I basically use noscript not to block javascripts completely, but rather to filter out the ones I don’t trust. It lets you filter out which scripts you want to run, as there are many rogue scripts across the web that will damage the PC’s of unsuspecting users.

It also lets you create a “whitelist” of completely trusted websites and scripts. The websites I go to quite often and ones that I know are trustworthy I always enable scripting on, even the advertisements. I never know when an Ad might direct me to a really useful sight or product so I keep that option open at least on trustworthy websites. And when browsing sites I’m not sure about, I enable scripting only after I verify the sight to be safe.

It’s more of a security measure that anything else; don’t allow particular scripts to run unless they are completely safe and always allow verified scripts to run by default.

From a marketing perspective, I also don’t think noscript will make a significant impact as these security measures provided by it are more of a burden for most end-users than anything else. It requires patience to learn and get used to, something a lot of end-users don’t have when it comes to computers. In addition, many users may not even understand the concept of scripts and subsequently won’t bother with noscript, further hindering mass-adoption of this extension.

Just my $0.02. I hope my perspective helps.

Thanks for linking to my post about the NoScript addon for Firefox.

I think it’s bad enough that an addon can filter out javascript, but what about the people who turn off javascript in their browsers?

I’ve done that when I wanted to get information fast and didn’t want to be slowed to a crawl because some pages have so many javascripts that have to be downloaded.

If I were on broadband, I probably would not have turned off javascript, but back here in the mountains where I live, all I have available is a slow dial-up connection and a page loaded with javascripts can take (seemingly) forever to load.

Of course, many sites don’t work properly unless javascript is enabled, so I’d turn it back on when I found the site with the information I wanted.

I’m wondering what will happen to our online marketing if browsers offer preferences to disable some javascripts (such as ads or subscription forms) while enabling other types of scripts.

I never really thought about this until a couple of days ago.

Is it a serious problem? I really don’t know.

Hope you’re well and happy.

Act on your dream!

JD