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Having redundancy in a web app like Gmail is just good practice in my opinion. Any Javascript reliant application should still work without Javascript, I haven'

Having redundancy in a web app like Gmail is just good practice in my opinion. Any Javascript reliant application should still work without Javascript, I haven't tested it, but I seriously doubt something like Asana would work with Javascript disabled nor really any other JS heavy application. Some people often forget that not everybody has access to a fast Internet connection, as pointed out Africa is one of those nations, but even here in Australia there are people out in regional areas still on dial-up because satellite is too expensive and DSL is not an option because of the distances. Then you have countries like Libya, Iran and even parts of India too. I do wonder if Gmail didn't build a HTML version out of necessity, if Gmail were built in 2014 or even back in 2009, would it have had a fully functional HTML version to boot or would it have been only partially functional?

kibibu 13y ago
> Africa is one of those nations Presumably you meant "regions", but even then, it's only some parts of Africa
- davb 13y ago
  > it's only some parts of Africa I think it would be safe to say that the vast majority of Africa is connectivity/bandwidth starved. Even in a (very) affluent South African neighbourhood, I struggled to get one of our remote workers a connection faster than 512kbps. And even that cost significantly more than our local (UK) connections which are comparatively overpriced. (This was about 18 months ago, the landscape could have obviously changed). Many of my African contacts rely on low-bandwidth comms such as GPRS or SMS. I guess that's why mobile banking (often via SIM Application Toolkit) is so popular. Same goes for WhatsApp.
  - Nitramp 13y ago
    Don't forget about North Africa, i.e. all non-sub-saharan Africa. That probably has much better connectivity across the board.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
spyder 13y ago
Javascript shouldn't be a problem for slower internet connections, it can be even useful by loading only the necessary parts of the site when users navigate. One problem is that lot of sites are using multiple libraries and widgets. Other problem is with web applications that show a loading screen (Gmail too) before showing the interface. The first load of most web applications should be static HTML, and JS should be run only after the first state of the interface is rendered. The worse is when the page loads the HTML and then the JS and then JS makes other request(s) to load more content for the first page.
blueskin_ 13y ago
...then you have people who disable crap like javascript for security, performance and sanity reasons.
- Sir_Cmpwn 13y ago
  Performance, maybe. Security, no. Disabling JavaScript for the sake of security is a placebo.
  - blueskin_ 13y ago
    It's not like 95% of exploits rely on either javascript or flash to work, is it? Oh wait, it is.
    - Sir_Cmpwn 13y ago
      I never said anything about Flash. JavaScript 0-days for Firefox or Chrome are very rare, and you'll never see them if you keep your browser updated. Disabling JavaScript is how stupid people make the lives of web devs more difficult.
      - blueskin_ 13y ago
        Making hard dependencies on javascript and including 4MB of jquery junk just to make an animated effect that wastes your CPU time is how stupid people make the lives of anyone who isn't running the bleeding edge at default settings on a fast low latency connection more difficult. If something lets people mine bitcoin on your computer without your consent, it's a risk. That means javascript.
      - clarry 13y ago
        Have you actually looked at, say, the lists of security vulnerabilities fixed in each version of Firefox? Many (if not most) of them say Thunderbird is not vulnerable because scripting is disabled. There's a hint for you. Have you actually looked at real or proof of concept exploits targetting Firefox or Chrome? How did you miss all the Javascript in them? Even if the underlying vulnerabilities are not in the implementation of Javascript itsfelf, having the scripts makes it so much easier to actually interact with all that attack surface, do tricks against things like aslr, load shellcode everywhere, etc. Some real bugs are just nightmarishly hard to exploit if you can't have a script hammer on it. Did you forget Panopticlick? Did you forget all the various ways scripts can snoop around and track you? I think you are rather deluded.

kibibu 13y ago

> Africa is one of those nations Presumably you meant "regions", but even then, it's only some parts of Africa

davb 13y ago
> it's only some parts of Africa I think it would be safe to say that the vast majority of Africa is connectivity/bandwidth starved. Even in a (very) affluent South African neighbourhood, I struggled to get one of our remote workers a connection faster than 512kbps. And even that cost significantly more than our local (UK) connections which are comparatively overpriced. (This was about 18 months ago, the landscape could have obviously changed). Many of my African contacts rely on low-bandwidth comms such as GPRS or SMS. I guess that's why mobile banking (often via SIM Application Toolkit) is so popular. Same goes for WhatsApp.
- Nitramp 13y ago
  Don't forget about North Africa, i.e. all non-sub-saharan Africa. That probably has much better connectivity across the board.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

spyder 13y ago

Javascript shouldn't be a problem for slower internet connections, it can be even useful by loading only the necessary parts of the site when users navigate. One problem is that lot of sites are using multiple libraries and widgets. Other problem is with web applications that show a loading screen (Gmail too) before showing the interface. The first load of most web applications should be static HTML, and JS should be run only after the first state of the interface is rendered. The worse is when the page loads the HTML and then the JS and then JS makes other request(s) to load more content for the first page.

blueskin_ 13y ago

...then you have people who disable crap like javascript for security, performance and sanity reasons.

Sir_Cmpwn 13y ago
Performance, maybe. Security, no. Disabling JavaScript for the sake of security is a placebo.
- blueskin_ 13y ago
  It's not like 95% of exploits rely on either javascript or flash to work, is it? Oh wait, it is.
  - Sir_Cmpwn 13y ago
    I never said anything about Flash. JavaScript 0-days for Firefox or Chrome are very rare, and you'll never see them if you keep your browser updated. Disabling JavaScript is how stupid people make the lives of web devs more difficult.
    - blueskin_ 13y ago
      Making hard dependencies on javascript and including 4MB of jquery junk just to make an animated effect that wastes your CPU time is how stupid people make the lives of anyone who isn't running the bleeding edge at default settings on a fast low latency connection more difficult. If something lets people mine bitcoin on your computer without your consent, it's a risk. That means javascript.
    - clarry 13y ago
      Have you actually looked at, say, the lists of security vulnerabilities fixed in each version of Firefox? Many (if not most) of them say Thunderbird is not vulnerable because scripting is disabled. There's a hint for you. Have you actually looked at real or proof of concept exploits targetting Firefox or Chrome? How did you miss all the Javascript in them? Even if the underlying vulnerabilities are not in the implementation of Javascript itsfelf, having the scripts makes it so much easier to actually interact with all that attack surface, do tricks against things like aslr, load shellcode everywhere, etc. Some real bugs are just nightmarishly hard to exploit if you can't have a script hammer on it. Did you forget Panopticlick? Did you forget all the various ways scripts can snoop around and track you? I think you are rather deluded.