5 replies to this topic

[BlaineSch]

So my buddy and I are having a little disagreement.

I think all sites should work even if JavaScript is disabled. You might lose some neat functionality, but it should still all work.

However, my friend thinks if JavaScript is disabled it's probably a web developer who turned it off on purpose. Since they turned it off on purpose they should expect some things to break and know how to turn JavaScript back on in order to fully use the site.

Do you know any sites that don't support non JavaScript users? I've haven't noticed a Google site that failed to work when JavaScript is disabled, but I'm sure there are plenty out there.

Thoughts?

[LuthfiHakim]

I agree with you. But not completely. Without enabling JavaScript you should expect some things could not be done. So the basic look must be there (and neat) but you should not expect availability of all functionalities. But you could warn the visitor to enable JavaScript, like maybe using a text that automatically hid by JavaScript.

There are a lot of sites that depends on JavaScript for their functionalities. Especially those that use AJAX. But I believe all follow the scheme I state above.

[WingedPanther]

It depends VERY heavily on the nature of the site. I work on one product that uses JavaScript to draw the navigation menus. After you log in, if you don't have JavaScript enabled, you cannot do ANYTHING, including log out. It also used JavaScript heavily for data validation. Can all that be circumvented? Sure, but it makes things a lot more user-friendly.

That said, it's meant to be a private portal. For a public site, I would generally avoid requiring JavaScript wherever possible.

[BlaineSch]

Almost anything you do in JavaScript just makes the user experience more friendly. Like the validation you talked about, or AJAX calls. They will make it seem more like a desktop application instead of a web page. However if they don't have JavaScript enabled I don't think that's an excuse for sites not to work.

I can see you point about the private software though WP. If you're expecting everybody to be using it at an office or something it's rather easy to make sure everybody has JavaScript enabled and recent versions of browsers.

[WingedPanther]

Alas, I'm still supporting IE6.

[Alexander]

Read: Fault tolerant coding, graceful degradation. It is an untold rule of thumb to apply that style of coding to essential elements (i.e. navigation, login).