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If you've got JavaScript disabled, no one is interested in catering to you. You are the pathological customer in the ad-driven content consumption world of the

by debacle 15y ago

If you've got JavaScript disabled, no one is interested in catering to you. You are the pathological customer in the ad-driven content consumption world of the Internet. It's impossible to make money off of you. Sure, you enable JavaScript but you don't disable AdBlock and so now you're just consuming resources and contributing negatively to the site you're visiting's bottom line. I understand the myriad justifications for disabling JavaScript, but I don't really care. There aren't enough people with JavaScript disabled to warrant giving it any attention. It's the same with Flash. If you don't have Flash, I will show you how to get it, but I'm not going to spend the time telling you why you ought to get it, because I don't care to argue the point. There aren't enough people without Flash for it to be a concern.

icebraining 15y ago
Sure, you enable JavaScript but you don't disable AdBlock I'm the opposite: I run NoScript but not AdBlock.
- EvilTerran 15y ago
  Likewise. AdBlock feels slightly scummy to me - it's going out of your way to subvert the site's business model. NoScript doesn't automatically discriminate between ads and content, which feels... fairer. In fact, if I like your site, and it happens that NoScript is blocking your ads, I'll make a point of letting them through. http://www.projectwonderful.com/ http://www.projectwonderful.com/ is on my whitelist, for instance.
  - mistercow 15y ago
    >it's going out of your way to subvert the site's business model When people sneak snacks into a movie theater they are not thinking "I am going to subvert this theater's business model". They are thinking "The normal way of getting snacks at the theater is unacceptable to me". The same is true with AdBlock. Nobody thinks "Mwahahaha, I'm going to financially ruin some content creators." They think "if I see one more punch-the-monkey ad, I'm going to punch an actual monkey". I mute TV commercials, I change the station on the radio when the commercials start, and I use AdBlock by default. If I really like a site, I will turn AdBlock off and see if its ads are acceptable. Usually, though, I turn it right back on.
    - EvilTerran 15y ago
      Fair enough. I find NoScript alone does a good enough job of blocking ads for my liking.
  - LinXitoW 15y ago
    AdBlock(afaik) directly blocks loading ads at all. Therefore, they are not counted as a view, because it isn't. I think it'd be a lot scummier if it loaded them, but didn't display them. That would wreck havoc with ad statistics and would drive down ad revenue.
  - Duff 15y ago
    I can relate to that feeling. I usually don't start enabling Adblock until a site I frequent does something particularly noxious. One example was my local newspaper, which put this flash overlay of a local bigmouth car deal floating in the middle of the screen -- in a area that you typically click on. I click it by mistake and end up with a high-volume "it's huuuge" booming across my office. Screw that... adblock=on.
  - effigies 15y ago
    Personally, I like Adblock Plus (Good Karma Edition). By default, it allows ads through, but blocking them on a website that uses them badly (which for me means flashing or making noise) is only a click away. My reason for using adblock is aesthetic, not paranoiac, so I'm willing to give sites the benefit of the doubt.
  - jff 15y ago
    Project Wonderful is worth whitelisting simply to see the ads for everyone's exquisitely terrible webcomics.
    - EvilTerran 15y ago
      Hey, they're not all terrible! ... okay, a lot of them are pretty terrible. But I suspect a lot of the terrible ones are drawn in by a desire to ride on the coat-tails of the not-so-terrible ones (Dr McNinja, SMBC, etc).
ef4 15y ago
> There aren't enough people without Flash for it to be a concern. That's not really true anymore, given the 200 million iPhones kicking around.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
rythie 15y ago
I, like a lot of people, do a fair amount of browsing on my iPad and iPhone, I don't see how you can lump this in with no-JavaScript users, it's a completely different set of people. Also, the amount of no-Flash users is increasing and will most likely do for years.
chris_wot 15y ago
With respect, I feel you are wrong. I browse the web with my iPad more than I browse it with my laptop. There is no way that I can run Flash on this device. There are now a significant numbers of folks who are doing the same as me. If you have to use Flash, then that's fine. But the author of the article is right IMO. You need to provide a compelling reason for me to hop off my iPad and boot up my workstation/laptop to look at your website. I have long considered that Unobtrusive Javascript to be one of the best paradigms for websites. It shouldn't be that hard to do. In fact, even in web applications there should be a clear seperation of content and behaviour, just as there is to seperate content and style. I was looking at a VMware product the other day that does ITSM, and it was the most god-awful mix of bad Javascript and HTML that I was most surprised. Not only did it not use Javascript in a sensible way (ala jquery, YUI, etc.), but it used stupid tricks like document.all - and in fact the webpages that it loaded entirely relied on Javascript working. Therefore, I submit to you that by not designing your websites with Unobtrusive Javascript, that you are a. causing accessibility issues (and NOT just for disabled users), and b. you probably haven't developed your website very well anyway. Please, I urge you to convince your users WHY they need to turn on Javascript to use your site. If you can't provide a compelling case, then I'd suggest that you probably don't have a good reason to require it!
- debacle 15y ago
  Yes, the Flash analogy was probably a poor one considering the ubiquity of iOS - you can no longer make the argument about not having to cater to people without Flash, because at this point there are so many of them.
  - chris_wot 15y ago
    I think the same can be applied to requiring Javascript however. Personally, I've never seen a website that delivers content that absolutely needed it. Certainly the ones that do use it well do it to enhance the site you are browsing, but if you turn off the Javascript then you only have a slightly less full featured experience. If you can't access a website because Javascript is turned off, then I think you are overcomplicating things anyway. There are obviously cases where it is required, but as the author states, it should be pretty easy to explain why you need to enable scripting!
gregory80 15y ago
well said.
- B0Z 15y ago
  Agreed. I logged in just to upvote this response.
  - lucb1e 15y ago
    Most people log in just to vote or comment. There is nothing else to do...
tone 15y ago
I have to agree with this somewhat. I can run through and disable various features in my browser, that's my prerogative. But I can't then expect other people to cater to my specific set up. If I am deny myself what is undeniably quite a key feature on the modern web, I must live with the outcome and accept that I will miss content. There definitely is a good argument for catering to those who cannot use some features, like Flash, but to those imposing these restrictions upon themselves, you know how to solve it. I consider myself fairly "tech-savvy" as well and have not seen more reasoning behind turning JS off than for leaving it on.
Pewpewarrows 15y ago
The last time I checked, GitHub has 0 ads on it. And they're clearly not making any money off of their users, because features like paid accounts don't exist. It's impossible to monetize a product without slapping tons of intrusive advertisements all over the place. /s
- Tipzntrix 15y ago
  https://github.com/settings/billing https://github.com/settings/billing says otherwise, mate. I assume the sarcasm was to the fact that you can't make money without ads, as opposed to being sarcastic about having no paid accounts.
  - Pewpewarrows 15y ago
    Sorry if the sarcasm was lost on you. GitHub very obviously has paid accounts and makes money without ads.
Drbble 15y ago
Ads are pay per click almost exclusively. Adblock saves money by avoiding rendering and distribution costs. Adblock users don't click ads even when Adblock is off.
- TheHegemon 15y ago
  I'm assuming you meant Ads are Pay Per VIEW almost exclusively. There is usually an incentive or you will be blocked if your click rate is incredibly low but very few ad systems pay on only a pay per click system.
krosaen 15y ago
Agreed. I think it's important for geeks not to be too influenced by certain preferences held by a fraction of their peers at the expense of more work that could have been spent making your product better for 99.5% Reminds me of people griping about lack of ogg vorbis support.
- kls 15y ago
  I agree sometimes the dogma in tech can cloud peoples perspective. If we get down to brass tacks their is no "right" way to develop for the web, when talking about using JavaScript or not. It is a preference, opinion and bias issue as such it is a persons prerogative if someone want to build apps based on those constraints, but to hold it out as if it is the "right" way is disingenuous. I personally make my decisions based on data, specifically how many users are doing what, in the real world the amount of people who do not support JavaScript for whatever reason is insignificant, in my organizations we tend to redirect the funds that it would cost to chase them to mobile efforts because their is a more significant market and ROI. For us that is the right way, for other it may not be.
mkmcdonald 15y ago
> If you've got JavaScript disabled, no one is interested in catering to you. I'd hope an amicable, intelligent developer would. Scripts don't always load. Errors happen. > I understand the myriad justifications for disabling JavaScript, but I don't really care. How nice of you to pick and choose users that matter. It must be a nice luxury.
jrockway 15y ago
Personal projects (and internal projects) I do always require JavaScript. The reason is because I can write much cleaner code by offloading some processing to the client. It's not about ads or content consumption. That stuff works fine without Javascript. It's about spending less time coding and having less server code to contain bugs or security problems.

by debacle 15y ago

icebraining 15y ago

Sure, you enable JavaScript but you don't disable AdBlock I'm the opposite: I run NoScript but not AdBlock.

EvilTerran 15y ago
Likewise. AdBlock feels slightly scummy to me - it's going out of your way to subvert the site's business model. NoScript doesn't automatically discriminate between ads and content, which feels... fairer. In fact, if I like your site, and it happens that NoScript is blocking your ads, I'll make a point of letting them through. http://www.projectwonderful.com/ http://www.projectwonderful.com/ is on my whitelist, for instance.
- mistercow 15y ago
  >it's going out of your way to subvert the site's business model When people sneak snacks into a movie theater they are not thinking "I am going to subvert this theater's business model". They are thinking "The normal way of getting snacks at the theater is unacceptable to me". The same is true with AdBlock. Nobody thinks "Mwahahaha, I'm going to financially ruin some content creators." They think "if I see one more punch-the-monkey ad, I'm going to punch an actual monkey". I mute TV commercials, I change the station on the radio when the commercials start, and I use AdBlock by default. If I really like a site, I will turn AdBlock off and see if its ads are acceptable. Usually, though, I turn it right back on.
  - EvilTerran 15y ago
    Fair enough. I find NoScript alone does a good enough job of blocking ads for my liking.
- LinXitoW 15y ago
  AdBlock(afaik) directly blocks loading ads at all. Therefore, they are not counted as a view, because it isn't. I think it'd be a lot scummier if it loaded them, but didn't display them. That would wreck havoc with ad statistics and would drive down ad revenue.
- Duff 15y ago
  I can relate to that feeling. I usually don't start enabling Adblock until a site I frequent does something particularly noxious. One example was my local newspaper, which put this flash overlay of a local bigmouth car deal floating in the middle of the screen -- in a area that you typically click on. I click it by mistake and end up with a high-volume "it's huuuge" booming across my office. Screw that... adblock=on.
- effigies 15y ago
  Personally, I like Adblock Plus (Good Karma Edition). By default, it allows ads through, but blocking them on a website that uses them badly (which for me means flashing or making noise) is only a click away. My reason for using adblock is aesthetic, not paranoiac, so I'm willing to give sites the benefit of the doubt.
- jff 15y ago
  Project Wonderful is worth whitelisting simply to see the ads for everyone's exquisitely terrible webcomics.
  - EvilTerran 15y ago
    Hey, they're not all terrible! ... okay, a lot of them are pretty terrible. But I suspect a lot of the terrible ones are drawn in by a desire to ride on the coat-tails of the not-so-terrible ones (Dr McNinja, SMBC, etc).

ef4 15y ago

> There aren't enough people without Flash for it to be a concern. That's not really true anymore, given the 200 million iPhones kicking around.

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

rythie 15y ago

I, like a lot of people, do a fair amount of browsing on my iPad and iPhone, I don't see how you can lump this in with no-JavaScript users, it's a completely different set of people. Also, the amount of no-Flash users is increasing and will most likely do for years.

chris_wot 15y ago

With respect, I feel you are wrong. I browse the web with my iPad more than I browse it with my laptop. There is no way that I can run Flash on this device. There are now a significant numbers of folks who are doing the same as me. If you have to use Flash, then that's fine. But the author of the article is right IMO. You need to provide a compelling reason for me to hop off my iPad and boot up my workstation/laptop to look at your website. I have long considered that Unobtrusive Javascript to be one of the best paradigms for websites. It shouldn't be that hard to do. In fact, even in web applications there should be a clear seperation of content and behaviour, just as there is to seperate content and style. I was looking at a VMware product the other day that does ITSM, and it was the most god-awful mix of bad Javascript and HTML that I was most surprised. Not only did it not use Javascript in a sensible way (ala jquery, YUI, etc.), but it used stupid tricks like document.all - and in fact the webpages that it loaded entirely relied on Javascript working. Therefore, I submit to you that by not designing your websites with Unobtrusive Javascript, that you are a. causing accessibility issues (and NOT just for disabled users), and b. you probably haven't developed your website very well anyway. Please, I urge you to convince your users WHY they need to turn on Javascript to use your site. If you can't provide a compelling case, then I'd suggest that you probably don't have a good reason to require it!

debacle 15y ago
Yes, the Flash analogy was probably a poor one considering the ubiquity of iOS - you can no longer make the argument about not having to cater to people without Flash, because at this point there are so many of them.
- chris_wot 15y ago
  I think the same can be applied to requiring Javascript however. Personally, I've never seen a website that delivers content that absolutely needed it. Certainly the ones that do use it well do it to enhance the site you are browsing, but if you turn off the Javascript then you only have a slightly less full featured experience. If you can't access a website because Javascript is turned off, then I think you are overcomplicating things anyway. There are obviously cases where it is required, but as the author states, it should be pretty easy to explain why you need to enable scripting!

gregory80 15y ago

well said.

B0Z 15y ago
Agreed. I logged in just to upvote this response.
- lucb1e 15y ago
  Most people log in just to vote or comment. There is nothing else to do...

tone 15y ago

I have to agree with this somewhat. I can run through and disable various features in my browser, that's my prerogative. But I can't then expect other people to cater to my specific set up. If I am deny myself what is undeniably quite a key feature on the modern web, I must live with the outcome and accept that I will miss content. There definitely is a good argument for catering to those who cannot use some features, like Flash, but to those imposing these restrictions upon themselves, you know how to solve it. I consider myself fairly "tech-savvy" as well and have not seen more reasoning behind turning JS off than for leaving it on.

Pewpewarrows 15y ago

The last time I checked, GitHub has 0 ads on it. And they're clearly not making any money off of their users, because features like paid accounts don't exist. It's impossible to monetize a product without slapping tons of intrusive advertisements all over the place. /s

Tipzntrix 15y ago
https://github.com/settings/billing https://github.com/settings/billing says otherwise, mate. I assume the sarcasm was to the fact that you can't make money without ads, as opposed to being sarcastic about having no paid accounts.
- Pewpewarrows 15y ago
  Sorry if the sarcasm was lost on you. GitHub very obviously has paid accounts and makes money without ads.

Drbble 15y ago

Ads are pay per click almost exclusively. Adblock saves money by avoiding rendering and distribution costs. Adblock users don't click ads even when Adblock is off.

TheHegemon 15y ago
I'm assuming you meant Ads are Pay Per VIEW almost exclusively. There is usually an incentive or you will be blocked if your click rate is incredibly low but very few ad systems pay on only a pay per click system.

krosaen 15y ago

Agreed. I think it's important for geeks not to be too influenced by certain preferences held by a fraction of their peers at the expense of more work that could have been spent making your product better for 99.5% Reminds me of people griping about lack of ogg vorbis support.

kls 15y ago
I agree sometimes the dogma in tech can cloud peoples perspective. If we get down to brass tacks their is no "right" way to develop for the web, when talking about using JavaScript or not. It is a preference, opinion and bias issue as such it is a persons prerogative if someone want to build apps based on those constraints, but to hold it out as if it is the "right" way is disingenuous. I personally make my decisions based on data, specifically how many users are doing what, in the real world the amount of people who do not support JavaScript for whatever reason is insignificant, in my organizations we tend to redirect the funds that it would cost to chase them to mobile efforts because their is a more significant market and ROI. For us that is the right way, for other it may not be.

mkmcdonald 15y ago

> If you've got JavaScript disabled, no one is interested in catering to you. I'd hope an amicable, intelligent developer would. Scripts don't always load. Errors happen. > I understand the myriad justifications for disabling JavaScript, but I don't really care. How nice of you to pick and choose users that matter. It must be a nice luxury.

jrockway 15y ago

Personal projects (and internal projects) I do always require JavaScript. The reason is because I can write much cleaner code by offloading some processing to the client. It's not about ads or content consumption. That stuff works fine without Javascript. It's about spending less time coding and having less server code to contain bugs or security problems.