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Comment by Pinckney | Hacker News Reader

You know what's worse than website loading bars? Breaking scrolling for your users.

I'm running Firefox with Vimperator and noscript. All scripts are blocked on this page. When it loads, none of the "scroll page" commands work (Arrow keys, PgDn, Spacebar, Ctrl-D, j/k, etc). Even once I click the text, Vimperator's Ctrl-D still refuses to scroll (though all the other commands work, including j/k). And if I permit scripts, arrows, PgDn and j/k all work, while Spacebar and Ctrl-D don't, regardless of what I click.

It is 2013. Twenty years ago we could serve plaintext without breaking shit. What happened?

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It is 2013, you are not supposed to use noscript.

Of course I may be behind the latest fads in web development but isn't the purpose of javascript to enhance the web pages and not to substitute/break functionality which the browser is perfectly capable to deliver with pure html. Like ... scrolling.

There is one essential use case of client side script being necessary for a better browsing experience: Endless scroll instead of pagination. Pages for query results is a big reason why older web apps feel much more restricted compared to their desktop counterparts. Being able to stream data however requires JS on the client, since it doesn't fit into the classic GET requests. Having to program a fallback pagination just for people with noscript is not worth it IMO.

I use NoScript and Ghostery to prevent tracking. There are certainly legitimate use-cases.

Your comment is difficult to comprehend, and low on information. Why should the year have any effect on whether users should use NoScript?

In the future, I would recommend going into detail rather than being dismissive.

Edit: ah, you were quoting the parent. I'm not convinced that excuses it. Sites should degrade gracefully, as users are becoming more aware of tracking technologies and taking steps to prevent it. Example: Tumblr actually fails to work with Ghostery enabled.

Trying to avoid tracking probably is not a legitimate use case.

Even with all scripts enabled, Spacebar (and Vimperator's Ctrl+D) are broken. Home/End and Vimperator's gg/G turn out to not work as well.

I'm on an old version of Safari, and scrolling is broken for me too. It's the only site on the internet that does this.

I brought it up with Medium on Twitter, and they seemed completely baffled. I haven't followed up though.

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