7 ms·

Checkboxes that kill your product

58 points by coppolaemilio 12y ago

valuegram 12y ago
This is related to a question I was just pondering. I'm developing a web application that relies heavily on JavaScript for a lot of the interactivity. I was planning on devoting a decent amount of time to implementing JavaScript disabled functionality as well, but realized for my target market (small to medium business), that might not be very important, and could just be a big time waste. Anyone have any experience/insight?
- Someone1234 12y ago
  The best argument I've heard made for fallback functionality is accessibility (disabled users: namely blind, and Search Bots which struggle with JS sometimes). In some countries (in Europe mostly) there are certain legal requirements to make your sites accessible. And while these laws are infrequently enforced, you can be civilly sued if you upset enough people (governments have been sued for badly performing websites).
- sdcooke 12y ago
  I find that a useful way to look at this is to compare the time you would spend on that to the growth you would get by spending time elsewhere. For example if it takes 1 week to add support for JS disabled clients and they are 1% of your target market but you could spend a week on a feature that would likely add 2% growth, it's a pretty easy decision. The exact numbers are sometimes hard to work out, but the thought process can make the decision easier.
kibwen 12y ago
This is from 2013. Previous comments on this article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5394494 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5394494
- gear54rus 12y ago
  Perfect comment about FF becoming the next IE. Same thought crossed my mind as well.
stiaje 12y ago
So how many of these things have been changed since the article was published 1,5 years ago? After looking through my settings, more or less all of them, with the exception of cache management, it seems.
- JoachimSchipper 12y ago
  Yes. And there was - on HN - much wailing and gnashing of teeth.
gear54rus 12y ago
Yeah because those who are aware how those things work can totally waste their time downloading addons to do basic things. Common sense: you don't know what this control is for? DON'T touch it. Or touch it and face the consequences (learning's got to start somewhere, right?). This article seems to encourage apple's way of thinking ('simple', 'just works') and this is one of the main reasons for me (and many other people, I reckon) to ignore all their products completely. You want to go this way? fine. Don't expect anyone technically-literate to use your thingie though (because it becomes harder to use for debugging and all those things than, say, Chrome). Also: > Is it really worth having a preference panel that benefits fewer than 2% of users overall? and then > Even 1% of a few hundred million isn’t a trivial number of people. Decide on it already :)
- ultramancool 12y ago
  Additionally, I think a key part of learning about something is to have that control and information there. It's hard for me to say where I'd be today if every application had a UI which was designed against the entire idea of me having to learn something. I might have never had the interest to learn more. The first, and often most important step to learning about anything abstract is knowing that it exists.
- x1024 12y ago
  Uhm, Apple does actually provide easy root shell access to what is essentially Unix. And the APIs to customize your desktop experience are much more permissive than what Windows allows. Or at least the Desktop customization apps do much more than their windows equivalents. I'd say that having usable defaults is better than having easy customization. People who customize to that level don't care about it being "easy"(myself included).
  - gear54rus 12y ago
    On defaults, I agree completely. On apple: look at the iphone vs android war. Android was and always will be a go-to for customization.
    - 12y ago
Lockyy 12y ago
My problem with the argument of moving everything into an addon is that I don't care for installing 13 addons with no permissions list (in firefox at least) and no way to keep them away from my browsing activity.
realusername 12y ago
I really don't understand how it is a problem, these options are surely useful for a portion of the userbase otherwise they would not be displayed. I'm pretty sure people browsing with a 33k modem connection would enjoy disabling images so everything could be faster and you can find examples for any item of this list. All these options are under the configuration menu anyway so no inexperienced user are not going to go in this menu anyway... I don't really see the point this article is trying to make.
- _pmf_ 12y ago
  > I really don't understand how it is a problem, It's a problem if you're an armchair "usability engineer" who needs to write a blog post.
  - Lewton 12y ago
    "Previously head of Firefox ux & Product Design Strategy at Mozilla " I'm guessing the word previously wasn't there back when the post was written.
- rtpg 12y ago
  >these options are surely useful for a portion of the userbase otherwise they would not be displayed. These options are there because they've always been there. Would you give users of the JVM (not program writers, mind you, but just people using the JVM) the ability to turn off the garbage collector? >All these options are under the configuration menu anyway so no inexperienced user are not going to go in this menu anyway... First rule of UX is not to assume you know how a user acts. Very inexperienced people can end up legitimately confused and do very irrational things. Probably for the best not to give them the gun to shoot their feet.
auggierose 12y ago
Well, how about the option that per default DOES NOT ALLOW FIREFOX TO AUTOMATICALLY SWITCH BETWEEN ONLINE AND OFFLINE MODE! Instead you have to explicitly hit Work Offline to get into offline mode. That's totally bad for a modern application that can work both offline and online.
tokenrove 12y ago
I find it amusing that one of his examples is disabling SSL 3.0.
a3176082 12y ago
Google is forcing its browser, Apple has its own, and Microsoft has one as well. I don't see "regular users" using Firefox unless it is recommended to them by the "2%". So don't annoy the 2%.
ithinkso 12y ago
Personally I hate when they hide or turn off entirely every possible option. They are there for a reason if someone wants to use them - if not - simply don't use them. After such options have disappeared peoples that were using it are pissed and those who have not - don't even notice.
srcmap 12y ago
I like Firefox with options - better yet Firefox + noscript. If your website needs with js, flash and need to load js plugins from 10 other ad domains to see, that's fine. I don't want to see it anyway. I love to have choices.
jensnockert 12y ago
Except most of those checkboxes don't exist anymore, the encryption tab is gone, etc. (http://imgur.com/YX4KyQL http://imgur.com/YX4KyQL)
unwind 12y ago
In that rather technical article, I was glad to see that the author thinks readers need help (in the form of a hover tooltip) that explains the "&" symbol. It means "and"! Who knew?!
- oneeyedpigeon 12y ago
  It is quite a stylised ampersand - maybe some people won't recognise it? :-)
oneeyedpigeon 12y ago
"That’s right, you can’t even see the text box you’re supposed to type your search into. Congratulations, we just broke the Internet." No, Google broke the Internet. If they've introduced a dependency between text boxes and images (?!), that's down to them. Web interface should work via progressive enhancement such that it's perfectly possible to browse and use a site without javascript, css, or even images.
- VBprogrammer 12y ago
  If you want a website which works perfectly without Javascript, CSS or images feel free to pay for it. The rest of us will continue ignoring that tiny minority of people in the interest of getting real work done.
  - oneeyedpigeon 12y ago
    It‘s not just the “tiny minority” (whatever that means — I‘m guessing neither of us have actual figures) of people with any of those technologies disabled that benefit from a progressive approach. I‘m not 100% idealistic on this one, but at least apportion the blame where it‘s due.
    - emodendroket 12y ago
      Four years ago it was around 1% of users worldwide; I doubt that number has gone up: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9478737/browser-statistics-on-javascript-disabled http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9478737/browser-statistic...
    - Eiriksmal 12y ago
      Following one of the SO answer links in the sibling comment, the front UK.gov page, in 2013, had 1.1% of visitors with JS not-functioning. 0.2% of the visitors either explicitly disabled JS or were using browsers that didn't support it. 0.9% had JS, but it did not work for whatever reason. The author supposes corporate or local JS blocks or malfunctioning browser addons that effectively disable JS functionality. https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2013/10/21/how-many-people-are-missing-out-on-javascript-enhancement/ https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2013/10/21/how-many-people-are-missi...
tome 12y ago
Firefox can even break itself. If you deselect "View -> Toolbars -> Menu Bar" with the menu bar then the menu bar disappears. How do you get it back? You can't repeat the same procedure because the menu bar is not there any more! It turns out you can right-click on an empty space on the tab bar to reenable the menu bar, but this is far from obvious.
- rockdoe 12y ago
  Press Alt, which is the standard menu shortcut in Windows.
- Someone1234 12y ago
  Press the alt key.
IkmoIkmo 12y ago
Can anyone explain to me the problem? They basically created an OPTION, i.e., optional, that breaks when people who don't get it use it. Now I've got plenty of tech illiterate friends, and they've asked me many questions over the years, but never did it have anything to do with browser settings not loading pictures or javascript. In fact, it's the one thing people tend not to mess with. They'll do tons of weird software, they'll even do regedits from a misinformed guide, but touching browser settings? I don't know about you, but none of my friends ever did. So what's the problem here? Don't see one. What's the solution if there was a problem? Create a 'dev-mode' button, give the user a warning they shouldn't use it unless they're software developers, and put your tricky settings behind that wall. The solution doesn't seem to me to require people to install add-ons for what is basic functionality to a decent amount of people, especially not in an addon store with lots of third-party crap that might work now, but doesn't work in combo with another add-on, or stops working after the browser updates and the add-on dev moved on to other things.
- poolpool 12y ago
  This attitude is extraordinarily hostile towards users, and even if it wasn't including checkboxes in preferences (especially when you have things like about:config) that disable the entire functionality of the app for 99% of use cases is ridiculous.
- Someone1234 12y ago
  > What's the solution if there was a problem? Create a 'dev-mode' button, give the user a warning they shouldn't use it unless they're software developers, and put your tricky settings behind that wall. That's my preferred solution. On both Android (tap the build version 7 times) and Chrome (chrome://flags) it works extremely well, allowing you access to settings you wouldn't dream of giving the general public. They could also move some of this from the general settings panel into the Developer Bar. Chrome allows you to disable JavaScript for your current page from there (although it still has the global setting too). I'm all for Firefox reducing the complexity/gotchas within the general public's settings panel. Just allow advanced users to continue to access them via some means and everyone is happy. It wouldn't be a big deal to e.g. have to type in About:DeveloperSettings.
pbhjpbhj 12y ago
The "load images" argument uses images from an alternate domain that is blocked where I am (porn hosting) ... so I can't see his screenshots arguing for not allowing images to show ... oh, the irony.
drivingmenuts 12y ago
In the case of Hipmunk and other javascript-required sites, I would say that's their problem, not the browser. Obviously, Hipmunk made a choice, and that's well within their rights, to not deal with browsers that don't have JS enabled. I've done the same thing. But never once did I, or would I, blame the user. These are just the decisions we have to make to get things done some days.
talmand 12y ago
Seems a nerve was struck with this one over the time since this was originally posted. Most of the options he's complaining about are not easily changed in my current Windows version of Firefox. Only the certificates (which is a multi-click process to get to) and the cache management are located as described. Although, looking around I found an option I never bothered to notice before. View -> Page Style seems to provide the ability to disable all CSS quite easily. What purpose does that serve for an everyday user?
erlkonig 12y ago
If Firefox would just add DOCUMENTATION (text and perhaps a URL to more text) to the options in the about:config page, many aspects of using it would improve enormously.
hyperpape 12y ago
The thing that so many of the usability challenged folks in this thread are missing is that this is an argument about checkboxes in the standard application preferences. For complicated products like Firefox, there can be a range of options based on how in your face they are: 1. wizard that demands a decision when you first install the app (last resort) 2. main pane of preferences (common decisions) 3. about:config (obscure use-cases, dangerous use cases) 4. only within the dev-tools (common case for a specific group of people) 5. recompiling (the other last resort) The customization/safety tradeoff is real, but it's not zero-sum.
krisdol 12y ago
Wait, what he's saying is that it's not obvious that View -> Toolbars -> Navigation Toolbar toggles the visibility of the navigation toolbar? I still have nothing but pure distaste for the current "I can look like Chrome, too!" UI decision of Firefox, and I'm just going to get more peeved as they kill off more features for pure stylistic sake. So in the future I'll have to browse through another 6 dozen 'classic options' add-ons until I find one that is maintained, compatible, does what it claims, and hopefully doesn't break my privacy? Sounds great that the company that puts "Your Privacy First" finds that untrusted third parties are the best providers of core functionality that should have been in the browser to begin with.

58 points by coppolaemilio 12y ago

This is related to a question I was just pondering. I'm developing a web application that relies heavily on JavaScript for a lot of the interactivity. I was planning on devoting a decent amount of time to implementing JavaScript disabled functionality as well, but realized for my target market (small to medium business), that might not be very important, and could just be a big time waste. Anyone have any experience/insight?

Someone1234 12y ago
The best argument I've heard made for fallback functionality is accessibility (disabled users: namely blind, and Search Bots which struggle with JS sometimes). In some countries (in Europe mostly) there are certain legal requirements to make your sites accessible. And while these laws are infrequently enforced, you can be civilly sued if you upset enough people (governments have been sued for badly performing websites).
sdcooke 12y ago
I find that a useful way to look at this is to compare the time you would spend on that to the growth you would get by spending time elsewhere. For example if it takes 1 week to add support for JS disabled clients and they are 1% of your target market but you could spend a week on a feature that would likely add 2% growth, it's a pretty easy decision. The exact numbers are sometimes hard to work out, but the thought process can make the decision easier.

kibwen 12y ago

This is from 2013. Previous comments on this article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5394494 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5394494

gear54rus 12y ago
Perfect comment about FF becoming the next IE. Same thought crossed my mind as well.

stiaje 12y ago

So how many of these things have been changed since the article was published 1,5 years ago? After looking through my settings, more or less all of them, with the exception of cache management, it seems.

JoachimSchipper 12y ago
Yes. And there was - on HN - much wailing and gnashing of teeth.

gear54rus 12y ago

Yeah because those who are aware how those things work can totally waste their time downloading addons to do basic things. Common sense: you don't know what this control is for? DON'T touch it. Or touch it and face the consequences (learning's got to start somewhere, right?). This article seems to encourage apple's way of thinking ('simple', 'just works') and this is one of the main reasons for me (and many other people, I reckon) to ignore all their products completely. You want to go this way? fine. Don't expect anyone technically-literate to use your thingie though (because it becomes harder to use for debugging and all those things than, say, Chrome). Also: > Is it really worth having a preference panel that benefits fewer than 2% of users overall? and then > Even 1% of a few hundred million isn’t a trivial number of people. Decide on it already :)

ultramancool 12y ago
Additionally, I think a key part of learning about something is to have that control and information there. It's hard for me to say where I'd be today if every application had a UI which was designed against the entire idea of me having to learn something. I might have never had the interest to learn more. The first, and often most important step to learning about anything abstract is knowing that it exists.
x1024 12y ago
Uhm, Apple does actually provide easy root shell access to what is essentially Unix. And the APIs to customize your desktop experience are much more permissive than what Windows allows. Or at least the Desktop customization apps do much more than their windows equivalents. I'd say that having usable defaults is better than having easy customization. People who customize to that level don't care about it being "easy"(myself included).
- gear54rus 12y ago
  On defaults, I agree completely. On apple: look at the iphone vs android war. Android was and always will be a go-to for customization.
  - 12y ago

Lockyy 12y ago

My problem with the argument of moving everything into an addon is that I don't care for installing 13 addons with no permissions list (in firefox at least) and no way to keep them away from my browsing activity.

realusername 12y ago

I really don't understand how it is a problem, these options are surely useful for a portion of the userbase otherwise they would not be displayed. I'm pretty sure people browsing with a 33k modem connection would enjoy disabling images so everything could be faster and you can find examples for any item of this list. All these options are under the configuration menu anyway so no inexperienced user are not going to go in this menu anyway... I don't really see the point this article is trying to make.

_pmf_ 12y ago
> I really don't understand how it is a problem, It's a problem if you're an armchair "usability engineer" who needs to write a blog post.
- Lewton 12y ago
  "Previously head of Firefox ux & Product Design Strategy at Mozilla " I'm guessing the word previously wasn't there back when the post was written.
rtpg 12y ago
>these options are surely useful for a portion of the userbase otherwise they would not be displayed. These options are there because they've always been there. Would you give users of the JVM (not program writers, mind you, but just people using the JVM) the ability to turn off the garbage collector? >All these options are under the configuration menu anyway so no inexperienced user are not going to go in this menu anyway... First rule of UX is not to assume you know how a user acts. Very inexperienced people can end up legitimately confused and do very irrational things. Probably for the best not to give them the gun to shoot their feet.

auggierose 12y ago

Well, how about the option that per default DOES NOT ALLOW FIREFOX TO AUTOMATICALLY SWITCH BETWEEN ONLINE AND OFFLINE MODE! Instead you have to explicitly hit Work Offline to get into offline mode. That's totally bad for a modern application that can work both offline and online.

tokenrove 12y ago

I find it amusing that one of his examples is disabling SSL 3.0.

a3176082 12y ago

Google is forcing its browser, Apple has its own, and Microsoft has one as well. I don't see "regular users" using Firefox unless it is recommended to them by the "2%". So don't annoy the 2%.

ithinkso 12y ago

Personally I hate when they hide or turn off entirely every possible option. They are there for a reason if someone wants to use them - if not - simply don't use them. After such options have disappeared peoples that were using it are pissed and those who have not - don't even notice.

srcmap 12y ago

I like Firefox with options - better yet Firefox + noscript. If your website needs with js, flash and need to load js plugins from 10 other ad domains to see, that's fine. I don't want to see it anyway. I love to have choices.

jensnockert 12y ago

Except most of those checkboxes don't exist anymore, the encryption tab is gone, etc. (http://imgur.com/YX4KyQL http://imgur.com/YX4KyQL)

unwind 12y ago

In that rather technical article, I was glad to see that the author thinks readers need help (in the form of a hover tooltip) that explains the "&" symbol. It means "and"! Who knew?!

oneeyedpigeon 12y ago
It is quite a stylised ampersand - maybe some people won't recognise it? :-)

oneeyedpigeon 12y ago

"That’s right, you can’t even see the text box you’re supposed to type your search into. Congratulations, we just broke the Internet." No, Google broke the Internet. If they've introduced a dependency between text boxes and images (?!), that's down to them. Web interface should work via progressive enhancement such that it's perfectly possible to browse and use a site without javascript, css, or even images.

VBprogrammer 12y ago
If you want a website which works perfectly without Javascript, CSS or images feel free to pay for it. The rest of us will continue ignoring that tiny minority of people in the interest of getting real work done.
- oneeyedpigeon 12y ago
  It‘s not just the “tiny minority” (whatever that means — I‘m guessing neither of us have actual figures) of people with any of those technologies disabled that benefit from a progressive approach. I‘m not 100% idealistic on this one, but at least apportion the blame where it‘s due.
  - emodendroket 12y ago
    Four years ago it was around 1% of users worldwide; I doubt that number has gone up: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9478737/browser-statistics-on-javascript-disabled http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9478737/browser-statistic...
  - Eiriksmal 12y ago
    Following one of the SO answer links in the sibling comment, the front UK.gov page, in 2013, had 1.1% of visitors with JS not-functioning. 0.2% of the visitors either explicitly disabled JS or were using browsers that didn't support it. 0.9% had JS, but it did not work for whatever reason. The author supposes corporate or local JS blocks or malfunctioning browser addons that effectively disable JS functionality. https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2013/10/21/how-many-people-are-missing-out-on-javascript-enhancement/ https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2013/10/21/how-many-people-are-missi...

tome 12y ago

Firefox can even break itself. If you deselect "View -> Toolbars -> Menu Bar" with the menu bar then the menu bar disappears. How do you get it back? You can't repeat the same procedure because the menu bar is not there any more! It turns out you can right-click on an empty space on the tab bar to reenable the menu bar, but this is far from obvious.

rockdoe 12y ago
Press Alt, which is the standard menu shortcut in Windows.
Someone1234 12y ago
Press the alt key.

IkmoIkmo 12y ago

Can anyone explain to me the problem? They basically created an OPTION, i.e., optional, that breaks when people who don't get it use it. Now I've got plenty of tech illiterate friends, and they've asked me many questions over the years, but never did it have anything to do with browser settings not loading pictures or javascript. In fact, it's the one thing people tend not to mess with. They'll do tons of weird software, they'll even do regedits from a misinformed guide, but touching browser settings? I don't know about you, but none of my friends ever did. So what's the problem here? Don't see one. What's the solution if there was a problem? Create a 'dev-mode' button, give the user a warning they shouldn't use it unless they're software developers, and put your tricky settings behind that wall. The solution doesn't seem to me to require people to install add-ons for what is basic functionality to a decent amount of people, especially not in an addon store with lots of third-party crap that might work now, but doesn't work in combo with another add-on, or stops working after the browser updates and the add-on dev moved on to other things.

poolpool 12y ago
This attitude is extraordinarily hostile towards users, and even if it wasn't including checkboxes in preferences (especially when you have things like about:config) that disable the entire functionality of the app for 99% of use cases is ridiculous.
Someone1234 12y ago
> What's the solution if there was a problem? Create a 'dev-mode' button, give the user a warning they shouldn't use it unless they're software developers, and put your tricky settings behind that wall. That's my preferred solution. On both Android (tap the build version 7 times) and Chrome (chrome://flags) it works extremely well, allowing you access to settings you wouldn't dream of giving the general public. They could also move some of this from the general settings panel into the Developer Bar. Chrome allows you to disable JavaScript for your current page from there (although it still has the global setting too). I'm all for Firefox reducing the complexity/gotchas within the general public's settings panel. Just allow advanced users to continue to access them via some means and everyone is happy. It wouldn't be a big deal to e.g. have to type in About:DeveloperSettings.

pbhjpbhj 12y ago

The "load images" argument uses images from an alternate domain that is blocked where I am (porn hosting) ... so I can't see his screenshots arguing for not allowing images to show ... oh, the irony.

drivingmenuts 12y ago

In the case of Hipmunk and other javascript-required sites, I would say that's their problem, not the browser. Obviously, Hipmunk made a choice, and that's well within their rights, to not deal with browsers that don't have JS enabled. I've done the same thing. But never once did I, or would I, blame the user. These are just the decisions we have to make to get things done some days.

talmand 12y ago

Seems a nerve was struck with this one over the time since this was originally posted. Most of the options he's complaining about are not easily changed in my current Windows version of Firefox. Only the certificates (which is a multi-click process to get to) and the cache management are located as described. Although, looking around I found an option I never bothered to notice before. View -> Page Style seems to provide the ability to disable all CSS quite easily. What purpose does that serve for an everyday user?

erlkonig 12y ago

If Firefox would just add DOCUMENTATION (text and perhaps a URL to more text) to the options in the about:config page, many aspects of using it would improve enormously.

hyperpape 12y ago

The thing that so many of the usability challenged folks in this thread are missing is that this is an argument about checkboxes in the standard application preferences. For complicated products like Firefox, there can be a range of options based on how in your face they are: 1. wizard that demands a decision when you first install the app (last resort) 2. main pane of preferences (common decisions) 3. about:config (obscure use-cases, dangerous use cases) 4. only within the dev-tools (common case for a specific group of people) 5. recompiling (the other last resort) The customization/safety tradeoff is real, but it's not zero-sum.

krisdol 12y ago

Wait, what he's saying is that it's not obvious that View -> Toolbars -> Navigation Toolbar toggles the visibility of the navigation toolbar? I still have nothing but pure distaste for the current "I can look like Chrome, too!" UI decision of Firefox, and I'm just going to get more peeved as they kill off more features for pure stylistic sake. So in the future I'll have to browse through another 6 dozen 'classic options' add-ons until I find one that is maintained, compatible, does what it claims, and hopefully doesn't break my privacy? Sounds great that the company that puts "Your Privacy First" finds that untrusted third parties are the best providers of core functionality that should have been in the browser to begin with.