Hacker News Reader

Comment by zer00eyz | Hacker News Reader

I don't think there is a way to ask this without sounding rude, but it isn't my intent, please don't interpret it that way:

Do you really have an expectation of anything on todays internet to work without JS running?

View on HN

I do, and you should too. Enabling JavaScript for all sites is a security risk (drive-by downloads, etc.), and makes far too much tracking crap possible. Since a huge number of sites are user-hostile with JavaScript enabled (loading huge amounts of JS for tracking purposes, that not only slows down load times and uses up precious bandwidth (especially important in countries where ISPs have overage charges for going over bandwidth limits), but also bogs down my computer when it’s still running in the background a minute after the page has loaded. Frankly, if websites are going to be so hostile to the user, the user should have no issues with returning the sentiment; I block JavaScript on all sites by default, and only enable it for certain types of content (like web apps, which you can’t expect to do anything useful without it) or sites that I trust. Otherwise, if I can’t even read a page’s textual content without JavaScript, I just don’t bother… it’s not worth my time.

You're free to want sites to work without JS, but to be realistic about it, that battle was lost loooong ago. Sort of like the old definition of "hacker" vs the one the media has used for the last 20 years.

It's probably more useful to figure out how to make the all-sites-require-js world more secure and less trackable than to try to turn back the clock 20 years.

(Of course you're free to block all JS, insist on how it should ok, etc etc etc.)

“You're free to want sites to work without JS, but to be realistic about it, that battle was lost loooong ago.”

Sites should at least work without JavaScript. Or are you saying we should just throw accessibility under the bus?

“It's probably more useful to figure out how to make the all-sites-require-js world more secure and less trackable than to try to turn back the clock 20 years.”

Blocking JavaScript works right now. Or are you saying end users should just patiently wait until these issues affecting them right now are fixed? It’s not like it isn’t happening… consider how many people have been tricked even by something like this¹. My parents are actually pretty new to the Internet, and I’ve made sure that I have them using something like NoScript. Of course, it breaks some sites for them, but that’s far preferable to them accidentally infecting their computer and putting their financial info at risk.

――――――

¹ — https://blog.malwarebytes.org/fraud-scam/2013/07/fbi-ransomw...

"You're free to want sites to work..."

How do you define "work"?

My definition of not working would be failure to receive a 200 response and some useful content.

The text of every recipe on this site is viewable without Javascript. In my experience, this is the case with most websites today.

I know the Javascript on website must do something to enhance the plain text of the recipe. Javascript is a cool language and I respect the creativity of web developers.

By not using Javascript I may have to forgo the "user experience" the developer has prepared for users, however I still get the text of the recipe. For me, that is enough. In other words, the website "works".

That's a bit of a straw man, isn't it? The homepage is just a basic page with recipes. Without JS, you can't even klick a recipe to view it, that just seems stupid to me. We've had a working tag for that for 20 years now, why would you break it? Sure, you could also build the whole thing in flash, but what's the point?

    > Do you really have an expectation of anything o
    > todays internet to work without JS running?

Yes, most of it works just fine. Larger sites tend to have graceful fallbacks sensibly implemented, too.

At least with rather aggressive third-party blockers in place. I don't expect everything to work, but basic reading, normal pictures and links should work.

Yes, it should work. Even if work means simply displaying plain blue links on a solid white page.

I use NoScript all the time, so yes.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com