10 ms·

I Turned Off JavaScript for a Week

94 points by ayi 11y ago

Zekio 11y ago
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....
- oneeyedpigeon 11y ago
  Sure, "a lot" as an absolute number because, hey, Internet. But I bet, relatively, the number of sites doing that is tiny. I've seen it myself, but it's terrible practise, and I'm sure it's easy to avoid those sites or, if you must, whitelist them. Teach the site owners something, vote with your HTTP requests!
  - Zekio 11y ago
    I have stopped using a number(Don't actually keep a total count, maybe I should begin doing it) of sites, simply because of the fact they do it
- pmlnr 11y ago
  js;dr http://tantek.com/2015/069/t1/js-dr-javascript-required-dead http://tantek.com/2015/069/t1/js-dr-javascript-required-dead
  - dvdcxn 11y ago
    [[citation needed]]
jakeogh 11y ago
Switched to surf+tabbed and default no JS years ago. Can't imagine going back. CTRL-ALT-s enables it for the tab if it's necessary; usually not.
- giancarlostoro 11y ago
  I currently am using Midori, but maybe I should give surf a shot.
Majestic121 11y ago
I have been using NoScript (a browser extension to black list all JS by default) for quite a while now, and I don't see myself turning back anytime soon. Everything feels much faster, and sober without Javascript, especially news site (looking at you, lemonde.fr) I still allow some JavaScript sometimes, most of the time to unbreak site, but if you start you using it you will realise that most of the JS running on each site is at best useless from a user point of view.
- mixmastamyk 11y ago
  News sites are the worst, some of them have twenty! libs and trackers on them.
silon7 11y ago
We need a declarative hypertext web back desperately. (I am running NoScript, but I have to enable it for too many sites)
- agumonkey 11y ago
  That's why I didn't believe parts of the article. Yes the web loads faster, nothing can load faster than a blank page from blogger.com. I now browse the web with curl | less
  - rspeer 11y ago
    There are a lot of cases where turning off JS is impractical, and I don't do it myself. But, to me, Blogger is a great example of a site that is poisoned by its reliance on JS. Blogger is so bad at showing a page of text that it needs a splash screen.
    - agumonkey 11y ago
      Only because Google neglected it. When blogger redesign landed it was exactly what was trendy, heavy js, dynamic layouting. It was slow but at least I thought it was worth the wait / the cost / the latency. A tech demo. Not anymore, I want to read something more than be amazed and don't want to shop for a core i5 to do so and now blogger looks dumb. Google could totally fix it but they had other horses to ride. Maybe one day.
      - TeMPOraL 11y ago
        Neglected? It takes a special amount of skill and a lot of work to screw it up so badly in the first place. The Web is designed to display text by default, and Blogger fails at that.
        agumonkey 11y ago
        Yes, neglected. They put resources for the js revamp. It was cute at the time, not anymore, Google surely knows it but doesn't want to invest anything here (for now). They just pushed a huge redesign of G+, supposed to be their flagship, vastly simpler and faster (to the point of making it even less relevant). Blogger gets the remains if anything ever drops.
aaronbrethorst 11y ago
Disabling JavaScript makes the headline font on Wired.com much, much more legible. I'm completely serious.
pmlnr 11y ago
Try https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/policeman/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/policeman/, that will make it even more interesting and show you that _everyone_ is including jquery from Google.
- loopbit 11y ago
  Didn't know about policeman and looks really, really, nice. Will definitely give it a try! I love the idea of writing my own rules. As for including jquery from google, of course and for good reasons, even from the user's perspective. The main one, of course is that chances are that your browser already has it cached (from other site that uses it), so retrieving it and loading it is (almost) instant.
  - Guest192038 11y ago
    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.
    - RobotCaleb 11y ago
      Is it really fair to include the total population of China in this statement?
      - TeMPOraL 11y ago
        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.
      - Guest192038 11y ago
        Yes, it's fair, because many developers live in a little bubble. The United States, Canada, Australia, Russia and all of Europe combined is only 15% of the world's population. You can argue the other 85% doesn't have internet access or isn't your target audience. However, I run a site that's geared to the US market, it's entirely in English, and 12k of my registered users are from China (1.5%). If I included files from the Google CDN, I'd be losing 1.5% of my users due to one line of code.
9mui 11y ago
I doubt if there is some alternate for the wonder full things that we can do with JS. But Its true that at sometimes things are missused and in case of JS its a top business now a days
t0mislav 11y ago
On old iPhone 4 I'm using, Wired site is very slow. But with JS disabled, it runs and looks great.
pmlnr 11y ago
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 http://picpaste.com/wired_com-yt7ooXyu.png
- JupiterMoon 11y ago
  I read it with javascript disabled with no problems at all.
  - LiquidFlux 11y ago
    Could you read the comments?
    - JupiterMoon 11y ago
      Why would I want to? EDIT Honest question. Since I've been disabling javascript I've not read many comments sections and I've wasted a lot less time.
    - pmlnr 11y ago
      I can do it here. There should be an html fallback everywhere.
  - 9mui 11y ago
    I'm afraid, we can't do javascript right but the against movement.
- groundCode 11y ago
  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......
santoriv 11y ago
Sure. If you believe that the browser should only be a document reader and not an application platform then go ahead. It's kinda like buying a smartphone and then using it exclusively as a phone though.... I think the real point of irritation here is all the 3rd party junk that gets loaded in that has nothing to do with the main functionality of the site that you are on.
- pvdebbe 11y ago
  I think that simple content such as blogs, news and the equivalent should not be implemented in js-dependent web apps. Web browsers are a platform for sure, but the simple content should stay simple.
  - e2e8 11y ago
    It have thought for a while now that the web and correspondingly the browser should be bifurcated into a content platform with no client side code and an application platform without the burden of the older technologies. The browser would provide all the interactivity and logic for the content platform through implementations of standard html tags. For the application platform, the browser could provide a more convenient set of apis sort of like plugins did before.
    - HappyTypist 11y ago
      Yes, because a blog post should disappear or be unable to be scrolled if my cellular reception drops out for 10 seconds.
    - TimJYoung 11y ago
      I can't agree more. I was just saying something similar in the thread on mobile JS framework loading performance. The browser has reached a critical stage where the Jekyll/Hide impersonation has got to stop. There needs to be separate modes in the browser, application/content, or there needs to be separate browsers. The evolution of JS as a decorative language has reached its ultimate end: it's no longer just decorative and instead is now devouring and devaluing the host content it was supposed to originally enhance. But, at the same time, it's usefulness for zero-install client-side applications cannot be ignored and it needs a platform also.
msravi 11y ago
I use uMatrix, uBlock0, and privacy badger, and am very happy about it. 1st party scripts are turned on by default by uMatrix, and for those that break, I selectively turn them on. Privacy Badger takes care of blocking cookies (first or third party) that try to track you.
z3t4 11y ago
Sadly JavaScript or "the language of the web" is going towards binary rather then openness. The big sites like Google already obfuscate their code so it's hard to see what it does. I learned JavaScript by viewing other peoples source code, witch was as easy as right clicking and selecting view source. Unless we want more people to disable JavaScript, we need to keep it open source and transparent!
- thecatspaw 11y ago
  Do you run any application which you downloaded from the internet? Database Administration tool, messaging app, or similar? They are mostly written in code you cannot access or view in any way, yet you still trust the publisher.
  - rplnt 11y ago
    And they are rarely sandboxed (as opposed to javascript in browsers).
    - JupiterMoon 11y ago
      But the web ones are different everytime you visit. With desktop apps you can install updated versions at your leisure. With a web app if someone managed to inject something nasty into gmail -- we all be hosed.
      - bbcbasic 11y ago
        You beat me to it. I was going to say that clicking a link is supposed to be a natural thing to do, while installing software requires some degree of trust in who you are downloading it from.
- oneweekwonder 11y ago
  Yes the Google Closure Compiler[0] obfuscate the code, but it also minifies it and even optimise it. [0]: https://developers.google.com/closure/compiler/ https://developers.google.com/closure/compiler/
joosters 11y ago
Spoiler: Author found that because the experience was so great, they turned JavaScript back on immediately after the experiment ended.
- JupiterMoon 11y ago
  He ended up wanting more control but acknowledged that some elements of the modern web require a scripting language. I don't know why he didn't just install noscript.
allSunshine 11y ago
This is where I draw the line, Hacker News. The end of the road. Do you know how many shitty stink eyes I've gotten from people on this site, just because I've dared to speak out against JavaScript, Cookies and Analytics. But oh! OH! Wired writes a story about it, and suddenly, the clouds open, and the sunshine just pours through. *OF COURSE* an article in *Wired* is gospel! We were *FOOLS* to ever claim otherwise! JavaScript is the devil! Boos and hisses for JavaScript all around. Next week, Firefox will do something sinister like bury about:config in an even deeper and more obscure location, like within the js console, so that you can't get to it from the address bar, and I'll cry foul, and you'll all take a big fat shit on me. Just like you did when I complained about Firefox taking the javascript checkbox out of the preferences panel and burying the it under about:config. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6166629 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6166629 Okay, Hacker News. I see how it is.
- jacquesm 11y ago
  Nonsense. The fact that HN has people with a lot of different viewpoints is what makes it good. I'm pretty strongly in the 'as little javascript as we can get away with' camp and this wired article contains no news to me but I'm more than happy to see it voted up.
- wtbob 11y ago
  It's not how I'd phrase it, but I agree. It's appalling how many people on HN seem to think that it's perfectly okay to require JavaScript in order to display text.
e2e8 11y ago
In addition to disabling js, another thing I do is disable styles. The web is really quite beautiful and often more usable with the default styles.
bshimmin 11y ago
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 bother?). As for the second quote, is this actually true or supported by any real evidence?
- andor 11y ago
  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_of_ad_blocking.pdf http://downloads.pagefair.com/reports/2015_report-the_cost_o...
oska 11y ago
> 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.
- moonshinefe 11y ago
  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.
  - simoncion 11y ago
    > ...this author is deluded if he thinks he's getting anything close to an adblocker experience. The quote from the author is: > ...and I could browse the web with fewer distractions—all without the sense of guilt that comes with using an ad blocker Notice the gulf between your statement and the author's statement.
- devsquid 11y ago
  If not ads what do you want? Paywalls? Native content? Personally I want a robust and diverse web ecosystem, not just pay walls and people forced to alternative revenue sources.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - vanderZwan 11y ago
    > Personally I want a robust and diverse web ecosystem Well, everything paid for by ads is the opposite of diverse. Pretending paywalls are the only alternative is disingenuous too. There's plenty of options, like donations, or Blende's "pay per article, get your money back if it sucks" model, which seems to work well
moonshinefe 11y ago
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.
- joonoro 11y ago
  >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.
  - JupiterMoon 11y ago
    I guess I have less diverse browsing habits than you guys. I use noscript very happily. I whitelisted what I need for sites that I use years ago and most things I do now "just work" (most is ~95% the other things I temporarily allow). When e.g. a job application needs a javascript heavy online test I open up another profile with no addons and use that profile for that that thing. Based on experiences using browsers without noscript I think that the "faff time" (for me) from doing what I do is less than the "waiting for excessive javascript" and "figuring out that this site has overriden scrolling/back button".
yason 11y ago
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.
- moonshinefe 11y ago
  uBlock doesn't disable all scripting at all, though.
  - JeremyNT 11y ago
    You certainly can block all scripts with uBlock Origin's "advanced" mode. There, you can block first and/or third party scripts as desired. It's a common misconception that uBlock Origin is "just" an adblock plus replacement, but it's a lot more than that. The one caveat is that there's no fine-grained GUI for white/blacklisting specific scripts. You can however white/blacklist scripts from domains using the GUI, and you can block / unblock individual scripts by writing rules.
wizzzzzy 11y ago
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.
JSDave 11y ago
I wouldn't mind some JS on this page to hide the conversations that don't interest me. Also, why make a request for 5x more data, reflow, and redraw everything whenever I click something?
_lce0 11y ago
In Firefox, the "disable javascript" checkbox is now gone from the settings --why would they do that? But it can still be disabled in `about:config` > `javascript.enabled` I used and loved Firefox since more than 10 years so far, but can't truly understand some decisions they took.
- tasdev 11y ago
  I read about this a while back if I remember correctly it's because people kept turning it off accidentally and breaking the Internet and blaming Firefox.
- AwesomeBean 11y ago
  Just download NoScript - it's better than turning JavaScript off and on all the time anyway.
tasdev 11y ago
I've been doing this for a while now after becoming tuned into the tracking and particularly fingerprinting being done. The web is surprisingly usable with it off. I use SafeScript in Chrome which generally works ok. I use multiple profiles in Chrome, one with just Adblock the other with Adblock, noscript, httpseverywhere, privacy badger, etc. I use the normal one where I absolutely must and that doesn't keep cookies. I'm not paranoid and I don't have anything to hide but I object to being tracked to have stuff sold to me.
lolive 11y ago
Disclaimer: I own an ipad 1 (and love it!) On an iPad1, your best choice is indeed to disable JavaScript. (Note that the ipad1 has 256 MB of RAM. That sounds enough, but it is not! May be because of a poor optimization of Safari on iOS5)

94 points by ayi 11y ago

Zekio 11y ago

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....

oneeyedpigeon 11y ago
Sure, "a lot" as an absolute number because, hey, Internet. But I bet, relatively, the number of sites doing that is tiny. I've seen it myself, but it's terrible practise, and I'm sure it's easy to avoid those sites or, if you must, whitelist them. Teach the site owners something, vote with your HTTP requests!
- Zekio 11y ago
  I have stopped using a number(Don't actually keep a total count, maybe I should begin doing it) of sites, simply because of the fact they do it
pmlnr 11y ago
js;dr http://tantek.com/2015/069/t1/js-dr-javascript-required-dead http://tantek.com/2015/069/t1/js-dr-javascript-required-dead
- dvdcxn 11y ago
  [[citation needed]]

jakeogh 11y ago

Switched to surf+tabbed and default no JS years ago. Can't imagine going back. CTRL-ALT-s enables it for the tab if it's necessary; usually not.

giancarlostoro 11y ago
I currently am using Midori, but maybe I should give surf a shot.

Majestic121 11y ago

I have been using NoScript (a browser extension to black list all JS by default) for quite a while now, and I don't see myself turning back anytime soon. Everything feels much faster, and sober without Javascript, especially news site (looking at you, lemonde.fr) I still allow some JavaScript sometimes, most of the time to unbreak site, but if you start you using it you will realise that most of the JS running on each site is at best useless from a user point of view.

mixmastamyk 11y ago
News sites are the worst, some of them have twenty! libs and trackers on them.

silon7 11y ago

We need a declarative hypertext web back desperately. (I am running NoScript, but I have to enable it for too many sites)

agumonkey 11y ago
That's why I didn't believe parts of the article. Yes the web loads faster, nothing can load faster than a blank page from blogger.com. I now browse the web with curl | less
- rspeer 11y ago
  There are a lot of cases where turning off JS is impractical, and I don't do it myself. But, to me, Blogger is a great example of a site that is poisoned by its reliance on JS. Blogger is so bad at showing a page of text that it needs a splash screen.
  - agumonkey 11y ago
    Only because Google neglected it. When blogger redesign landed it was exactly what was trendy, heavy js, dynamic layouting. It was slow but at least I thought it was worth the wait / the cost / the latency. A tech demo. Not anymore, I want to read something more than be amazed and don't want to shop for a core i5 to do so and now blogger looks dumb. Google could totally fix it but they had other horses to ride. Maybe one day.
    - TeMPOraL 11y ago
      Neglected? It takes a special amount of skill and a lot of work to screw it up so badly in the first place. The Web is designed to display text by default, and Blogger fails at that.
      - agumonkey 11y ago
        Yes, neglected. They put resources for the js revamp. It was cute at the time, not anymore, Google surely knows it but doesn't want to invest anything here (for now). They just pushed a huge redesign of G+, supposed to be their flagship, vastly simpler and faster (to the point of making it even less relevant). Blogger gets the remains if anything ever drops.

aaronbrethorst 11y ago

Disabling JavaScript makes the headline font on Wired.com much, much more legible. I'm completely serious.

pmlnr 11y ago

Try https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/policeman/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/policeman/, that will make it even more interesting and show you that _everyone_ is including jquery from Google.

loopbit 11y ago
Didn't know about policeman and looks really, really, nice. Will definitely give it a try! I love the idea of writing my own rules. As for including jquery from google, of course and for good reasons, even from the user's perspective. The main one, of course is that chances are that your browser already has it cached (from other site that uses it), so retrieving it and loading it is (almost) instant.
- Guest192038 11y ago
  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.
  - RobotCaleb 11y ago
    Is it really fair to include the total population of China in this statement?
    - TeMPOraL 11y ago
      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.
    - Guest192038 11y ago
      Yes, it's fair, because many developers live in a little bubble. The United States, Canada, Australia, Russia and all of Europe combined is only 15% of the world's population. You can argue the other 85% doesn't have internet access or isn't your target audience. However, I run a site that's geared to the US market, it's entirely in English, and 12k of my registered users are from China (1.5%). If I included files from the Google CDN, I'd be losing 1.5% of my users due to one line of code.

9mui 11y ago

I doubt if there is some alternate for the wonder full things that we can do with JS. But Its true that at sometimes things are missused and in case of JS its a top business now a days

t0mislav 11y ago

On old iPhone 4 I'm using, Wired site is very slow. But with JS disabled, it runs and looks great.

pmlnr 11y ago

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 http://picpaste.com/wired_com-yt7ooXyu.png

JupiterMoon 11y ago
I read it with javascript disabled with no problems at all.
- LiquidFlux 11y ago
  Could you read the comments?
  - JupiterMoon 11y ago
    Why would I want to? EDIT Honest question. Since I've been disabling javascript I've not read many comments sections and I've wasted a lot less time.
  - pmlnr 11y ago
    I can do it here. There should be an html fallback everywhere.
- 9mui 11y ago
  I'm afraid, we can't do javascript right but the against movement.
groundCode 11y ago
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......

santoriv 11y ago

Sure. If you believe that the browser should only be a document reader and not an application platform then go ahead. It's kinda like buying a smartphone and then using it exclusively as a phone though.... I think the real point of irritation here is all the 3rd party junk that gets loaded in that has nothing to do with the main functionality of the site that you are on.

pvdebbe 11y ago
I think that simple content such as blogs, news and the equivalent should not be implemented in js-dependent web apps. Web browsers are a platform for sure, but the simple content should stay simple.
- e2e8 11y ago
  It have thought for a while now that the web and correspondingly the browser should be bifurcated into a content platform with no client side code and an application platform without the burden of the older technologies. The browser would provide all the interactivity and logic for the content platform through implementations of standard html tags. For the application platform, the browser could provide a more convenient set of apis sort of like plugins did before.
  - HappyTypist 11y ago
    Yes, because a blog post should disappear or be unable to be scrolled if my cellular reception drops out for 10 seconds.
  - TimJYoung 11y ago
    I can't agree more. I was just saying something similar in the thread on mobile JS framework loading performance. The browser has reached a critical stage where the Jekyll/Hide impersonation has got to stop. There needs to be separate modes in the browser, application/content, or there needs to be separate browsers. The evolution of JS as a decorative language has reached its ultimate end: it's no longer just decorative and instead is now devouring and devaluing the host content it was supposed to originally enhance. But, at the same time, it's usefulness for zero-install client-side applications cannot be ignored and it needs a platform also.

msravi 11y ago

I use uMatrix, uBlock0, and privacy badger, and am very happy about it. 1st party scripts are turned on by default by uMatrix, and for those that break, I selectively turn them on. Privacy Badger takes care of blocking cookies (first or third party) that try to track you.

z3t4 11y ago

Sadly JavaScript or "the language of the web" is going towards binary rather then openness. The big sites like Google already obfuscate their code so it's hard to see what it does. I learned JavaScript by viewing other peoples source code, witch was as easy as right clicking and selecting view source. Unless we want more people to disable JavaScript, we need to keep it open source and transparent!

thecatspaw 11y ago
Do you run any application which you downloaded from the internet? Database Administration tool, messaging app, or similar? They are mostly written in code you cannot access or view in any way, yet you still trust the publisher.
- rplnt 11y ago
  And they are rarely sandboxed (as opposed to javascript in browsers).
  - JupiterMoon 11y ago
    But the web ones are different everytime you visit. With desktop apps you can install updated versions at your leisure. With a web app if someone managed to inject something nasty into gmail -- we all be hosed.
    - bbcbasic 11y ago
      You beat me to it. I was going to say that clicking a link is supposed to be a natural thing to do, while installing software requires some degree of trust in who you are downloading it from.
oneweekwonder 11y ago
Yes the Google Closure Compiler[0] obfuscate the code, but it also minifies it and even optimise it. [0]: https://developers.google.com/closure/compiler/ https://developers.google.com/closure/compiler/

joosters 11y ago

Spoiler: Author found that because the experience was so great, they turned JavaScript back on immediately after the experiment ended.

JupiterMoon 11y ago
He ended up wanting more control but acknowledged that some elements of the modern web require a scripting language. I don't know why he didn't just install noscript.

allSunshine 11y ago

This is where I draw the line, Hacker News. The end of the road. Do you know how many shitty stink eyes I've gotten from people on this site, just because I've dared to speak out against JavaScript, Cookies and Analytics. But oh! OH! Wired writes a story about it, and suddenly, the clouds open, and the sunshine just pours through. *OF COURSE* an article in *Wired* is gospel! We were *FOOLS* to ever claim otherwise! JavaScript is the devil! Boos and hisses for JavaScript all around. Next week, Firefox will do something sinister like bury about:config in an even deeper and more obscure location, like within the js console, so that you can't get to it from the address bar, and I'll cry foul, and you'll all take a big fat shit on me. Just like you did when I complained about Firefox taking the javascript checkbox out of the preferences panel and burying the it under about:config. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6166629 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6166629 Okay, Hacker News. I see how it is.

jacquesm 11y ago
Nonsense. The fact that HN has people with a lot of different viewpoints is what makes it good. I'm pretty strongly in the 'as little javascript as we can get away with' camp and this wired article contains no news to me but I'm more than happy to see it voted up.
wtbob 11y ago
It's not how I'd phrase it, but I agree. It's appalling how many people on HN seem to think that it's perfectly okay to require JavaScript in order to display text.

e2e8 11y ago

In addition to disabling js, another thing I do is disable styles. The web is really quite beautiful and often more usable with the default styles.

bshimmin 11y ago

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 bother?). As for the second quote, is this actually true or supported by any real evidence?

andor 11y ago
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_of_ad_blocking.pdf http://downloads.pagefair.com/reports/2015_report-the_cost_o...

oska 11y ago

> 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.

moonshinefe 11y ago
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.
- simoncion 11y ago
  > ...this author is deluded if he thinks he's getting anything close to an adblocker experience. The quote from the author is: > ...and I could browse the web with fewer distractions—all without the sense of guilt that comes with using an ad blocker Notice the gulf between your statement and the author's statement.
devsquid 11y ago
If not ads what do you want? Paywalls? Native content? Personally I want a robust and diverse web ecosystem, not just pay walls and people forced to alternative revenue sources.
- deleted 11y ago
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- vanderZwan 11y ago
  > Personally I want a robust and diverse web ecosystem Well, everything paid for by ads is the opposite of diverse. Pretending paywalls are the only alternative is disingenuous too. There's plenty of options, like donations, or Blende's "pay per article, get your money back if it sucks" model, which seems to work well

moonshinefe 11y ago

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.

joonoro 11y ago
>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.
- JupiterMoon 11y ago
  I guess I have less diverse browsing habits than you guys. I use noscript very happily. I whitelisted what I need for sites that I use years ago and most things I do now "just work" (most is ~95% the other things I temporarily allow). When e.g. a job application needs a javascript heavy online test I open up another profile with no addons and use that profile for that that thing. Based on experiences using browsers without noscript I think that the "faff time" (for me) from doing what I do is less than the "waiting for excessive javascript" and "figuring out that this site has overriden scrolling/back button".

yason 11y ago

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.

moonshinefe 11y ago
uBlock doesn't disable all scripting at all, though.
- JeremyNT 11y ago
  You certainly can block all scripts with uBlock Origin's "advanced" mode. There, you can block first and/or third party scripts as desired. It's a common misconception that uBlock Origin is "just" an adblock plus replacement, but it's a lot more than that. The one caveat is that there's no fine-grained GUI for white/blacklisting specific scripts. You can however white/blacklist scripts from domains using the GUI, and you can block / unblock individual scripts by writing rules.

wizzzzzy 11y ago

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.

JSDave 11y ago

I wouldn't mind some JS on this page to hide the conversations that don't interest me. Also, why make a request for 5x more data, reflow, and redraw everything whenever I click something?

_lce0 11y ago

In Firefox, the "disable javascript" checkbox is now gone from the settings --why would they do that? But it can still be disabled in `about:config` > `javascript.enabled` I used and loved Firefox since more than 10 years so far, but can't truly understand some decisions they took.

tasdev 11y ago
I read about this a while back if I remember correctly it's because people kept turning it off accidentally and breaking the Internet and blaming Firefox.
AwesomeBean 11y ago
Just download NoScript - it's better than turning JavaScript off and on all the time anyway.

tasdev 11y ago

I've been doing this for a while now after becoming tuned into the tracking and particularly fingerprinting being done. The web is surprisingly usable with it off. I use SafeScript in Chrome which generally works ok. I use multiple profiles in Chrome, one with just Adblock the other with Adblock, noscript, httpseverywhere, privacy badger, etc. I use the normal one where I absolutely must and that doesn't keep cookies. I'm not paranoid and I don't have anything to hide but I object to being tracked to have stuff sold to me.

lolive 11y ago

Disclaimer: I own an ipad 1 (and love it!) On an iPad1, your best choice is indeed to disable JavaScript. (Note that the ipad1 has 256 MB of RAM. That sounds enough, but it is not! May be because of a poor optimization of Safari on iOS5)