Guy Gascoigne - Piggford writes: | I hate to tell you this, but lots of users switch off javascript. Unlike | ActiveX and Java the code that can get executed on the client machine | can't be signed and so it much harder to authenticate. | | It stops sites grabbing registry information on the fly (say my email | address), as well as making sure that unexpected code doesn't get | executed on my machine. | | As it happens I tend to leave javascript enabled, but there are quite a | few people who switch it off (even ones in the UK).
Yup. I normally leave JS turned off, unless I want to look at a site that uses it and I don't expect them to abuse it. Some time back, I worked up a little demo of one reason you might want to do this: http://trillian.mit.edu/~jc/demo/ImgPreload.html | Dafydd Monks wrote: | | >I've never heard anything about turning scripting off? Is everyone insane? | >No one in the UK has scripting off. Not necessarily insane; just ignorant of the dangers. There's a bit of a fuss right now over IE, which is the worst case. It seems the US Dept. of Homeland Security has noticed the problems and published a report advising not only turning off all scripting tools, but also switching to a browser other than IE. In the last day or so, there has been a huge spike of downloads over at mozilla.org. For those with Macs, the IE warnings don't apply. Macs have a thing called "Internet Explorer", but it was reimplemented by Apple using the Microsoft specs. It supposedly shares little if any code with the MS program, and doesn't have the egregious security holes. Still, JavaScript is what it is. If my little demo worries you, you should turn it off. This is an example of something that is a feature, not a bug, and won't be "fixed". Also, if any of the browser windows on your screen have ads that are changing, chances are that they use JS or ActiveX or some other scripting tools. This means that they soak up cpu time even when they're idle. If your machine seems bogged down, this may be part of the explanation. You can get back a lot of your cpu by turning off everything like this that produces changing images. Many browsers also have a control that turns off changing GIF and JPEG files, and this also saves a lot of cpu time. I usually change the setting to "run images once". To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
