Posted by John Hosking on 12/23/06 16:10

Kevin Scholl wrote:
> Harlan Messinger wrote:
>
>> substitute for most of the rest. Conversely, many people turn off
>> Javascript for good reasons, and that doesn't keep most sites from
>> displaying.
>
> Just to satisfy my devil's advocacy, could you provide examples of these
> so-called "good reasons"? I have yet to see a truly viable "good reason"
> for turning off Javascript. Most reasons to date involve 1) confusion
> with Java, 2) some supposed security risk (often ActiveX controls
> mistaken for JS), 3) "somebody told me..." nonsense, or 4) stopping
> popups. The only one of these with any real merit was 4, but even that
> is antiquated given the specialized popup blockers in modern browsers.
>

Some sites (including, but not limited to adult sites) try to do a lot
of tricks like popping up windows on close or Back (I guess you
mentioned that), hiding or changing the link text in the status bar,
preventing use of the secondary mouse button (right-click), or showing a
fancy but inevitably annoying custom cursor, like for instance a string
of letters that follow me as I try to mouse around the page. Yick.

The best reason for me, though (because it affects so many more sites),
is that turning off JavaScript saves me from having to see so many
Google ads. This is a great Web-beautification feature, since most pages
look so much better without that crap (and I don't have to wait while it
loads).

Wishing you and the others in alt.html a merry Christmas.

-- John

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