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Comment by dave5104 | Hacker News Reader

I don't think I've ever heard my parents ever want to shut off Javascript or disable GET requests from <img> tags.

I think you're forgetting that Firefox is not used exclusively by developers who may find those options useful. They're simply one /portion/ of Firefox users, and in my opinion, developers should be considered power users. In which case, moving some of the more "advanced" options off to about:config, where power users would be more than comfortable.

I don't think the article is advocating for disabling these options completely. Rather simply hiding them from the average Firefox user who doesn't need to mess with them.

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I think you are forgetting that whether your website works without images and JS is up to you as a developer. Disabling those things should not completely break normal websites. The immediacy of those checkboxes is a good reminder.

I have some bad news about what constitutes a "normal" website these days.

I think in the last three weeks I have needed javascript for three things:

1. feed/email app sites

2. trying out stacksort

3. loading flash embeds on youtube because youtube is set up annoyingly

So tell me your bad news. What sites are you talking about here that apparently make up a majority of the internet and need javascript?

Also I just turned off images and tried a few pages, nothing broke. Google's homepage had a perfectly visible text box, I'm not sure what the problem in the article was.

How about facebook (specifically messaging and paging also no likes and comments for users without JS)? I know, you probably don't use it but I know quite a few people who do.

Messaging is more of an 'app' thing than a website thing. Comments not working just makes me call it one of the minority of badly-coded sites. There is absolutely no need for scripting just to have comments.

Yeah, but that's why it's a switch, and these features are defaulted to "enabled".

Nothing wrong there. We need these switches. Taking them away is a bad, BAD idea.

If the discussion were about how to provide access to these settings in a cleaner manner, so that people understand why they exist, and how to properly use them, I'm all for that. Increasing awareness and informing people about what the internet does, how it all works, and why they should care is a good idea.

This article doesn't take that tone. It just says "Ew, yucky! Hide all these settings because they're ugly, or better yet, don't make them settings. Don't even let people change them. It doesn't matter how practical they are. They keep us from making money. The ivory tower, where all the developers live, will be able to figure out a way around the road blocks we put up as they usually do."

Is it worth alienating web developer and power users because they represent a small fraction of your user base ?

Try alienating your power users and wonder your product suddenly start bleeding regular users along with power users.

Start alienating web developer and wonder why suddenly websites start breaking in your browser.

This article is advocating total removal or rendering as impractical as possible as a mean of protecting ignorant people from their ignorance all in the sake of brand image.

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