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Comment by simion314 | Hacker News Reader

I put most of the blame on Adobe, they handled Flash and the related technologies as Flex/AIR badly. I think if they wuld have start from scrtch with an open source implementation of the player it would have had a better success, at tat time the only alternative was Java applets or Silverlight.

I liked the idea you had Flash off by default and you enable it only for the page or section of page you liked, I am running now Vivaldi with Javascript off by default because we have a even more garbage experience now with JS, like on BBC news with JS off the links are broken (wtf the web developers can't even create a working link without JS)

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What makes you think it isn't a requirement coming from their superiors?

There are many reasons your link may not work. Why do you assume incompetence?

Because the link opens a different news, you click on article A but it opens article B,also the pages work without JS(except the videos or fancy image galleries) only the navigation seems to be broken . A competent developer will show you a blank page and explain that you need to enable Java Script(it could be also not testing the webpage with JS off combined with using JS to layout stuff).

The problem is not JS the language but how it is abused and similar to Flash you get people installing plugins or turning it off in settings and white-listing JS on necessary pages, in my case I will not read the article most of the time or use a private window.

>A competent developer will show you a blank page and explain that you need to enable Java Script

I completely disagree with this, if I'm understanding you correctly. As someone who disables Javascript, I don't want you to purposely break a page that previously worked (in the sense of being able to read the content of the article) simply because a portion of it which I might not even use doesn't work.

The fully competent solution would be to use progressive enhancement[1] (i.e., use functioning anchor elements initially, and use Javascript to add the Javascript-only functionality on top of the HTML solution).

If you don't have time for that, the somewhat-competent solution for alerting non-technical users that Javascript is disabled would be to add a banner at the top of the page (like Stack Exchange does) stating that some features will be broken without Javascript.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_enhancement

I agree, the blank page with JS is required should be the least thing they can do instead of some pages where you just get a loading animation. In this case the page appears to work but the links are broken so you can read the titles but frustratingly you are directed to a different article.

Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity

... or corruption. ;)

So you are saying that their superiors are incompetent. Or the superior’s superiors are incompetent. And that seems true enough?

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