How many users have JavaScript disabled?
developer.yahoo.com
How many users have JavaScript disabled?
1–10 of 74 posts
Re: How many users have JavaScript disabled?
#2The 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 consider JS as a privacy and security vulnerability - disabled JS saves bandwidth
It never takes more than 2 seconds to get an idea if a page does work without JS, and another 2 seconds to decide if it is worth it to enable JS.
Re: How many users have JavaScript disabled?
#3That's 2% I could do without, no problem.
Re: How many users have JavaScript disabled?
#4It obviously depends on 1) who your target audience is, and 2) what your website is.
If the target is HN type people I'm guessing the number of non-Javascript goes up.
If the website is pure information, why not provide it even to people who telnet to port 80?
But if the website is a rich interactive application, even if it could fall back on simple form submissions, I'd say it's fair that non-JS users sees a "This requires Javascript" message.
(my answer is very different if the "interactive application" was powered with something vendor/platform-specific)
Re: How many users have JavaScript disabled?
#5The 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…
I'd reckon that most of them are FOSS weenies and/or security paranoid. At least, that's the common thread among my peers who disable JS as a matter of principle. They are proud of it, and they are happy to find a reason (like requiring JS) to snub your web app.
Then there are the NoScript people, who are willing to whitelist your site to allow JS if they think there is value in it. These people skew the numbers but are pretty reasonable when it comes to turning JS on.
Re: How many users have JavaScript disabled?
#6NoScript 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...)
Re: How many users have JavaScript disabled?
#7The 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…
I'd reckon that most of them are FOSS weenies and/or security paranoid. At least, that's the common thread among my peers who disable JS as a matter of principle. They are proud of it, and they are happy to find a reason (like requiring JS) to snub your web app. Then there are the NoScript people, who are willing to whitelist your site to allow JS if they think there is value in it. These people skew the numbers but…
I'm one of those NoScript users. Most sites get temporary permissions if they actually need them for something I want to do, trusted sites get whitelisted if I visit them often enough.
Pretty much all of the attacks against Mozilla that might have actually affected me have been mitigated to some extent by NoScript, so it's pretty useful.
Re: How many users have JavaScript disabled?
#8Could 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?
Re: How many users have JavaScript disabled?
#9Could 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 the site navigation links are rendered by javascript. In both cases the sites are inaccessible to non-javascript users.
In my opinion if you can provide the same content without requiring active scripting, you should. If you're providing an interactive experience that can't be achieved without scripting at least be aware that you're limiting your user base. Even if users have scripting available but disabled by choice, they may decide that your content is not worth enabling scripting for.
I'm also concerned that technical users who disable javascript by choice might not frequent a site like "yahoo" as much as non-technical users. I'm curious if a more neutral but still popular site would have a larger percentage of non-javascript visitors.
Re: How many users have JavaScript disabled?
#10That'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 complex then).