I Turned Off JavaScript for a Week

http://www.wired.com/2015/11/i-turned-off-javascript-for-a-whole-week-and-it-was-glorious/

by ayi • 11 years ago

94 87 11 years ago

Zekio2• 11 years ago

Tried turning off javascript completely for a time once, but then a lot(Edit: Don't actually keep count, maybe I should begin doing that) of pages are blank/white emptiness because they do all the html in the browser....

oneeyedpigeon• 11 years ago

Sure, "a lot" as an absolute number because, hey, Internet. But I bet, relatively, the number of sites doing that is tiny. I've seen it myself, but it's terrible practise, and I'm sure it's easy to avoid those sites or, if you must, whitelist them. Teach the site owners something, vote with your HTTP requests!

Zekio2• 11 years ago

I have stopped using a number(Don't actually keep a total count, maybe I should begin doing it) of sites, simply because of the fact they do it

pmlnr4• 11 years ago

js;dr

http://tantek.com/2015/069/t1/js-dr-javascript-required-dead

dvdcxn• 11 years ago

[[citation needed]]

jakeogh• 11 years ago

Switched to surf+tabbed and default no JS years ago. Can't imagine going back. CTRL-ALT-s enables it for the tab if it's necessary; usually not.

giancarlostoro2• 11 years ago

I currently am using Midori, but maybe I should give surf a shot.

Majestic121• 11 years ago

I have been using NoScript (a browser extension to black list all JS by default) for quite a while now, and I don't see myself turning back anytime soon.

Everything feels much faster, and sober without Javascript, especially news site (looking at you, lemonde.fr)

I still allow some JavaScript sometimes, most of the time to unbreak site, but if you start you using it you will realise that most of the JS running on each site is at best useless from a user point of view.

mixmastamyk• 11 years ago

News sites are the worst, some of them have twenty! libs and trackers on them.

silon7• 11 years ago

We need a declarative hypertext web back desperately. (I am running NoScript, but I have to enable it for too many sites)

agumonkey3• 11 years ago

That's why I didn't believe parts of the article. Yes the web loads faster, nothing can load faster than a blank page from blogger.com.

I now browse the web with curl | less

rspeer• 11 years ago

There are a lot of cases where turning off JS is impractical, and I don't do it myself.

But, to me, Blogger is a great example of a site that is poisoned by its reliance on JS. Blogger is so bad at showing a page of text that it needs a splash screen.

giancarlostoro2• 11 years ago

I usually default it to only enable scripts on the same domain.

feider• 11 years ago

Why? I really don't understand how this is the solution. Ok, so a lot of sites use JS in a wrong way or too much of it, but I think the root problem cant be fixed by forcing a technology solution.

dave20002• 11 years ago

It's the only solution. You can't force people to not use it, and it's a very good solution (whitelisting is only a click away).

aaronbrethorst• 11 years ago

Disabling JavaScript makes the headline font on Wired.com much, much more legible. I'm completely serious.

pmlnr4• 11 years ago

Try https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/policeman/, that will make it even more interesting and show you that _everyone_ is including jquery from Google.

loopbit• 11 years ago

Didn't know about policeman and looks really, really, nice. Will definitely give it a try! I love the idea of writing my own rules.

As for including jquery from google, of course and for good reasons, even from the user's perspective. The main one, of course is that chances are that your browser already has it cached (from other site that uses it), so retrieving it and loading it is (almost) instant.

Guest1920382• 11 years ago

Keep in mind Google is blocked in China, so if you include jQuery from Google, it's not going to work for over a billion people.

9mui2• 11 years ago

I doubt if there is some alternate for the wonder full things that we can do with JS. But Its true that at sometimes things are missused and in case of JS its a top business now a days

t0mislav• 11 years ago

On old iPhone 4 I'm using, Wired site is very slow. But with JS disabled, it runs and looks great.

pmlnr4• 11 years ago

wired.com, please learn from your own article and don't try to load 22 3rd party javascripts.

http://picpaste.com/wired_com-yt7ooXyu.png

JupiterMoon5• 11 years ago

I read it with javascript disabled with no problems at all.

LiquidFlux• 11 years ago

Could you read the comments?

9mui2• 11 years ago

I'm afraid, we can't do javascript right but the against movement.

groundCode• 11 years ago

Came here to say basically this. Would have been nice if they had the courtesy to disable their own javascript on an article about how disabling javascript gives a better user experience......

santoriv• 11 years ago

Sure. If you believe that the browser should only be a document reader and not an application platform then go ahead. It's kinda like buying a smartphone and then using it exclusively as a phone though....

I think the real point of irritation here is all the 3rd party junk that gets loaded in that has nothing to do with the main functionality of the site that you are on.

pvdebbe• 11 years ago

I think that simple content such as blogs, news and the equivalent should not be implemented in js-dependent web apps.

Web browsers are a platform for sure, but the simple content should stay simple.

e2e82• 11 years ago

It have thought for a while now that the web and correspondingly the browser should be bifurcated into a content platform with no client side code and an application platform without the burden of the older technologies. The browser would provide all the interactivity and logic for the content platform through implementations of standard html tags. For the application platform, the browser could provide a more convenient set of apis sort of like plugins did before.

dave20002• 11 years ago

I believe the browser should be exactly what it is, without using javascript. I'll always block javascript, whitelisting sites which 1) fail to work without it and 2) which i really want to visit. If you need javascript to present information then you're either not a very good developer or else you don't care about the user experience. Degrade gracefully; you can still display text and images without javascript and a lot of people don't want a lot of high-risk fluff just because you're proud of your use of add-ons.

TimJYoung2• 11 years ago

That's fine, but there is still a place for JS-only applications on the web. For example, we produce a web application development IDE that emits JS-only applications (HTML just bootstraps the JS). The things you can do with such applications are numerous, and are the backbone of a lot of SAAS offerings. However, our company web site doesn't use any JS (other than the Google Analytics hook), and it loads/runs like a dream on any device/browser. The point here is that there is a rationale for both modes of operation (content vs. application), and maybe, like another commenter noted here, it's just time to bite the bullet and separate out the two use cases in a more forceful and clear manner.

annnnd• 11 years ago

Excellent comparison! Except - no, it's like buying a smartphone and expecting it can still be used as a phone. I want both an application platform and a document reader.

Too many pages obscure content by showing ads, showing annoying popups (no I don't want your newsletter!) and by wasting screen estate on some "float on the top" menu you can't get rid of.

The thing I miss most on my smartphone is NoScript. Luckily Firefox has "reader mode" which helps a lot, but it sometimes doesn't show whole content.

vanderZwan2• 11 years ago

I think the real point of irritation here is all the 3rd party junk that gets loaded in that has nothing to do with the main functionality of the site that you are on.

First, while I agree with this being the biggest issue, there is a little bit of nuance to your other point.

If you believe that the browser should only be a document reader and not an application platform then go ahead

The thing is, the overwhelming majority of those applications are glorified document readers, with a bit of social media plug ins thrown in. It features rich media perhaps, but you don't need JavaScript for an image or video tag. Of the remaining applications, the majority of use-cases is forms to send over the web. This can often be enhanced by JavaScript, but is also not that insane in terms of needs. Then we get to the remaining use-cases of the "application platform".

There's also the part where most websites are just plain badly designed. For example, many sites that have a video that auto-plays when you open it, even if you open a text article and the video is totally unrelated to what you were watching. Worse, some of them even tend to autoplay to a new video, often redirecting your webpage, interrupting the reading experience. Sure, I can pause. It still downloads and buffers a video I never intend to watch. Similarly, whatever happened to progressive enhancement? Websites that give you a blank page unless you download three megabytes of JavaScript. WTH.

WorldMaker2• 11 years ago

«Similarly, whatever happened to progressive enhancement?»

In one word: Frameworks.

In more words: Building HTML in two different places is typically not very DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself) and if you are assuming a lot of very dynamic content that want to update on the fly from the JS side of things all the way down to micromanaging the HTML generation at run time, well then all of your HTML building moves into JS to keep things DRY.

The hope for the future is so-called "Universal" JS (which is interesting in that its kind of circling back to the origins of JS (LiveScript Server) and ASP Classic): now that we have a somewhat standardized JS platform on the server side (NodeJS) we can use the same JS to build HTML on the server or in the client...

msravi• 11 years ago

I use uMatrix, uBlock0, and privacy badger, and am very happy about it. 1st party scripts are turned on by default by uMatrix, and for those that break, I selectively turn them on. Privacy Badger takes care of blocking cookies (first or third party) that try to track you.

z3t43• 11 years ago

Sadly JavaScript or "the language of the web" is going towards binary rather then openness. The big sites like Google already obfuscate their code so it's hard to see what it does.

I learned JavaScript by viewing other peoples source code, witch was as easy as right clicking and selecting view source.

Unless we want more people to disable JavaScript, we need to keep it open source and transparent!

thecatspaw• 11 years ago

Do you run any application which you downloaded from the internet? Database Administration tool, messaging app, or similar? They are mostly written in code you cannot access or view in any way, yet you still trust the publisher.

rplnt• 11 years ago

And they are rarely sandboxed (as opposed to javascript in browsers).

oneweekwonder• 11 years ago

Yes the Google Closure Compiler[0] obfuscate the code, but it also minifies it and even optimise it.

[0] https://developers.google.com/closure/compiler/

catshirt• 11 years ago

you and I learned how to code before the resources were as plentiful as today.

for every obfuscated app there are 200 sites that explain in detail what you want to do. and another 200 open source versions to implement or learn from.

bojo• 11 years ago

While I understand the intent of your post, don't most people minify (obfuscate) their JS code to reduce bandwidth costs (on both ends, user and company)? Even in todays high bandwidth availability age we still use CDNs and the like to reduce such a cost.

That said, it would definitely be nice to see non-minified versions of code we run in our browsers available as open source by the company serving it. It's not like it's a secret, just a pain to actually try to decipher.

iainmerrick• 11 years ago

Gzip encoding works great to shrink JS (and CSS and HTML). Obfuscation adds almost nothing on top of that.

Dead-code stripping is still useful but you can do that without obfuscating.

z3t43• 11 years ago

You only save bandwidth the first time the resource is accessed. After that it's loaded from the browser cache! So over time, the band-witch saving by minification is insignificant.

dzhiurgis• 11 years ago

While I do not mind the obfuscation, I do not like that browsers do not give you easy way to access/inspect variables. Or seeing what function names (and parameters) are called.

WorldMaker2• 11 years ago

I've been in the habit of leaving sourcemaps in the production drops for this reason that by it's nature it's not exactly secret, even if the code isn't strictly "open source": if someone is that interested in the non-minified version they are likely to use a deminifier anyway and obfuscation isn't security nor copyright law enforcement. Plus it's also selfish and lazy to leave the sourcemaps accessible (thus the business case for it): as much as you work to prevent having to debug things in production, you will almost always need to debug things in production.

Sourcemaps are great.

kennydude• 11 years ago

Sourcemaps make this a non-issue

joosters• 11 years ago

Spoiler: Author found that because the experience was so great, they turned JavaScript back on immediately after the experiment ended.

JupiterMoon5• 11 years ago

He ended up wanting more control but acknowledged that some elements of the modern web require a scripting language. I don't know why he didn't just install noscript.

e2e82• 11 years ago

In addition to disabling js, another thing I do is disable styles. The web is really quite beautiful and often more usable with the default styles.

bshimmin• 11 years ago

Two things that caught my eye in this article were "Many people have turned to ad blockers" and "A small but growing number of people, however, are taking ad-blocking a step further and just disabling JavaScript altogether". For the first quote, I know many people in tech who use ad blockers (but maybe still not a majority?), but I'm pretty sure they aren't all that prevalent outside of it (or why would advertisers bother?). As for the second quote, is this actually true or supported by any real evidence?

andor• 11 years ago

I found a study [0] from Q2 2015 -- before iOS 9 -- that reports ad blockers on 16% of devices in the US, and on 36.7% of devices, the highest value, in Greece.

I have Javascript turned off by default and sometimes enable it if pages don't work otherwise. Sometimes I just leave the page. I don't see it as ad blocking, but as a means of reducing attack surface, tracking, and improving page load times.

[0] http://downloads.pagefair.com/reports/2015_report-the_cost_o...

oska• 11 years ago

and I could browse the web with fewer distractions—all without the sense of guilt that comes with using an ad blocker

Never felt the slightest skerrick of guilt for using an ad blocker.

Instead I feel mildly virtuous in doing my own small part in helping the idea of an ad-supported internet die.

moonshinefe3• 11 years ago

Just turning off JS doesn't stop flash ads, static ads, video ads before videos play on youtube, etc. as well... so to say the least this author is deluded if he thinks he's getting anything close to an adblocker experience.

simoncion3• 11 years ago

...this author is deluded if he thinks he's getting anything close to an adblocker experience.

The quote from the author is:

...and I could browse the web with fewer distractions—all without the sense of guilt that comes with using an ad blocker

Notice the gulf between your statement and the author's statement.

devsquid2• 11 years ago

If not ads what do you want? Paywalls? Native content? Personally I want a robust and diverse web ecosystem, not just pay walls and people forced to alternative revenue sources.

vanderZwan2• 11 years ago

Personally I want a robust and diverse web ecosystem

Well, everything paid for by ads is the opposite of diverse. Pretending paywalls are the only alternative is disingenuous too. There's plenty of options, like donations, or Blende's "pay per article, get your money back if it sucks" model, which seems to work well

moonshinefe3• 11 years ago

Whoa, this guy managed to uncheck "enable javascript" somehow? Glad to read such a cutting edge article.

In seriousness, disabling javascript (and enabling it selectively when things inevitably break when I was using NoScript) grew too tedious for me after a while.

There are simply too many sites that require JS to function properly. Others may disagree and enjoy clicking constantly to enable select javascripts to get pages to work properly (or maybe don't visit JS intensive sites), but in my experience it isn't worth it.

joonoro• 11 years ago

In seriousness, disabling javascript (and enabling it selectively when things inevitably break when I was using NoScript) grew too tedious for me after a while.

I'm sort of inclined to agree. I really want to like NoScript, but every now and then when I use NoScript for a couple of weeks I get frustrated with it and disable it. Sure, having it disabled is also frustrating, but it's a different kind of frustration and at least I can sort of use the site without having to put active effort into it. Now I just use uBlock Origin, it just works more or less.

JupiterMoon5• 11 years ago

I guess I have less diverse browsing habits than you guys. I use noscript very happily. I whitelisted what I need for sites that I use years ago and most things I do now "just work" (most is ~95% the other things I temporarily allow). When e.g. a job application needs a javascript heavy online test I open up another profile with no addons and use that profile for that that thing. Based on experiences using browsers without noscript I think that the "faff time" (for me) from doing what I do is less than the "waiting for excessive javascript" and "figuring out that this site has overriden scrolling/back button".

yason• 11 years ago

I've disabled anything 3rd party and all scripting via uBlock. When I really need some site to work 100%, I'll just selectively enable the parts that are required for that site. The little button makes it easy to whitelist stuff case by case.

moonshinefe3• 11 years ago

uBlock doesn't disable all scripting at all, though.

JeremyNT• 11 years ago

You certainly can block all scripts with uBlock Origin's "advanced" mode. There, you can block first and/or third party scripts as desired.

It's a common misconception that uBlock Origin is "just" an adblock plus replacement, but it's a lot more than that.

The one caveat is that there's no fine-grained GUI for white/blacklisting specific scripts. You can however white/blacklist scripts from domains using the GUI, and you can block / unblock individual scripts by writing rules.

wizzzzzy• 11 years ago

Why not disable images too? I'd suspect they add most weight to the average site and are likely just as superfluous as all the javascript.

JSDave• 11 years ago

I wouldn't mind some JS on this page to hide the conversations that don't interest me. Also, why make a request for 5x more data, reflow, and redraw everything whenever I click something?

_lce0• 11 years ago

In Firefox, the "disable javascript" checkbox is now gone from the settings --why would they do that?

But it can still be disabled in `about:config` > `javascript.enabled`

I used and loved Firefox since more than 10 years so far, but can't truly understand some decisions they took.

tasdev2• 11 years ago

I read about this a while back if I remember correctly it's because people kept turning it off accidentally and breaking the Internet and blaming Firefox.

AwesomeBean• 11 years ago

Just download NoScript - it's better than turning JavaScript off and on all the time anyway.

tasdev2• 11 years ago

I've been doing this for a while now after becoming tuned into the tracking and particularly fingerprinting being done. The web is surprisingly usable with it off. I use SafeScript in Chrome which generally works ok. I use multiple profiles in Chrome, one with just Adblock the other with Adblock, noscript, httpseverywhere, privacy badger, etc. I use the normal one where I absolutely must and that doesn't keep cookies.

I'm not paranoid and I don't have anything to hide but I object to being tracked to have stuff sold to me.

lolive• 11 years ago

Disclaimer: I own an ipad 1 (and love it!)

On an iPad1, your best choice is indeed to disable JavaScript. (Note that the ipad1 has 256 MB of RAM. That sounds enough, but it is not! May be because of a poor optimization of Safari on iOS5)

I Turned Off JavaScript for a Week

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