Re: [Lynx-dev] a twitter user? is a posible solution, is help with ff.net.

[Mouse]

>>>>> [...] that individuals who experience Cesar disorders like
>>>>> epilepsy, cannot use JavaScript either.
>>>> I cannot see anything about epilepsy that would have any bearing
>>>> on whether you can use a JavaScript-capable browser.  [...]
>>> Its not the browser, it is the scripting.  [...]
>> Ah, so it's not actually JavaScript per se, it's really the
>> bells-whistles-and-gongs kind of user interface that JavaScript
>> tends to go along with?
> Actually, that feels a bit like the guns don't kill people argument.

I can understand that, but I'd say it's more like the "hammers don't
kill people" argument.

Guns are designed specifically to kill, or at least injure, and, while
they have other uses, there are comparatively few such other uses and
guns are not particularly well suited to most of them.  Hammers, while
they certainly can kill, are not designed with that as their primary
design goal, and they have plenty of other uses, many of which are a
better fit to them than killing is.

Similarly, yes, JavaScript can indeed produce seizure-triggering visual
effects...but those are not its primary design goal, and it has a lot
of other uses, many of which are a better fit to the language.  As a
simple example, suppose you have a form that wants to accept a Canadian
postal code: letter-digit-letter-digit-letter-digit.  JavaScript can
verify that the entered string fits that pattern without needing to do
a round-trip to the backend server, thereby saving frustration (filling
out the whole form only to be told that field's syntax is wrong) and
resource usage (the network bandwidth and backend cycles involved).
(Indeed, I'd say that animated GIFs would be a better fit for your
argument than JavaScript is; while still not really designed to induce
seizures, it's closer, and it's got fewer other uses.)

> If the result of the scripting causes injury, much like the result of
> some words and some guns cause injury, is there not some blame for
> JavaScript as well?

Some.  The tool certainly has to bear *some* of the responsibility for
its use.  But, when the tool does not come readier to that use than to
many other, far less harmful (even helpful!) uses, then I will
generally apportion more of the blame to the user than the tool - just
as, to continue the analogy above, if someone kills someone with a
hammer, I would place only a tiny bit of the blame on the hammer.

The major way in which the analogy breaks down is that it is really
popular to do visually obnoxious things with JavaScript.  But I blame
the webmasters for choosing to impose that sort of UI on their viewers
far more than I blame JavaScript for being sufficiently general-purpose
to do that.  You might as well blame your monitor for being too fast to
respond to changes in what the computer is displaying!

I'm no JavaScript apologist.  I use lynx too, and I consider it a bug
in a website when it fails for lack of JavaScript without any actual
need to.  See my blah post of 2009-Nov-28
(http://ftp.rodents-montreal.org/mouse/blah/2009-11-28-1.html) for an
example in a different domain (wanting cookies enabled instead of
wanting JS support) and some of my stances on such matters.

I just don't think it's fair to blame JS for how it gets used here.

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