable Javascript" option removed in Firefox 23

#100

Post by kondro »

darkarmani wrote: post #56
kondro wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But even Hacker News would be provide a better user experience if it made more use of Javascript to publish comments, etc. instead of all the jumping around with the current UI. Something only possible with JS.

I think that would be easy to fix using only HTML, if the refresh used an anchor tag to your comment.

But would always require a complete page reload.

Not that most web apps wouldn't implement it that way to begin with anyway, but this would be the only choice with a HTML-only site.

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