2009-05-06

gratuitous Javascript

Someone sent me a link to an article on indiatimes.com, especially pointing out something about the comments.  My reply:

---------------------

I can't see any comments; they are obscured by needless, meaningless, gratuitous, Javascript.

The amazing thing is that the comment leaders load along with the main page.  They're just not **visible** unless you have JS turned on.  In other words, they made an effort to **actively hide them** unless you have JS turned on -- it wasn't just an artefact of whatever brain dead web development software they're using.

My policy on JS is this: if I absolutely **must** use the site (like my bank, railway reservations, bill payments, and Ultamatix) I will turn it on.  Otherwise, a site that requires JS can do without my viewership and patronage.

And I most certainly will **not** switch on Javascript for a fluff rag like the TOI.  What happened once can happen again.

2 comments:

offby1 said...

I agree with you in general, but in fact I just recently uninstalled the NoScript extension for Firefox -- too many sites that I use are useless without JS :-|

Anonymous said...

I use vimperator, in which -- for the price of a file called noscript.js kept in ~/.vimperator/plugin, and a couple of "map" commands in ~/.vimperatorrc, you can type in \s to toggle termporary permissions, and \S to toggle permanent permissions.

So on the occasions where I need it that I did not already mention in my post, like youtube, for instance, I just hit "\s" (or "\S" to make it permanent)

Sitaram