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Thread: JavaScript always On?
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From: Greg Gamble
Date: Thu, Jul 11 2013 10:23AM
Subject: JavaScript always On?
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Since Firefox is removing the ability to disable JavaScript soon, what does this mean to web developers who care about accessibility, like us?
Personally, I think it's a good thing. We'll no longer need to design pages that fallback gracefully any more.
But what problems do some of you see coming up ... or maybe I should ask, what advantages do you see?
Greg
From: deborah.kaplan
Date: Thu, Jul 11 2013 10:37AM
Subject: Re: JavaScript always On?
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Greg Gamble wrote:
> Since Firefox is removing the ability to disable JavaScript soon
Wait, removing it in the sense that it will break NoScript?
> Personally, I think it's a good thing. We'll no longer need to design pages that fallback gracefully any more.
If they are actually going to disable the ability to turn off
JavaScript, this is a terrible thing. First of all, Firefox is
not the only browser, so we will certainly still need to design
pages that fall back gracefully (not to mention the
JavaScript/SEO issues).
Additionally, as a person with accessibility needs,
I have to control JavaScript very tightly, because of all of the
pages where bad JS prevents keyboard manipulation in the browser
(e.g. capturing keystrokes that are commonly used browser
keystrokes). For example, the default Google homepage is
completely uncontrollable by keyboard without disabling
JavaScript, because the search box captures every single
keystroke. (You can disable that functionality, only if you have
the desire and authority to set Google preferences for that
browser, and not everyone has those.).
Deborah Kaplan
Accessibility Team Co-Lead
Dreamwidth Studios
From: Jukka K. Korpela
Date: Thu, Jul 11 2013 11:11AM
Subject: Re: JavaScript always On?
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2013-07-11 19:23, Greg Gamble wrote:
> Since Firefox is removing the ability to disable JavaScript soon,
What?
> what does this mean to web developers who care about accessibility, like us?
If true, it would mean a little bit of more work. You would need to use
an add-on that lets you switch of all or part of JavaScript. Not very
difficult, but could be annoying to some.
> Personally, I think it's a good thing. We'll no longer need to design pages that fallback gracefully any more.
So you mean that if you cannot directly test, on one browser, how a page
behaves with scripting disabled, you don't need to do such testing at
all? Analogously, if Firefox removes the option of not loading images
automatically, will you stop worrying about alt attributes?
Yucca
From: Greg Gamble
Date: Thu, Jul 11 2013 11:17AM
Subject: Re: JavaScript always On?
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No, they're moving the ability to disable JS to the config page. It can still be disable, but you need to go to about:config and update the "javascript.enabled" preference. The current link under tools > options > content is going to be removed.
Any plugins should continue to work, but not sure on that.
Greg
From: Greg Gamble
Date: Thu, Jul 11 2013 11:41AM
Subject: Re: JavaScript always On?
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Well, if they removed images it might not be worth using now would it? And to be honest, I don't waste a lot of time testing with JavaScript (JS) off since I have the ability to fall back to the server for anything that would be done client side. Any JS that does fail from lack of support is usually eye candy anyway.
Supposedly there are about 1.5% of users with JS turned off, but how much of that is from spyders and spam bots ... half maybe? And to be honest, if you have a site that requires a lot of interaction from the users and there is a lot of data being moved around then JS is going to be required.
I understand your "Anger?" at this, and my "thinking it a good thing", but there are times when JS is required and the time required to degrade a site gracefully to work without JS is getting harder and harder to justify.
Greg