Turning off Java script at work
For a while now I have had Javascript (JS) turned off on my work computer, while white listing or turning JS on as needed. I was inspired to do this after reading an article titled, “I Turned Off JS For a Whole Week and it was Glorious.” I placed a link bellow this article if you are interested.
During my time of using the web without JS is just how much faster the internet is to use. Yes, there are many sites that break without JS. Often this is not a bad thing as you can still read the text you are looking for, but other times, the page will be blank, and you are forced to use JS.
One of the craziest things was the lack of advertising when JS is off. Furthermore, every site that prompts you to please turn off your ad blocker, you can instead just turn off JS and not get that prompt as well as not see any advertisements. This failure to show ads when JS is off reminded me of something the youtuber and Linux enthusiast Bryan Lunduke had said. (I will have links to his YouTube channel bellow the article).
Bryan had done many episodes where he mentioned a failure of the industry to maintain a set of standards that allowed backwards compatibility with older html version such as 1, 2, 3, and 4. We can take this argument into what is good web design. When you create a webpage, you want it to be accessible by the widest audience possible, this includes people with out of date software and people with text only browsers.
Currently, I do not imagine may people turn off or know that it is an option to turn off, javascript; but, the fact that advertisements do not run when JS is off does show that a lot of work needs to be done if we want our webpages to withstand changing software and design philosophies on the internet.
Author Daniel Pecoraro
Computer support specialist
You can find “I Turned Off JS For a Whole Week and it was Glorious.” Here: https://www.wired.com/2015/11/i-turned-off-javascript-for-a-whole-week-and-it-was-glorious/
You can find Bryan Lunduke’s channel and webpage here: http://lunduke.com/ and https://www.youtube.com/BryanLunduke