Image of an old Kindle with its old web browser

It has recently been published on a very important website in the ereader world a tutorial on javascript and our ereaders.

The idea of ​​this tutorial is to disable javascript in the ereader so that how the ereader's web browser works go faster and smoother. But not everything is as beautiful or as easy as it sounds.

By disabling javascript in our ereader, you only do it in the web browser and therefore, ebooks will continue to have and use this programming language. So if someone has come up with the idea of ​​looking at it in order to make illegally downloaded ebooks safer, I have to say no, you can't.

We must also say that for the moment, this tutorial only works with Kindle ereaders. And if it works on more models, it would be with eReaders, never with tablets. If you try to do it on a Fire or Kindle Fire, as it is an older model, the result could be disastrous.

Why do you talk about removing javascript on my Kindle?

The browser that the Kindle has was born from an experimental project that was carried out in 2009, more than 12 years ago and since then it has not been updated or improved, so in addition to being an insecure tool for certain operations, does not work well with the most modern websites, which rely heavily on javascript.

The javascript makes the user can interact with the web in an easier way But at the cost of device performance, that's why many say that it is best to disable the javascript of the Kindle's wev browser.

Pros and cons of removing javascript in web browser

If we have a news or informative website, by removing the javascript we make only the information load, so the load is faster. What's more all other functions of the device will work better since the ereader processor has fewer operations to calculate. In Kindle tablets this trick would also be useful, we go on any device with a web browser that allows it, but we would also lose functionality on these devices.

The negative points about disabling javascript in our ereader are in the current internet trends. I explain. While it is true that 40% of all Internet web pages are made with WordPress and removing Javascript would not affect to get information, the rest of the Internet pages do not use it and the trend within informational web pages is to use static sites that are mostly built and use javascript, so disabling the interpretation of this language would cause these sites to malfunction and not be able to receive this information.

How to make the ereader browser work faster?

As we have said throughout this article, the trick to that the web browser works faster is by disabling the javascript. To do this we open the web browser of our Kindle and we go to web browser settings icon which is accessed through the button with the three dots. In configuration we go to the option to "disable javascript" and leave it checked. Now him web browser will work faster, as we have mentioned. To reactivate it we have to repeat the previous steps and mark it as enabled. Finally to say that this does not make it apply to the entire device and the javascript in the ebooks and it has we will continue to have it working, with its good and bad points.

3 Alternatives to this trick just as good

Afortunadamente there are more alternatives to this trick that will allow us to read our web pages in a faster, safer way and without losing functionalities.

The first of these alternatives is use a read later service, possibly it is the best option since in addition to improving the reading on our Kindle, we can apply it to any other ereader, change the readings between devices, or recover them at any time as we have read it in the beginning without worrying about whether have been deleted or changed.

For Kindle users we have the option of SendtoKindle and for users of other devices we have the option of Pocket. Both are very good and not only allow us to read the web pages in our ereader as if they were an ebook but we can also use the dictionary, underline or change the color.

The second alternative to disabling javascript is the use of AMP, a Google technology that many web pages have and that make users have a minimal, fast and functional version of the web. In many cases this version is obtained by putting / AMP at the end. For example, in Todo eReaders you have a version by visiting https://todoereaders.com/amp. Unfortunately not all web pages use this technology but it is very interesting and a good alternative.

The third alternative is the oldest but just as functional. It would be to download the news or the feed from the website through Caliber and that this send it as an ebook to our ereader. This Caliber function is very old but works very well and the only difference with respect to the previous ones is that allows us to have a great control of the readings, more than with the previous methods.

Personal opinion

For various personal reasons, in the past, in a past when I was sending pages with Flash, I came across the use of disabling javascript. It is true that a browser such as the Kindle or even the Kobo or PocketBook web browser are basic browsers and that by disabling javascript they gain in resources and less code that they load, but it is also true that it is present in all the web pages and that each developer uses it as he wants, either to hide things, to show others, to send data, etc ... and that disabling javascript to read two web pages can be very good but if we forget to enable it, we can have a serious problem when navigating. So personally I am inclined to use alternatives like Pocket, Sendtokindle or Caliber before disabling javascript what do you think? Have you already tried it? what do you think?