Re:Google Hangouts without the Google: Meetings.io (YC W11) ...
by ben0x539 on Wednesday April 11, 2012 @09:42PM
(#3830594)
Graceful degradation has been a thing for a while and of the minority of websites that actually require javascript for their main use rather than for some flashy UI enhancements or advertisements, plenty remember to go "you need javascript for this site". And you pretty much have to do sneaky things with a flash object to begin with to hide the really obvious button to enable it that flashblock substitutes.
If the site just silently fails, I'll often enough assume it's just broken and move on rather than try to debug it.
I'm most likely not the target audience for this product in particular so I don't want to be snarky or anything, I guess I'm mostly surprised that so many web developers and HN submitters still browse with permissive vanilla browser settings.
Re:Google Hangouts without the Google: Meetings.io (YC W11) ...
by nl on Wednesday April 11, 2012 @10:05PM
(#3830664)
I guess I'm mostly surprised that so many web developers and HN submitters still browse with permissive vanilla browser settings.
My point is that you shouldn't be.
I've never heard a compelling argument so to why anyone should change their settings.
(I do have some sympathy for the argument that people should change the default blocking of third-party cookies in Safari to allow them, and in the pre-XP SP3 days changing the defaults in IE was sensible at times, but these are exceptions)
Of course they are "still" niche. Any browser plugin that isn't installed by default is niche - hell, any configuration change in a browser is niche.
In related news, Javascript is often required for modern web applications.
If using some plugin to disable features of your browser is something you want to do that that is great, and your business. But you shouldn't complain when it disables a feature of your web browser.