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Toggling JavaScript in Firefox
by Alan German
As everyone
is aware, modern web sites are full of advertisements. I
can live with (and pretty well ignore) static adverts.
The things that really drive me crazy are video clips
and especially the associated audio tracks
that start up when I am halfway down the page. And, there
are also those pop-ups and fly-outs that pop up and fly
out whenever I happen to move my mouse somewhere in their
vicinity. Has anyone tried reading anything on PC World's
web site? If so, you get the idea! Most of this stuff
seems to be controlled by JavaScript so wouldn't it be
nice if you could just turn JavaScript off?
In Firefox, this is not an intuitive process, but many
web postings tell you exactly how to do it. Type
about:config in the address window, promise to be careful
(really!), navigate to or search for javascript.enabled,
right-click, and select Toggle in order to set
Value=true. Close the about:config window. JavaScript is
now disabled. No problem right?
Well, almost. Turning off JavaScript works fine for many
web sites (such as PC World!) but occasionally sites use
JavaScript to either do something useful, or will no
longer display sufficient information to be useful if
JavaScript is turned off. So, what we need is the ability
to toggle JavaScript off for most web browsing, and
toggle it on for just those specific sites where we need
its capabilities?
There are a number of add-ons for Firefox that claim to
do this task. One such piece of open-source software that
works without any real fanfare is JSOff. The program's
description says Disable and enable JavaScript
using a simple toolbar button. And, essentially
that's exactly what it does.
The underlying code toggles the javascript.enabled user
preference with just a single mouse click on an icon in
the toolbar. Actually, there are two icons. A green
circle when JavaScript is enabled, and a red circle when
JavaScript is disabled. Click on the button that is
displayed and toggle the JavaScript setting.
Now, I can surf in relative peace and quiet, and
establish JavaScript with a click of the mouse, when I
wish to view a web page that I know will display better
with JavaScript enabled.
Bottom Line:
JSOff (Open-source)
Bowen Li
Version: 1.02.1-signed
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/jsoff/
Originally published: March, 2016
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