[Gllug] Open Source Hardware User Group meeting on Thursday.

[Andrew Back]

On (14:24 27/04/10), Alain Williams wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 27, 2010 at 02:15:44PM +0100, Dan Kolb wrote:
> > On Tue, Apr 27, 2010 at 02:12:58PM +0100, general_email at technicalbloke.com wrote:
> > > Actually there isn't if you are browsing with Javascript disabled - does
> > > anyone browse with it enabled by default these days!?
> > 
> > About 99.9% of people on the internet?
> 
> Not quite, but getting close. Many years on most people don't care about
> security -- they see it as someone else's problem.

I'm not sure how valid the concern is over Javascript security these days,
provided you take reasonable care. You can turn it off, sure, but you will
close yourself off to increasingly large areas of the Web.

I used to, and still occasionally use, w3m and lynx. But in doing so I
appreciate that will severely constrain my browsing experience.

I guess at the end of the day it's down to what you are happy with. But IMHO
complaining about Javascript in 2010 is a bit like complaining about sites
with images circa 2000.
 
> I'm setting up a new bank facility and they want the documents (proof of
> identity, ... everthing that you need for setting up a bank a/c) emailed
> to them. I have asked them about encryption ... I don't expect to get
> anything back than 'Duh ?'. They also sent a couple of MS Word documents
> crawing with macros -- which OoO on Linux won't handle; I asked for something
> in a 'standard' format & suggested ODF -- this will prob get the same reply.

I can see here why you would be concerned, but I don't see how this relates
to Javascript, which is pretty much the standard for client-side web
applications, native to most browsers and ratified as ISO/IEC 16262.
Furthermore, it gives you an alternative to Flash [1].

So, as I see it the options are:

- A rather flat, unresponsive Web and browser refreshes etc
- Binary blobs of a proprietary nature
- Javascript

I know which I'd rather have.

Cheers,

Andrew

[1] - E.g. http://icantbelieveitsnotflash.com/

-- 
Andrew Back
mailto:andrew at osmosoft.com
http://carrierdetect.com
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