[josteink]

For every one of these CDNs you use, chances that people with scriptblockers will use your site goes down.

When I see that a site tries to resolve scripts from 50 domains, for what should really just be static HTML, I generally leave.

So please. Don't use CDNs. If you want people to trust you, host your own damn stuff on your own domain.

[sp332]

If you've decided to cripple your browser, that's really not anyone else's fault. I use RequestPolicy with a hand-built whitelist of domains, and sure it breaks some pages, but I don't whine about it because that's my problem.

[vidarh]

Users that care, or even notice, are so few that you are noise compared to the number of users that will leave if the site loads slower, so the CDN is likely to be a net win many times over.

[MatthewPhillips]

How does using CDNs make you distrust a website? If someone is loading jquery.min.js from Google shouldn't you trust it more?

[josteink]

When I have see that a webpage has 20 or more scripts attached to it from domains differing from the one website I am visiting, I do by default assume they are tracking scripts from advertisers or facebook or similar ilk.

If a website needs scripts, I expect the website to serve it from a domain which belongs to it. For most sites I visit there are at least 30, sometimes 50 scripts from various sites and domains trying to track me, slowing down my browsing experience, and sucking up my systems ram.

Disabling those causes massive speed-ups. Plus it protects my privacy.

Install ScriptNo in Chrome (or similar for Firefox). You will be shocked by the difference. And you will be shocked by the massive script-abuse currently on the net.

And no, I will not wade through that long list for each and every page I visit, to whitelist whatever CDN you have decided to put in the same trustworthyness-group as doubleclick.net.

If your site breaks with those scripts blocked, I leave.

[MatthewPhillips]

This is what you're after: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_(protocol)

Not an insult, by the way, Gopher is awesome. Today the Web is an applications platform and that is not going to be reversed.

[freehunter]

Install ScriptNo in Chrome (or similar for Firefox). You will be shocked by the difference.

Yes, I would be shocked to be browsing the web circa 1995. Which is why I use a modern browser that supports modern technologies. I also use Ghostery with a whitelist to block tracking. That way, sites work like they should and I can browse this decade's Internet without having to go on forums and let everyone know I'm important and I'm special and every web app should work on Lynx because I said so.

[josteink]

My point was not that all scripts are evil, but if you want me to trust your site, then dont require me to trust 50 domains I do not know for a minescule 10ms potential performance improvement.

I find that a perfectly reasonable attitude.

[ehutch79]

To everyone else replying, i think it's using a whole bunch of different cdns he's complaining about.

Having that many disparat cdns is a net loss anyways by the time you do dns lookup on each one, you've lost the latency savings.

[sergiotapia]

You are in the vast minority. A tremendously small percentage of users will actually care about a non-issue like that.

[Nux]

Unfortunately he is in vast minority. Only when you start using NoScript or generally paying more attention to your browser's status bar do you start to realise the scale of the ridiculousness.

[ebiester]

If I ever ran a media site, I'd redirect noscript users to this:

"We love that you've come to value the great material we provide, but we make money off of advertizers. If you run noscript, that's great! We totally support noscript options for those who purchase a subscription plan."

[MatthewPhillips]

Subscriptions would not support the development costs of that.

[sp332]

Ars Technica seems to be doing fine with it. http://arstechnica.com/subscriptions/#features

[MatthewPhillips]

Doesn't say anything about being JavaScript free. Ads are not the only use of JS you know.