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How many users have JavaScript disabled?

developer.yahoo.com

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Re: How many users have JavaScript disabled?

#11

Post by lukifer »

jessor wrote: post #6

NoScript has 74,459,688 downloads so far ( https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/722/ ). You'd have to do some calculations with this to get closer to a real user number, though ;) I'd wager that the average NoScript user has at least two machines, so the total number of NoScript users is probably less than 2.7 million. ( http://blog.brandonbloom.name/2010/06/noscript-add-on-instal... )

I'm also guessing the majority of NoScript users have exceptions whitelisted for many trusted sites, given how many sites are completely useless without JS.

Re: How many users have JavaScript disabled?

#12

Post by DjDarkman »

mirkules wrote: post #10
marknutter wrote: post #3

That's 2% I could do without, no problem.

Explain that to a potential investor. "We snubbed 2% of our potential user base because we were too lazy to make sure that our site degrades gracefully." From the article, that's _6 million_ of Yahoo!'s 300M+ user base. I really don't understand what's the big deal about making sure your site works without JS, it's just some extra work that you're going to have to do anyway later down the line (and it will be more co…

We were too lazy to spend at least twice the time creating the product.

Shorter version: 2x more work does not justify 2%

Re: How many users have JavaScript disabled?

#13

Post by metageek »

mirkules wrote: post #10
marknutter wrote: post #3

That's 2% I could do without, no problem.

Explain that to a potential investor. "We snubbed 2% of our potential user base because we were too lazy to make sure that our site degrades gracefully." From the article, that's _6 million_ of Yahoo!'s 300M+ user base. I really don't understand what's the big deal about making sure your site works without JS, it's just some extra work that you're going to have to do anyway later down the line (and it will be more co…

It's potentially a lot of extra work. If your site's UI is heavy on the AJAX, a non-JS option basically means writing a completely separate UI.

Explain to an investor, "We don't have features X, Y, and Z, which our competitors have, because we were spending time maintaining the non-JS version for 2% of our user base.".

Re: How many users have JavaScript disabled?

#14

Post by lukifer »

mirkules wrote: post #10
marknutter wrote: post #3

That's 2% I could do without, no problem.

Explain that to a potential investor. "We snubbed 2% of our potential user base because we were too lazy to make sure that our site degrades gracefully." From the article, that's _6 million_ of Yahoo!'s 300M+ user base. I really don't understand what's the big deal about making sure your site works without JS, it's just some extra work that you're going to have to do anyway later down the line (and it will be more co…

If your web page is a simple marketing site, blog, or e-store, then I completely agree.

But if your web page is a complex application, having to support no-JS either shuts you out from from a huge set of interface tools, or forces you to maintain two interfaces in tandem. To me, 2% doesn't justify that, particularly when you can just politely inform the user that their browser has a significant feature disabled, and inform them how they can remedy the situation so that your site works.

Re: How many users have JavaScript disabled?

#15

Post by michaelchisari »

daten wrote: post #9
michaelchisari wrote: post #8

Could the argument be made that the minority who surf with Javascript disabled don't necessarily have to be catered to, since they will enable Javascript if they trust the site or find it useful?

There may be lots of reasons to disable javascript or not have it available at all such as security policies, bandwidth restrictions, limited hardware devices or other things you haven't anticipated. I think it depends on what content you're providing and which users you want to reach. I've seen text-only blogs that involve javascript in their visual design and cannot be read without it. I've also seen websites where…

Very good response, I agree that the base functionality should exist without Javascript, and I would assume that most who disable it are willing to forego bells and whistles, but will still use your site if the basics work. This also ties into best practices of having Javascript which degrades properly.

Re: How many users have JavaScript disabled?

#16

Post by DjDarkman »

eiji wrote: post #2

The follow-up question is "Why users disable JS?". How many do it unintentional because they think JS is Java(applets ...), or the browser does not support it. I'm also wondering how many people change the advanced JS settings in the browser (do browser other than Firefox even support them?). I'm one of those 2% for different reasons(open for discussion): - it blocks 90% of ads, because most banners are JS driven - I…

FFS, use Adblock You are so fuckin wrong, JS is not a security vulnerability it's a programing language.

Wikipedia: JavaScript is an implementation of the ECMAScript language standard and is typically used to enable programmatic access to computational objects within a host environment.

If you want real privacy, then why not just disable cookies? ohhh your login won't work... well then just disable your internet connection then.

Disabling JS wastes bandwidth because you can't do partial page replacements. OMG so much stupidity.

Edit: So many downvoting trolls. Edit #2: Even more trolls who can't even leave a reply.

Re: How many users have JavaScript disabled?

#17

Post by reid »

lukifer wrote: post #14
mirkules wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Explain that to a potential investor. "We snubbed 2% of our potential user base because we were too lazy to make sure that our site degrades gracefully." From the article, that's _6 million_ of Yahoo!'s 300M+ user base. I really don't understand what's the big deal about making sure your site works without JS, it's just some extra work that you're going to have to do anyway later down the line (and it will be more co…

If your web page is a simple marketing site, blog, or e-store, then I completely agree. But if your web page is a complex application, having to support no-JS either shuts you out from from a huge set of interface tools, or forces you to maintain two interfaces in tandem. To me, 2% doesn't justify that, particularly when you can just politely inform the user that their browser has a significant feature disabled, and…

Even if your users have JavaScript enabled, they still need to download and run it before using your complex application.

Consider GMail. How awesome would it be if you didn't have to wait for its "Loading..." progress bar? It takes 2-4 seconds for that to go away on my computer. If you design for progressive enhancement, you can interact immediately and when JS is ready, it simply enhances what's already there. If done right, it's all the same interface.

If you don't mind waiting, your users may not agree: Google and Amazon both have noted significant losses in revenue at page delays much shorter than 2 seconds.

Re: How many users have JavaScript disabled?

#18

Post by mirkules »

lukifer wrote: post #14
mirkules wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Explain that to a potential investor. "We snubbed 2% of our potential user base because we were too lazy to make sure that our site degrades gracefully." From the article, that's _6 million_ of Yahoo!'s 300M+ user base. I really don't understand what's the big deal about making sure your site works without JS, it's just some extra work that you're going to have to do anyway later down the line (and it will be more co…

If your web page is a simple marketing site, blog, or e-store, then I completely agree. But if your web page is a complex application, having to support no-JS either shuts you out from from a huge set of interface tools, or forces you to maintain two interfaces in tandem. To me, 2% doesn't justify that, particularly when you can just politely inform the user that their browser has a significant feature disabled, and…

I agree with you and the posters below that you can't develop two versions. But I'd like to point out that "it doesn't work because JS is disabled" versus "it's not pretty because JS is disabled" are two different things, and they are not mutually exclusive. There are a slew of sites that work without JS even though they depend on it for "fancy" stuff. Plus you don't have to support two different sites in tandem, it's not exactly 100% more work. For example, instead of an AJAX call (which returns content), display the content in a new page, i.e. Slashdot's comment system -- when JS is turned off, clicking on a comment opens it up in a new page.

Re: How many users have JavaScript disabled?

#19

Post by shaggy »

I'm a NoScript user and generally only whitelist JS on sites I use all the time and trust. I'm not overly paranoid about security, but the experience on the web with NoScript is far superior than without it in my opinion. What drives me absolutely insane is when a website is 100% useless unless JS is whitelisted. That instantly gets put on my list of sites to never ever go to again.

Re: How many users have JavaScript disabled?

#20

Post by estel »

shaggy wrote: post #19

I'm a NoScript user and generally only whitelist JS on sites I use all the time and trust. I'm not overly paranoid about security, but the experience on the web with NoScript is far superior than without it in my opinion. What drives me absolutely insane is when a website is 100% useless unless JS is whitelisted. That instantly gets put on my list of sites to never ever go to again.

Doesn't that depend on what the website is trying to achieve? Clearly there are plenty of sites out there whose functionality is necessarily dependant on JS. As long as they make clear that this is the case and what the website is supposed to do, is it all that bad if a website becomes otherwise useless without JS?
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