Jackson wrote:
Hello, I noticed that the website pidgin.im contains nonfree JavaScript
that it wishes for it's users to run.
This is a concern to me because
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.html
I wish for the JavaScript to be made free as in freedom as per
http://www.gnu.org/software/librejs/free-your-javascript.html
Although I sympathise, I'm afraid, on the web as a whole, this is a lost
cause. I personally would prefer that public web pages didn't use
scripting at all, but over the last year, I've have become used to pages
regularly producing runaway script warnings, because I'm using an old
PC, and the scripts are causing CPU usage bloat. Although I haven't
looked in detail, I think GoogleAPIs is responsible for a lot of this.
The Pidgin website is still responsive, although, amongst non-commercial
sites, Wikipedia has started producing non-responsive warnings.
The original concept of HTML was that it would be simple, and run on
almost any hardware, unlike the advertising authoring tools of the time.
Unfortunately, the browser (even open source ones) and standardisation
committees, are now dominated by people who are trying to create the
tools for advertisers that the original HTML concept wanted to steer
clear of. They are continually pushing for the lowest common
denominator level to be raised
HTML has become a tool for marketers, rather than consumers.
I am more and more forced to use a Windows Netbook to access web sites
because of their non-universal design, although I've also recently had
to fall back to IE, even on that, for one big internet building products
supplier.
I find the use of such techniques by banks particularly worrying, as the
resulting complexity increases the security risks and can make it
difficult to verify that the page is secure. Financial institutions
should use the simplest possible pages.
As well as the performance hit from AJAX, one big problem is that it
forces you to use one of a small number of tools, which are primarily
for visual access, and particularly for younger users.
I would note that the non-executable content of most web sites is
non-"free".
(Incidentally, the article you quoted mentions disabling scripting. The
problem with this is that bad design of sites means a sufficiently large
number of sites will fail sufficiently badly that disabling scripting
makes the web unusable for most people.)
--
David Woolley
Emails are not formal business letters, whatever businesses may want.
RFC1855 says there should be an address here, but, in a world of spam,
that is no longer good advice, as archive address hiding may not work.
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