How do I disable and re-enable a button in with javascript?

true and false are not meant to be strings in this context.

You want the literal true and false Boolean values.

startButton.disabled = true;

startButton.disabled = false;

The reason it sort of works (disables the element) is because a non empty string is truthy. So assigning 'false' to the disabled property has the same effect of setting it to true.