Why Chrome has No NoScript | Hacker News Reader

Why Chrome has No NoScript

hackademix.net

39 pointsMathnerd31426 comments

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http://www.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/extensio...

"The following lists some types of extensions that we'd like to eventually support:"

[...]

* "Content filtering: Adblock, Flashblock, Privacy control, Parental control"

Thanks! I was just about to go look that up. I was certain I had seen it before. This is just another conspiracy hunt.

I may be naive, but the sandboxing makes me feel more secure, so I may happily roll without noscript. (I don't care about ads, and I can live with annoying flash, especially if it means I don't have to deal with annoying unblocking of things)

Unfortunately, Flash can be a huge resource hog on Linux and can cause usability problems as well. It's certainly better on chrome since it runs in a separate process. I'm hoping the next stable version of flash reduces the resources needed for flash to run on Linux.

Same with osx. When Flash hits my browser it acts as kryptonite for my battery.

For Mac OS X you have clicktoflash for blocking flash but it isn't a browser add-on, rather a plugin (similar to Flash, Silverlight etc.)

Technical details: http://boredzo.org/blog/archives/2009-01-29/how-clicktoflash...

I'd love to see a similar plugin on Linux for Firefox, Chromium etc.

http://boredzo.org/blog/archives/2009-01-29/how-clicktoflash...

I primarily use Chromium on Linux without the flash plugin. Sure, I miss like 1/8th the internet, but I didn't care about most of that anyways. If there's something in flash I really want to see, I'll fire up Konquerer (which will use the Firefox flash plugin), paste in the link I want, and go about my merry way.

Could someone post some meaningful numbers of the percentage of users that browse the web with extensions like AdBlock and/or NoScript?

I know a lot of people that run AdBlock, but outside the hardcore techie crowd I know very few who run NoScript.

Anecdotal observation doesn't mean much, so numbers would be appreciated.

Also, NoScript requires a lot (relatively speaking, of course) of interactively applied knowledge about web technologies. I'm fairly certain the people who use it make up a very small segment of Google's target audience.

I think a fair amount of early adopters who use chrome/chromium also probably use a fair amount of firefox extensions too.

Last time I measured, on a largely firefox userbase, adBlock was used by about 6%. Not enough really to bother about.

I'd expect the number who use NoScript to be 1-2% if that.

Note this is out of a mainly firefox userbase. For the general web those %'s would be far lower.

I have been really disappointed with the Chrome team's approach to flexibility. While I can't stand up for Gecko when compared to Webkit, the fact that Mozilla is a toolkit for building apps rather than an application itself means it's far better for hackers who like things like Conkeror and Vimperator. Chrome is great for people who lack the imagination to come up with a better UI than what you get out of the box.

"Write some C++ code and spend two hours recompiling" is not a reasonable answer to "how do you modify the browser's UI?", especially for tasks that can be done in seconds without restarting in Mozilla.

> Chrome is great for people who lack the imagination to come up with a better UI than what you get out of the box.

Huh? So... If I like Chrome the way it is and don't want to turn my browser into Emacs, I 'lack the imagination to come up with a better UI?'

If you cannot imagine a better UI then you lack the imagination to come up with a better UI. That holds as a statement without being insulting, doesn't it? Though it could be argued to be begging the question (properly, I hope).

Instead, I suggest the weak bits of the claim are the omission - Chrome is also great for other people too - and the unjustified implication that being unable to come up with a better UI is a problem (it applies to most of us).

I'm not sure begging the question is the term you were looking for. Perhaps tautological.

Narrated in this way it looks like:

Google guy 1: we really have to figure how to prevent people from building noscript-alike extension.

Google guy 2: hey, I have an Idea! Let's ask the author what are the important API to do so in order to avoid the development of such APIs!

Google guy 1: you are a genius! I'm phoning him just now.

That's not what happened I guess.

Chrome doesn't want Adblock, so they don't put in the hooks for NoScript to work either. (or else they're just slow...)

Agreed. I don't see why people think an advertising company would want to make it easy to block ads in their browser.

Google developer Peter Kasting's comment on this is here:

http://hackademix.net/2009/12/10/why-chrome-has-no-noscript/...

That comment points to a Chromium tracking bug, here:

http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=16932

It looks like while a developer at Google was working on this project, that developer left Google in October and there's been no replacement.

While this doesn't suggest the feature is the highest priority for Google, it also doesn't suggest Google is deliberately intending to prevent JavaScript or advertising blocking. Sometimes things that didn't get done just didn't get done.

To be fair, if they wanted to be hostile towards ads blocking extensions in general they would have made it really hard or impossible to develop them in the first place; or wouldn't even allow them to be hosted on Google extensions website.

To my last count they currently have 5 ad blocking extensions on Google extensions gallery. One of the is the second most downloaded Chrome Extension.

Generally speaking Google has done so much with Chrome browser in such a short time, I don't mind giving them the benefit of doubt that they didn't get around fixing or implementing the said bug/feature.

There is an extension called adthwart available: https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/cfhdojbkjhnklbpk...

I personally have adblock disabled on Google itself, I want those ads. I still block adsense though.

On one hand, I'm blocking some of their potential impressions for their lower margin, add-on, commodity product. On the other hand I'm making supply of their higher margin main product more scarce, more valuable. I'm not sure th net effect is too worrying.

Of course this is anecdote but maybe I'm not the only one.

You are willing to give money to Google but not the site-owners who produced the content you consume? I don't blame you though; great majority of the sites don't have monetizable content, no inventory for them.

I don't care about giving money to sites or to Google. I use Google ads (click on them) and they don't bother me when I don't use them. I don't use most other ads and often they bother me. Purely selfish.

I use Google a lot & I know that I want the ads. For everything else, it's easiest to blanket opt out. Many sites (particularly Israeli news sites which I read sometimes) have ads that bother me a lot.

This would be better titled "Why doesn't Chrome have NoScript?", instead of misleadingly giving the impression the writer actually knows why.

And yes, I'm aware the misleading title is the blogger's work - no need to perpetuate it.

Lack of NoScript is the reason Chrome still asks about being the default browser on my consoles...

Starring G Maone as Aristotle. This would put Google in the role of Plato then?

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