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Re: Blocking JavaScript seems like a good idea

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On Mon, 15 Sep 2014, Rich wrote:

> Ben Bacarisse <ben.usenet@bsb.me.uk> wrote:
>> Rich <rich@example.invalid> writes:
>
>>> http://mortoray.com/2014/09/15/blocking-javascript-seems-like-a-good-idea/
>>>
>>>    My fancy new website is broken due to a script blocking extension.
>> <snip>
>>>    I don't think it's useful to argue for JavaScript, it's features
>>>    are well known and I find it invaluable. Instead I'd like to
>>>    consider why somebody would disable it. To my own chagrin, my
>>>    list seems to support their position.
>
>> Later:
>
>>   "As a website designer it?s a big problem for me though. HTML and
>>   CSS are simply not adequate for doing a lot of basic presentation.
>>   Used correctly, simple interactive features can provide a huge
>>   benefit to user experience. From simple hiding and revealing of
>>   information, to providing interactive forms that guide the user, or
>>   presenting voting and rating buttons for articles."
>
>> All of which can be provided without client-side scripting.  "Used
>> correctly" (to borrow the author's own term) such scripting should do
>> no more than improve on the functionality that is there for all
>> visitors. Many designers don't seem to be able to build sites that
>> operate perfectly well without JS, but with JS enhancements for those
>> that like that kind of thing.
>
> I suspect some of the problem is that these "designers" are unable to
> think past their latest idea for eye candy to realize that those who
> have javascript turned off (or like myself, blocked by default via
> noscript) would be perfectly happy with a 1994 layout of the
> informational content of the site.
>
> They somehow think the eye candy add's informational value (usually it
> does not, it just adds eye candy).
>
> I'd be fine with the text information looking like it was a 1994 web
> page.
>
>
But some of the problem is that this started not long after 1994.

What I think happened is that among that wave that came later, the ones 
who wanted the internet for their own purposes, they didn't look around 
and see what was there, they saw the internet as a solution for what they 
needed.

"Let's put movies on the internet, that way documentary films will get 
distribution".  Maybe that's true, but it loads the cost of distribution 
onto the end user.  It also changes the internet from a very interactive 
medium to a more passive medium.

"It's advertising, so we have to be slick".  Hence all that glossy stuff, 
competing with old media, rather than being intimate and using words to 
speak the truth.

And it goes on.

SOme years back, Kraft Dinner no longer included the instructions for 
cooking it in a microwave. You had to go to a website, and that was an 
awful website (I may not have even gotten to try it), it was about style 
rather than substance.  The company was using it for promotion, but they 
couldn't tell the difference between information and "flash".

So it becomes  a recursive thing, advertisers expecting the internet to be 
as they knew it, which in turn raises the expectations of the readers.

I saw it starting in 1996, looking at "community group" webpages, they 
were all so nicely done, but they were markers.  They didn't try to lure 
people in, they didn't have an understanding of a webpage (you don't drive 
by a webpage, you have to go there deliberately, so no need for a glossy 
photo on the front page), they weren't using it for topical information. 
They had a bad foundation, and it often never got better.

I remember mentioning something about this to someone running a folk 
coffee house and she said something about "it's too much work to get the 
information about who is playing up".  But around that time, 1998, the 
organization that housed that coffee house had a very glossy webpage, 
including some butterfly that flitted about. "Me stupid, me like pretty 
butterfly".

It is and still is a cultural clash.  Since some many of the 
carptetbaggers were coming for their own reasons, they never bothered
to look at what existed, what worked well.  They had their own vision, and
had some guy implement it (that guy didn't have experience witht the group 
so he couldn't tell the group how to be effective on the internet) and 
used javascript or whatever rather than laying down a simple page of 
information, that was readable by all browsers.  In effect, those groups 
and businesses didn't grasp that the internet was about "getting the 
information about".  It was condiditional to them, you needed a certain 
browser, at the very least.

   Michael

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Thread

Blocking JavaScript seems like a good idea Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2014-09-15 10:18 +0000
  Re: Blocking JavaScript seems like a good idea Tim Streater <timstreater@greenbee.net> - 2014-09-15 11:30 +0100
    Re: Blocking JavaScript seems like a good idea Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2014-09-15 10:34 +0000
      Re: Blocking JavaScript seems like a good idea Jerry Peters <jerry@example.invalid> - 2014-09-15 20:27 +0000
        Re: Blocking JavaScript seems like a good idea Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2014-09-15 22:23 +0000
  Re: Blocking JavaScript seems like a good idea Ben Bacarisse <ben.usenet@bsb.me.uk> - 2014-09-15 14:32 +0100
    Re: Blocking JavaScript seems like a good idea Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2014-09-15 22:27 +0000
      Re: Blocking JavaScript seems like a good idea Mike Spencer <mds@bogus.nodomain.nowhere> - 2014-09-16 04:26 -0300
        Re: Blocking JavaScript seems like a good idea Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2014-09-16 10:08 +0000
      Re: Blocking JavaScript seems like a good idea Michael Black <et472@ncf.ca> - 2014-09-16 14:34 -0400
      Re: Blocking JavaScript seems like a good idea Jerry Peters <jerry@example.invalid> - 2014-09-16 20:12 +0000
        Re: Blocking JavaScript seems like a good idea Mike Spencer <mds@bogus.nodomain.nowhere> - 2014-09-18 15:39 -0300
          Re: Blocking JavaScript seems like a good idea Tim Streater <timstreater@greenbee.net> - 2014-09-18 20:25 +0100
            Re: Blocking JavaScript seems like a good idea Marko Rauhamaa <marko@pacujo.net> - 2014-09-18 23:41 +0300
            Re: Blocking JavaScript seems like a good idea Paul Sture <nospam@sture.ch> - 2014-09-19 12:56 +0200
              Re: Blocking JavaScript seems like a good idea Tim Streater <timstreater@greenbee.net> - 2014-09-19 12:57 +0100
              Re: Blocking JavaScript seems like a good idea Mike Spencer <mds@bogus.nodomain.nowhere> - 2014-09-19 15:50 -0300
                Re: Blocking JavaScript seems like a good idea Tim Streater <timstreater@greenbee.net> - 2014-09-19 21:57 +0100
          Re: Blocking JavaScript seems like a good idea Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2014-09-18 23:32 +0000
            Re: Blocking JavaScript seems like a good idea Huge <Huge@nowhere.much.invalid> - 2014-09-19 16:37 +0000
              Re: Blocking JavaScript seems like a good idea Paul Sture <nospam@sture.ch> - 2014-09-19 20:19 +0200
    Re: Blocking JavaScript seems like a good idea Underactive Moth <underactivemoth@gmail.com> - 2014-09-16 08:21 +0000
      Re: Blocking JavaScript seems like a good idea Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2014-09-16 10:10 +0000
      Re: Blocking JavaScript seems like a good idea Ben Bacarisse <ben.usenet@bsb.me.uk> - 2014-09-16 13:57 +0100
  Re: Blocking JavaScript seems like a good idea Whiskers <catwheezel@operamail.com> - 2014-09-15 14:24 +0000
    Re: Blocking JavaScript seems like a good idea Mike Spencer <mds@bogus.nodomain.nowhere> - 2014-09-15 14:37 -0300
      Re: Blocking JavaScript seems like a good idea Jerry Peters <jerry@example.invalid> - 2014-09-15 20:20 +0000
        Re: Blocking JavaScript seems like a good idea Mike Spencer <mds@bogus.nodomain.nowhere> - 2014-09-16 04:14 -0300
  Re: Blocking JavaScript seems like a good idea Oregonian Haruspex <bob_davis_retired@yahoo.com> - 2014-09-19 07:40 +0000
    Re: Blocking JavaScript seems like a good idea Paul Sture <nospam@sture.ch> - 2014-09-20 02:42 +0200

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