Firefox 23 Makes JavaScript Obligatory

mikejuk writes "It seems that Firefox 23, currently in beta, has removed the option to disable JavaScript. Is this good for programmers and web apps? Why has Mozilla decided that this is the right thing to do? The simple answer is that there is a growing movement to reduce user options that can break applications. The idea is that if you provide lots of user options then users will click them in ways that aren't particularly logical. The result is that users break the browser and then complain that it is broken. For example, there are websites that not only don't work without JavaScript, but they fail in complex ways — ways that worry the end user. Hence, once you remove the disable JavaScript option Firefox suddenly works on a lot of websites. Today there are a lot of programmers of the opinion that if the user has JavaScript off then its their own fault and consuming the page without JavaScript is as silly as trying to consume it without HTML."

Comments

why?

[bdabautcb]

Are there still security issues with having JS enabled?

Re:why?

[Culture20]

Are there still security issues with having JS enabled?

Even if Javascript is 100% secure, running in an airtight jail, it's still using up resources on my computer. Sometimes if you leave a JS page open overnight, it will be pegging one of your CPU cores in the morning.

Re:why?

[jedidiah]

Except I don't have to avoid Javascript entirely.

I can do it selectively.

I can decide who to let into my circle of trust.

Given what kind of random crap seems to be on modern websites these days. That's a very good idea. It's not paranoia when people really out to get you. Trying to deny the danger is the position that's really out of touch with reality.

YOU are the one that's a danger to self and others, not me.

Juvenile insults won't change that.

Re:why?

[rnturn]

``It's much like food labeling or processes running on your PC.

If you don't recognize it, chances are that it's to be avoided.''

I've adopted that attitude when grocery shopping. I figure that if I feel a need to consult my old BioChem text to figure out just what that ingredient is, I shouldn't be eating it.

Re:why?

[MoFoQ]

crap....so noscript also?

Re:why?

[Darinbob]

I get used to temporarily whitelisting things. It's really interesting to see just how much of the web is utterly dependent upon javascript for things that could be done without it. If you enable it all though, you're back to ubiquitous advertisements, tracking and privacy issues, and noticeable drops in performance. I don't need to see every site on the web anyway, so if I have to go and enable things to get it to work then half the item I'll just leave the site and never return; there has to be enough html there to give me the idea that enabling javascript is worth it. It's like TV, just because it's available doesn't mean you have to watch it.

Re:why?

[Bing Tsher E]

The fork already happened, ages ago. Seamonkey is the Mozilla fork that happened when the Firefox devs decided to go crazy and start stripping out useful stuff. Download Seamonkey and use it. It's very up to date because it's based on the same code from Mozilla as Firefox. Also, it has the Composer and Email and other integrated stuff intact.

And NoScript runs on it.

Solution in extensions

[Verteiron]

As long as it doesn't break Noscript, I'm ok with this. It really IS folly to try to use the modern web without any javascript at all, but with Noscript I can still pick and choose which sites are allowed to run it in my browser.

Re:Solution in extensions

[h4rr4r]

How well do screen readers deal with javascript?

I am almost certain it is poorly, as we add more shiny and BS we reduce usability for a lot of folks. Well we actually reduce usability for everyone, but for some people usability goes to zero.

Re:Solution in extensions

[amicusNYCL]

The folly is in writing pages that cannot be viewed without javascript.

The folly is assuming that the internet is still all "web pages" instead of applications. There are plenty of useful web applications around, and I develop one of them. There isn't a non-Javascript alternative to it, it has around 1.5MB of (unminified) Javascript code written by us (plus about the same for third-party frameworks) and relies on maybe a total of 4 actual HTML pages (index, a dedicated non-JS login form, and 2 content launchers), which usually do nothing except load various Javascript interfaces. This is a software-as-a-service platform, we develop and host the software and other companies and organizations pay us to set up an installation for them to use (and us to maintain).

If you want to run software, run it on your computer, not mine

You're the one using the interface, you execute it. I'm happy to execute all of the actual logic for the application on the server, but your browser is more than capable of rendering the interface. Even IE6 could handle this thing (slowly).

And anyway, there's very little that actually uses javascript for anything useful.

I hear that sentiment periodically. It's complete bullshit. Google's services are the obvious screaming example of useful Javascript. Hell, Google's push for faster Javascript in Chrome, which bled over to the other browsers after they got left in the dust by V8, is the reason why browsers are so fast with Javascript today. A prime example of Javascript making a site more usable is Facebook, regardless of your personal opinion of social networks in general or Facebook's corporate policies. Imagine if every time someone clicked the Like button, the entire page reloaded. That's obviously not usable. There are plenty of sites and applications that interact with users in similar ways (small individual actions on a much larger interface) where it would be stupid to not use Javascript to keep the data transfer and response times to a minimum.

NoScript

[Anonymous Coward]

Does this break noscript functionality as well? That would be massively unappealing.

Really, they should make it easier to do

[doom]

Personally, what *I've* always wanted is a way to turn JS on and off that's more easily accessible. I often want it off, to try to get more consistent behavior (whizzy JS crap is often completely non-standard and confusing), but every now and then I need to flip it on to see if the apparent breakage is because some lazy programmer didn't feel like thinking about how things degrade.

But Mozilla seems determined to alienate users like myself, so this current bonehead move is hardly a surprise.

And yes, many "modern" web sites these days seem to require javascript-- thanks to google who made it ultra-cool and groovy.

Hasn't this ship sailed?

[Alternate Interior]

I'm a web developer and have taken JS & CSS for common for years and years now. Spent about 6y working at a small local web design shop and it just wasn't feasible to double contract amounts to make sites work without JS.

That said, there's no reason to require JS if it can be done without. Lots of page book-keeping, like menus, active page indicators, etc, can be done with CSS. Some stuff, like Amazon's polygonal focus on subnav can degrade nicely. Fantastic. But I'm not going to build an Ajax-y interface AND a static HTML interface (for free) to coddle people with nothing more than a distrust of JavaScript.

I miss progressive enhancement

[Kethinov]

I miss the days when web developers still gave a shit about progressive enhancement.

I miss the days when you couldn't be considered a real web developer unless you could make a CSS Zen Garden (http://www.csszengarden.com) skin without cheating by changing the markup or using JS.

I miss the days when you were only considered a good web web developer if your site was usable with both JS and CSS disabled because you used semantic HTML.

I miss the days when accessibility still mattered.

I miss the days when writing semantic HTML, enhancing it with CSS, and enhancing it further with JS was considered the best practice, rather than starting with just JS and an empty body tag as is so common today.

I miss the days before the now popular false dichotomy of thinking that progressive enhancement is extra work was popular among web developers.

I love that the web can do more now and compete with native apps better. But I hate that web developers are so quick to unnecessarily abandon progressive enhancement in the process when that's what made the web great to begin with.

Stop Feeding the Troll!

[b1ng0]

Stop posting this "user's" aka Dice's stories on Slashdot! His entire history of posts all link to the user's own i-programmer.info site in order to generate traffic and ad impressions. Enough is enough already!