Just to be precise: If you need Javascript for something as simple as submitting a form, then there is also most likely something seriously wrong with how you program – unless you are using a HTTP method that is not GET or POST.
534 karma · joined June 1, 2016
What the parent poster wrote about testing is only true as long as one chooses “graceful degradation” as the strategy to build web sites. Using the alternative strategy “progressive enhancement” means that one does not have to test as much. The reason is that with “progressive enhancement” the more complex functionality of a web site is built on top of the simpler (think “no JS”) layers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graceful_degradation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_enhancement
It may seem counterintuitive, but choosing the right approach to build a web site can save a lot of testing effort – and even make sure that a site displays on browsers one did not even consider.
When I worried about the impact of the the EU cookie directive I read it. Surprisingly, it only requires Cookie notifications for web sites that use cookies for purposes that are not strictly necessary for the web site to function. This means that the operators of web pages that show cookie notifications are probably spying on their users for advertising (or other) purposes. The EU cookie directive only makes this obvious.
I think EU politicians know what cookies are and how they are used. You can see that in the list of cookies exempt from consent:
• session IDs
• authentication cookies
• user-centric security cookies
• session-limited multimedia player cookies
• social network cookies (for logged in members of the social network)
Source: http://ec.europa.eu/ipg/basics/legal/cookies/index_en.htm
If we ever meet, I might ask you if you want to be hit in the face now or later. I hate doing it, but it's a necessary evil.
Take window management, for example: If I want my windows to fill exactly half the screen, have one window on top of all others or move them from anywhere (just not the title bar), last time I checked it was just impossible out of the box.
Package management is another thing where GNU/Linux excels. On Debian, I am usually just a single “apt-get” away from having exactly what I need. The UI for such tasks does not seem to exist at all on OS X without third party tools.
In practical terms, Apple delivering outdated GNU utilities that are by now nine years old is something that should not happen with a modern operating system. I have encountered a lot of (non-developer) Apple users who do not know this and then wonder why something does not work.
If you would explain what makes the “UI being much better” in your eyes, it might help us to understand why exactly we think differently (heh) here.
The “enthusiastic” bit is the important part: When a user browses a web site, that user does not enthusiasticly consent to being profiled for marketing activities. Whereas: When someone answers a questionaire about consumer behavior to get a bargain or collects points for a customer loyalty program, then you have explicit and unambiguous consent.
Besides being explicit, consent should be given freely. An ultimatum (like “If you do not accept the new privacy guidelines, you will never be able to see your family photos again.”) does not result in freely given consent.
When I interact with non-free software or “social networking” web pages I often notice dialogs that remind me of how really pushy people behave. If I ever come across a person that creates these kinds of dialogs that do not give users a real choice about what is happening, I might just ask them if I should hit them in the face “now” or “later” just to see what happens.
If someone does something morally wrong, it is not made morally acceptable by the possibility that someone else might have done it. Justifications that use the kind of reasoning “If I had not done it, someone else would have done it.” come most often from people who might lose something (or not gain something) from doing the morally acceptable thing. I suspect it is just selfishness that makes people cling to such justifications, no matter how weak those are.
I think a distribution like Debian should appeal to you for its focus on quality. New packages in Debian move first to the Unstable distribution and then after some time to the Testing distribution. Testing is “freezed” before a Stable release to weed out remaining bugs. [1]
Debian also has a tool called “apt-listbug” that warns you before installing a new version of a package that has a known bug and gives you an option to not update that package automatically for as long as that bug exists.
What Ubuntu does is just putting its own stuff on top of Debian Unstable (or Testing, when it does a Long Term Support release). They have next to no quality control. When I drew glyphs for Unifont, this meant that for half a year, Ubuntu had a half-finished Unifont it imported from Debian Testing at the wrong time. I got complaints as I told people to install Unifont to play my Unicode proof-of-concept roguelike [2].
The guy from the article I wrote eventually did use Debian. I think he fiddled around with Emacs for over a month until he arrived at his “perfect” setup (which is different for everyone, by the way).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian
[2] http://news.dieweltistgarnichtso.net/notes/zoo-tycoon-roguel...
Changing the GUI has a function, btw. Just yesterday I wrote a custom stylesheet for Slack because its developers chose “the right values” for people who can see gray-on-grey “contrast” well (so, not me).
Besides, many people like to believe they are the “good guys”.
I have read arguments of the form “It is [the current year]. We should be past this by now.” a lot lately, but I do not understand how referring to time provides a useful starting point for an argument about morality. Can anyone tell me?
Your example is spot on. I once spent over an hour with a friend who wanted to test a multimedia application [1] on OS X and tried to help her installing it. In the end it turned out that installing the needed C compiler and SDL dependencies – a task that is only an “apt-get install” away on Debian – was a lot harder on OS X than we both had expected.
[1] IBNIZ: http://pelulamu.net/ibniz/
Maybe some would consider stuff like this a part of the Ubuntu experience, but I have encountered neither bug on Debian using XFCE, GNOME or i3. You should know that Ubuntu has a different desktop from most other Linux distributions and that Ubuntu is not representative of the whole – in a similar way that any GUI bug in Android is irrelevant for most other Linux distributions.
What users do not see, they usually do not miss. E.g. many users of OS X do not realize that some command line tools Apple ships are almost ten years old at this point until they find out that “[[” does not work in Bash on OS X or similar: https://github.com/sclorg/s2i-python-container/issues/104