[Puts]

You really start to wonder what pot they are smoking over there at Mozilla. Standard things you would expect from a browser, like a way to easily disabling javascript are apparently left to third-party extensions, because oh you don't want to bloat the browser. But hey, video conferencing on the other hand is such an essential part of the browsing experience.

[sp332]

They don't let users easily disable JS because that breaks so many webpages, and they didn't want to deal with supporting users who complained that Firefox wasn't working. http://limi.net/checkboxes-that-kill/

[yellowapple]

The vast majority of the described problems would be solved if Firefox provided more/better documentation and help text alongside such options. Or better yet, they could be solved by Firefox displaying warnings if pages appear to rely on certain settings.

Javascript disabled and a site relies on it? "Hey, this site would probably work better if you enabled Javascript, but you have it disabled. Would you like to enable Javascript again? Or perhaps just for this page?"

SSL/TLS disabled? "Hey, so TLS is disabled, but I need it in order to show you this web page. You want me to enable it for you?"

The overarching theme here is not that there are too many options, but that there are too many poorly documented options with poorly documented consequences. Fixing that problem would give users the best of both worlds: flexibility and ease-of-use.

[m45t3r]

This wouldn't work, the majority of users don't read so they would blame Firefox either way. And showing message box every damn time one site has Javascript/SSL (and considering that almost every site nowadays has one or another) would infuriate the users that really want to use this feature. It's a lose-lose option.

I think it's fine to have these options as extensions or even inside about:config, where the user would never disable by accident.

[yellowapple]

> This wouldn't work, the majority of users don't read

If they don't read, then they wouldn't be using Firefox, since all web pages (barring a few exceptions) would be gibberish to them :)

> And showing message box every damn time one site has Javascript/SSL

That's not what I'm advocating in that particular recommendation. I'm more advocating for some sort of heuristic analysis when Javascript is disabled. There are lots of sites that do silly things like rely entirely on Javascript for rendering text (for example); those should be easy-to-detect as scenarios where a warning would appear.

Also, most similar warnings presented by Firefox already (usually about outdated plugins and such) have a way to permanently dismiss, or to remember a setting for a particular website, or some other way to mitigate the understandable annoyance of always throwing warnings. A "don't ask me again" would immediately resolve the problem you identified.

> I think it's fine to have these options as extensions or even inside about:config, where the user would never disable by accident.

I think that's fine, too. My comment was more about identifying the correct cause of various effects - i.e. that the harmfulness of the checkboxes being criticized is due to their non-obviousness rather than their existence.

[JonathonW]

> If they don't read, then they wouldn't be using Firefox, since all web pages (barring a few exceptions) would be gibberish to them :)

Not can't read; don't read. See http://blog.codinghorror.com/teaching-users-to-read/, http://www.joelonsoftware.com/uibook/chapters/fog0000000062....

Users don't read material that's put in front of them. Modal dialogs get dismissed without reading, non-modal dialogs (Firefox's doorhangers, Chrome/IE's notification bars) get ignored completely or dismissed.

[derefr]

In this case, though, the resulting page without Javascript would probably be entirely empty. Maybe Firefox could detect that and throw up a full-page-error kind of thing (like e.g. an SSL cert-failure error page) rather than a dialog. "There's nothing here. We detect <script> tags on the page, so you probably need to [enable Javascript]. Don't do this if you don't trust the site, though—you disabled Javascript for a reason!"

Basically, a heuristic browser-chrome view in place of what used to be a site-author's <noscript> view.

[x0x0]

This comment makes me strongly believe you don't speak to end users.

You can't get them to read prompts at all, let alone text on a page.

[yellowapple]

My comment actually comes from lots of speaking to end users. I cut my teeth on help desk and desktop support roles; understanding end-user needs is baked pretty damn hard into my blood.

And from those discussions, and from my observations of those users, 99% of the problems discussed would be resolved if it was clear what options actually did. Users don't know or care what "Javascript" or "TLS" are, but you can bet your ass that if the relevant checkboxes had at least a basic explanation of why they should be checked (i.e. "Don't uncheck this box unless you know what you are doing; doing so will cause a lot of websites to break"), the vast majority of end-users will happily leave that box unchecked until they ask someone more knowledgable about it.

[dblohm7]

or somebody on a reddit thread tells them to do it.

[xg15]

That's what sensible defaults are for.

But in this case, we're dealing with users who somehow managed to disable JS, but are still surprised by the effects and don't read prompts.

I'm pretty sure such users exist, however instead of directly basing your UI descisions on this scenario, why not trying to investigate where such behavior comes from and how frequent it is?

[derefr]

Imagine a user whose internet isn't working. They go into their web browser's Preferences and start fiddling with things at random "until it works again" (for entirely unrelated reasons.) Then they leave things however they just made them.

[cwyers]

Documentation only makes software easier to use if it is read. People don't read it.

[yellowapple]

By "documentation" I mean actually making the checkboxes better explained in their visible descriptions, or accompanying those descriptions with "a lot of websites rely on this box being checked" or somesuch. By no means am I calling for more things to be buried away in never-read manuals.

[pgeorgi]

And you think people read those descriptions when they follow the latest tutorial (in the syle of http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/2710/firefox_disable_the_down...) to make their firefox 25000% faster?

[cwyers]

Won't read it:

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/uibook/chapters/fog0000000062....

[pdkl95]

What a terrible article. So they have a problem of users who are ignorant about the fancier features in a big app like Firefox. So instead of trying to fix that ignorance with education and a better UI, they punish the people that used to use those features while justify those actions with claims about how important it is to nerf the internet to protect these ignorant users.

Anybody that read my posts in the recent HN thread on building devices for safety (and the Therac-25 discussion) knows that I advocate strongly for spending the time and effort to make sure a design fails safely. It would indeed be a terrible design, for example, to provide a checkbox or radio button that let you disable important TLS/SSL security features. As a potentially serious safety risk, those features should be handled with great care. On the other hand, disabling javascript or image loading is not a safety risk; the worst that can happen to the user is they can't use some webpages. Removing the ability to disable those features isn't doing anything for the benefit of the user, it's Mozilla trying to avoid having to deal with tech support.

Some things in life need to be learned by experience, and by limiting the safer opportunities to lean about how the browser and the internet works, Mozilla is working to keep users ignorant when they should be doing everything they can to give their users the education they obviously need.

As for websites that break without javascript, this i just an excuse for lazy programming. Such sites should break, and Mozilla should loudly send any users complaining back to the websites that wrote broken, incomplete pages. This is yet another example where appeasement only hurts you in the long run.

http://www.sitepoint.com/javascript-dependency-backlash-myth...

(there is a difference between reduced functionality (which is perfectly acceptable) and totally breaking)

// here come the down-votes; saying anything bad about javascript is easily one of the faster ways to draw down vote - probably because far too many HN reader's paycheck rely on the user not being able to disable javascript

// don't bother replying if you just want to assert that javascript is necessary, because i have multiple existence proofs to the contrary. This does require finding alternatives for a handful of broken sites. Such is the cost of safety.

[userbinator]

Treat users like ignorant entitled idiots, and they'll just continue to act like ignorant entitled idiots. Meanwhile everyone else who does know what those settings are for suffers, and it decreases the chances of future users ever learning they could do that.

If users aren't putting in the effort to read warnings/error messages, or can't put two and two together and correlate why things aren't working on some sites with what they did with the settings (or even better, apply some more critical thinking and possibly Googling to figure out why), I think that's a sign of a deeper problem and trying to patch over it by dumbing down software interfaces is a horrible direction to take.

To become knowledgeable users of Web technologies and not mere consumers, they must be allowed to explore, experiment, and break, then fix things. Taking away these settings discourages that. "The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing."

FYI Alex Limi no longer works at Mozilla.

[Frondo]

Virtually no one outside the tech world thinks twice about javascript. They have other things to think about. They're still users of the product, and they will never start tweaking it, because their lives are already full of other things.

[totony]

And thus they should not tweak things they don't understand.

If you don't know what javascript is, don't disable it and complain things aren't working...

[SquareWheel]

Good read, thanks for linking. Some points I'd never considered.

[astrobe_]

TL;DR: fck power users.

Well, fair game, given that those power users can switch browsers in the blink of an eye (). All my hopes go to the Vivaldi browser now.

The only problem is that these power users promote your browser and installed it on grandma's computer, and who make your precious extensions on occasion, often for free. Don't be surprised if you need partnerships now.

(*) Well, thinking about it normal users can also switch browsers in the blink of an eye, too. All it takes is Flashplayer update that sneakily install Chrome as the default browser. Just sayin'.

[untog]

Standard things you would expect from a browser, like a way to easily disabling javascript

That is very far from being an expectation of the average user.

[squids]

Disabling javascript is fairly easy on a page by page basis, right click on the page, inspect element to bring up the console, click on the settings cog, scroll down, disable javascript tickbox.

[justizin]

Could we avoid associating pot smoking with poor decisions? There's no science backing that up. ;)