Do you still design your websites and take users having Javascript disabled into context or do you place important needed features in Javascript without thinking twice?
If the user disables JavaScript, my code will break. If they are either A) so paranoid that they turn off JS due to security concerns, or B) malignant and disable JS to bypass client-side validation (I always use server-side as a backup), then it’s no skin off my nose - the code will not work, not degrade gracefully, and it’s not my concern.
If they want to access my site/app, they’ll enable JS. If they don’t want to enable JS, they don’t want to access my site/app. I’m okay with either scenario.
And what if (C) they are forced to keep JS disabled because of visual/perceptual/cognitive disabilities? So many sites these days seem to feel that sliders, videos and other moving images are a necessity - often multiple instances on the same page - and don’t provide any simple means to disable the movement. The only alternative is to routinely disable JS as a form of self-defence. 
If the site is unusable with JS disabled, I’ll leave immediately. If I can access the site and make an informed decision as to whether (a) I actually need to enable JS to achieve what I want and (b) whether I’m likely to encounter any major problems by so-doing, then I’ll go that far.
It’s probably superfluous to add that I use JS as little as possible in my sites, and where I do use it, I provide alternative content for those with JS disabled. 
What are your reasons for disabling it? What “major problems” have you encountered in the past?
How does Javascript effect your function on the web, with the ever growing use of single page applications? It seems that if you disable it, then you’re really cutting out a very large portion of the internet and a good bit of the productivity enhancements. Take Stack Overflow for instance, it works with or without Javascript, but with JS it functions more like a single application than a website.
I always aim to build any site without any dependency on Javascript, then add JS as an enhancement, not something to rely on. Unless I’m instructed otherwise I tend to only use JS where absolutely necessary, I’ve built several sites recently where the only JS used if for analytics code.
IMHO there’s a lot of “new” designers who simply throw it all together with a ton of JS to make it look fancy, and without a care for the sites visitors. These people probably haven’t heard of techniques such as image optimisation either 
Among other things, moving images cause problems for me. Depending on size, placement, number it may “simply” be that I’m unable to read the surrounding text, or it may cause nausea and dizzyness, etc. Multiple images which change on mouseover are also disorientating, although I tend to keyboard where possible, which helps to cut down on that problem.
Depends on your perspective whether I’m “cutting out a very large portion of the internet”, or whether a large portion of the internet is excluding me.
As I said, I will enable JS where I feel there’s a good reason, and provided that it has no adverse effects (for me) along the way. I use NoScript, so I can allow some scripts and not others, if I so choose. But it’s a pain to have to go through that palaver.
Discourse uses JavaScript extensively, and I initially found some aspects pretty hard to live with. However, both Discourse and the SitePoint team have made fairly small changes which have made a big difference from my point of view. I’m happy to enable JS where I can - it’s just that so often, I can’t.
Yes, I think that’s what the problem boils down to. You only have to look around the forums to find people advocating more videos, more slideshows/carousels, more “Web 2.0” features (whatever that means), generally more bells and whistles. Usability and accessibility no longer seem to matter in many quarters. And it’s because of the bells and whistles brigade that I - and others with similar issues - have learnt to habitually disable JS.
With CSS3 moving images can be implemented too, instead of old way with JS and setTimeout/Interval
By the way, some applications like “brand new” HTML5 games can’t work without JS.
(about) 50% of HTML5 features uses JS (Canvas, WebGL, Video, File API, native Drop’n’Drag, etc.), so you’re refusing out of these “deserts” and leaving yourself only with “main” dish.
It’s important to leave gracefully degradation, however, not every app can afford it.
Even though carousels have been proved to be ineffective eh?
Web2.0? Haven’t you heard, people are touting Web3.0 now - eeeek!
It’s probably superfluous to add that I use JS as little as possible in my sites
The same here; I use a Google map that uses JavaScript and on a new website I have to use it on one page as there is no workable alternative. My sites may not look “flashy” but they get the information across and last time I looked worked on the mobile devices I had access to without any special hacks. I try to stick to the KISS principle.
I tend to develop the core website with no Javascript. Part of the reason is mobile phones which can consume a lot more bandwidth when Javascript is enabled. Maybe that doesn’t matter in America but its a concern here.
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I try to develop without JavaScript, but more and more I’m finding for what I need to do I need JavaScript enable. However, I let the user know if my website is 100 percent dependent on JavaScript by having a message “Sorry, but the website needs JavaScript Enable”. Though if I had to develop a website for a client that needed graceful degradation, I could.
It definitely matters here - there are a number of countries who get better/more bandwidth than most US carriers provide. Part of why I avoid most “streaming” services as much as humanly possible.
there are a number of countries who get better/more bandwidth than most US carriers provide.
I was surprised to see how bad broadband could be in America and the prices some companies charge.
It’s a problem here, too. We have decent broadband, but the mobile coverage is pretty poor.
I would say Web 3.0 is starting now. Single page apps that act more like locally installed programs than websites. Leverage more on the computer that probably isn’t doing anything other than looking at your page, than on the server. Doing it this way really opens up a ton of possibilities and it’s not tacked on like it was with Flash (not to mention proprietary). Going a little in reverse and letting the browser act like a remote terminal, than a text renderer but letting it do more of the processing at the same time.
That article is almost comical. It reads like one of those “in the year 2000” articles from the 1950’s.
Thank you. I never thought about it this way. You’re probably the first person I’ve seen to have a legitimate reason, everything else I’ve ever seen was either paranoia (tracking stuff) or a leftover from the late 90’s and early 2000s, where the only time you saw JS was when someone wanting a bunch of annoying tacky crap all over the screen.
As @bluedreamer mentioned though, you’re never really going to move away from the tacky misused overloaded crap though… because it’s still here.
Not necessarily, I just think that the web is moving into a new direction. One of Jeff Atwood’s responses to the Ruby criticism on Discourse was something along the lines of it didn’t matter what the backend was because most of it was Javascript anyway. (I’m not going to quote him, because I forget his exact words)
Web 3.0 is long dead. The last time I saw it referenced in a book was about six or seven years ago. I haven’t seen any recent sites adopting it either - it was an extremely poor idea.
As for assuming JavaScript is enabled - I have come across lots of sites that are broken when JavaScript is enabled because of the poorly written antiquated JavaScript it uses. Fortunately most of those sites will work with JavaScript off.
As decent browsers allow you to enable/disable JavaScript on a site by site basis it is relatively easy to enable JavaScript for the sites that work properly and where JavaScript makes the site easier to interact with and disable it for all the sites that misuse it.
It is not quite so easy to do but you can add your own JavaScript to your browser to disable all the antiquated commands that tend not to work properly. For example: I have the JavaScript in my browser set to strip out <noscript> tags (as they are long obsolete) and to override document.write() alert() confirm() and other obsolete commands so that they do nothing. That means that more sites actually work without having to actually disable JavaScript.
[My former user name was Frank S. Due to a failed password reset, i.e. sending of the new password, I had to create a new account, unless I would want to wait longer to participate.]
After having gone over the pro and contra arguments, I see no valid reason with sufficient weight to start coding for users with JS disabled. On the contrary:
- My clients won’t want to pay for for dual-mode sites.
- If a client wants a site without any flashy stuff, I can make that with JS as well. (And I don’t propose much flashy stuff anyway, for a number of reasons.)
- Accessibility can be completely independent of the use of JS.
- The general public doesn’t even know how to disable JS in their browser, and in FF it is not even possible anymore, on a normal user level.
- I would think that the few users that have JS disabled are generally nerds with a psychological derangement, e.g. paranoia or an overly ‘developed’ self-importance.
- Coding without JS limits my options enormously, and dual-mode coding makes the coding significantly more difficult.
It is a good idea, IMO, to code as much as possible with a minimum of JS, due to the ever increasing mobile surfing. As such, native/vanilla JS has my preference over jQuery or other libraries.
Sorry for taking so long to respond to this, @TechnoBear ; .
When I code vanilla JS or jQuery, I’m coding for DOM traversal/manipulation, submitting forms via AJaX, doing calculations (which WebWorkers are FANTASTIC for, if it’s something HUGE), stuff like that. I don’t use jQuery .show() or .hide() unless the client DEMANDS it (which causes me to wonder if it will be worth working with them). So if visual/perceptual/cognitive is an issue, the sites/apps I work on can (most likely) be safely added to a whitelist.
Fair dos.
Let say we’re making GMail as non-Javascript site. My guess is that it’ll be very slow and clunky looking GUI due to not having dynamic content… Heck… I would NEVER use any email site that does not use JavaScript. There are MILLIONS of people who use GMAIL today. Try to access GMAIL without JS and you’ll get an error saying JS is required.
