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Using the Web for a Day with JavaScript Turned Off

smashingmagazine.com

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Re: Using the Web for a Day with JavaScript Turned Off

#101

Post by romaniv »

Androider wrote: post #19
everdev wrote: post #8

Back in 2006/7 I remember we'd use "progressive enhancement" to make a site work without JavaScript and then add JavaScript enhancements for those who had JS enabled. At some point (maybe after the popularity of Google Maps?) nobody wanted progressive enhancement and it was totally cool to just ignore users who had JS turned off. It made web app development so much easier, but probably less user friendly. It feels li…

It does make development easier, and at some point it just doesn't make sense to support any longer. If the number of people who visit your site with JavaScript disabled is less than the number of people who visit using the Opera browser, does it really make sense to add [number of supported browsers] x [JS on | JS off] permutations to your testing workload? Is spending the time and resources on creating a non-JS sit…

> Is spending the time and resources on creating a non-JS site worth it

Comments like these make me wonder if any of the people saying PE is hard ever tried it at all. The whole point of progressive enhancement is that you don't create a separate non-JS website.

Re: Using the Web for a Day with JavaScript Turned Off

#102

Post by dredmorbius »

scient wrote: post #97
TeMPOraL wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, if you use JavaScript trackers instead of server logs, guess which group won't show on those trackers at all...

Most trackers have a way to handle non-JS clients by rendering a tracking pixel - a solution that has been out there for a long time now.

The anti-JS crowd also tends to block tracking pixels. E.g., New Relic's tracking beacon.

Re: Using the Web for a Day with JavaScript Turned Off

#103

Post by bitwize »

cptskippy wrote: post #53
bitwize wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Iron law of Web development: You develop your site for tge platform that has 95% of your user base, and tell the other 5% to join the 21st century because supporting them is not worth the cost. Back in the early 2000s, this meant you had to check your site in IE. Stragglers still using Netscape could pound sand.

Actually we use to tout Graceful Degradation back in those day. Most sites were either static, rendering information from a DB, capturing simple form input, or a combination of the three. AJAX wasn't a thing and the concept of Web Apps didn't exist. If you were checking user agents then chances are you were doing something stupid or lazy.

> Actually we use to tout Graceful Degradation back in those day.

I don't know who "we" is, but what was touted and what was actually done were, then as now, two different things. The client wanted something fancy, was only willing to pay developers who would deliver, and (crucially) was running IE as their browser. As was most of the audience for the page. Stupid or lazy it may have been, it's still what web developers did to feed their families.

Re: Using the Web for a Day with JavaScript Turned Off

#104

Post by 2RTZZSro »

staticelf wrote: post #2

I like that he offers solutions but honestly, more people are vision impaired than have javascript disabled so instead of doing all that work instead put it first on helping people with disabilities. > There is a danger that more and more sites will require JavaScript to render any content at all. What danger, exactly? While some sites that don't require a lot of js is nice you will soon notice that many sites you wa…

If WebAssembly is the future for large consulting gigs

Re: Using the Web for a Day with JavaScript Turned Off

#105

Post by dredmorbius »

reaperducer wrote: post #87
everdev wrote: post #8

Back in 2006/7 I remember we'd use "progressive enhancement" to make a site work without JavaScript and then add JavaScript enhancements for those who had JS enabled. At some point (maybe after the popularity of Google Maps?) nobody wanted progressive enhancement and it was totally cool to just ignore users who had JS turned off. It made web app development so much easier, but probably less user friendly. It feels li…

I built a website for a mid-sized health care company, and the primary goal was to communicate with as many people using as many devices as possible, not to be flashy. With that mandate, the site (about 300 pages) ended up almost completely js-free. I think there was only one page that had js, and that was for a calculating widget. js is great for certain things, but certainly not necessary for all the things it's us…

Sounds like a potentially sane organisation. Care to mention them?.

Re: Using the Web for a Day with JavaScript Turned Off

#106

Post by reaperducer »

dredmorbius wrote: post #105
reaperducer wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I built a website for a mid-sized health care company, and the primary goal was to communicate with as many people using as many devices as possible, not to be flashy. With that mandate, the site (about 300 pages) ended up almost completely js-free. I think there was only one page that had js, and that was for a calculating widget. js is great for certain things, but certainly not necessary for all the things it's us…

Sounds like a potentially sane organisation. Care to mention them?.

Not really. I'm still "the new guy" and I'm not sure how they'd feel about me outing it. Though the consultants keep talking about submitting the site for some kind of award. So maybe you'll see it eventually.

Re: Using the Web for a Day with JavaScript Turned Off

#107

Post by Rapzid »

Somebody should create a list of JS free sites. They can sell it at Whole Foods in the "medicine" aisle. You guys know what I'm talking about; "JS Free -All Natural!".

I think we've about reached the point of ideology on this. If you are considering arguing with the other side your probably better off arguing evolution with a creationist, or facts with the GOP.

Re: Using the Web for a Day with JavaScript Turned Off

#108

Post by godshatter »

The author talks about "noscript" and makes it clear that it's not a reference to the html tag but to the idea of surfing the web without javascript. I was waiting for a discussion of NoScript, the popular add-on for Firefox that blocks javascript by default and allows for turning it back on on a site-by-site basis.

I surf the web, as I have for many years, with NoScript turned on and as few permanent domains white-listed as I can get away with for security reasons.

I don't have any numbers to back this up, but my guess is that the population of people who use the NoScript add-on dwarfs the population of users that actually disable their javascript in their browser. I'm not sure how someone like me shows up in their numbers, but I suspect that I would be on the "blocks javascript" list and then on the "uses javascript" list if I am intrigued enough about the site to enable some of the domains it requests javascript from.

I don't know if web developers take that into account or not, but I suspect they don't because the number of domains I have to experimentally temporarily enable just to see some parts of some sites is getting even more ridiculous these days.

Maybe someone should design a new protocol that is built for interactivity from the start instead of one designed around static content with back-flips needed to make it usably interactive.

Re: Using the Web for a Day with JavaScript Turned Off

#109

Post by c22 »

icebraining wrote: post #77
cptskippy wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually we use to tout Graceful Degradation back in those day. Most sites were either static, rendering information from a DB, capturing simple form input, or a combination of the three. AJAX wasn't a thing and the concept of Web Apps didn't exist. If you were checking user agents then chances are you were doing something stupid or lazy.

Yet "Best Viewed With Internet Explorer/Netscape" was common back then.

I put one of those graphics on my very first angelfire site, because all I had was IE and I hadn't checked how it would work in anything else. When people started paying me for web development, though, I started installing browsers, operating systems, and even acquiring whole new devices (wap phones) to see how my client's sites were rendering in the real world. I spent whole nights agonizing about tiny tweaks and compatibility hacks to make sure everything looked good, this was the majority of the job in the early aughts. Now, in 2018, if you stick to a somewhat conservative set of html and css you can build nice looking sites that render great in any moderately modern browser across thousands of devices. It's insane to me that web developers now would rather descend back into compatibility hell by making their sites rely on a stack of unwieldy and opaque javascript.
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