In my experience it is not uncommon for a site to be unusable WITH JS.
In some cases sites are unusable both ways.
Since there are almost always alternative sites you can use this isn’t an issue. The large number of sites I find that don’t work with JS I simply tell my browser to not run JS on that site. If it is still broken after turning off JS I simply go to one of their competitors and use their site instead.
Sometimes I add my own JS to a site to override just the broken part while leaving JS turned on - it depends on how much interest I have in that particular site.
I’ as a user, prefer sites with Javascript, because with Javascript form validation can be done without sending a request to the server.
Anyway, I believe that e-mail, shopping and bill payment sites should supports browsers without scripting options.
The topic opinion failed. Of course you want to love JavaScript. Modern big website without JavaScript it looks like web-developer or his founder are foolish. Maybe web-developer can’t be able to do best ways with it or founder doesn’t understand the needs of the market. What are you talking about?
This is supposed to be a discussion about whether web sites should only work with JavaScript enabled or whether they should be friendly to those visitors who for one reason or another have JavaScript disabled so that their site will work for everyone.
This forum is an example of a site that is unusable for anyone with JavaScript completely disabled. In fact there are some things on the site that don’t work with JavaScript enabled and so the only way to fully interact with the forum is to switch JavaScript on and off.while posting depending on just what you are trying to do for a particular word in the post.
When I want to paste something into a post I am making I have to turn off JavaScript while I copy and paste and then turn JavaScript back on before I can post it.
Why do you have to do that? What happens? I paste stuff all the time and don’t have any problems. It keeps indentation and everything no matter where I’m pasting it from. (most of the time)
Understandable given that there is not going to be a newer version produced of that browser.
A pity because it almost supports it.
I am still waiting for another browser to support the rewind button that I use all the time. The only browsers to support it are Opera 12 (and earlier) and there is an extension for Firefox 3. Until I can get that functionality in a different browser I will continue to use Opera 12 as my main browser.
I hear ya. I spent time resolving some of the Opera 12 issue that made it into core, but haven’t really had the time to investigate some of its other issues.
I can’t say that I’ve had the experience with rewind that you have, but I understand the need to keep using something because it has a feature you use religiously (daily, hourly, what-have-you).
I just tried using Opera 12.17 and the ability to paste from the clipboard is indeed broken.
Oddly no error messages.
If I paste with a leading newline - no paste
If I paste inside of 3 backticks - no paste (gets the grey background but no text)
If I paste “normally” - it pastes
Yes but I rely on the rewind button too much (about every third action I usually perform is to rewind back at least one site and sometimes more than one site from where I currently am - it helps me to avoid having to have several hundred tabs open at once. All of the other security built into my computer will hopefully prevent most issues. Also my browser doesn’t identify itself as Opera, it identifies itself as some high numbered version of Chrome - so that should also reduce the possibility of attacks.
I have a JavaScript checkbox at the bottom of the browser so if I need to paste I simply turn off JavaScript, perform the paste and then turn JavaScript back on. - that works regardless of the backticks.
Yup. Other than the vanishing title bar; haven’t seen that one in awhile. I can’t give you web links because that is precisely the sort of site I stay away from (and don’t bookmark.) But all it takes is a simple search on any site that caters to web design questions, and I’ve seen recent (within last 3 months) questions/answers detailing how to do this stuff.
WARNING: I’m wandering off-topic on a topic, which I started after being reprimanded for meandering off-topic.
So, set aside whether JavaScipt is convenient or inconvenient, secure or not secure to users. My question is why is it advantageous to content servers/designers/etc to shunt it to the client side. I could understand why it might have been advantageous back in the day, when computing power/resources sucked. Why is it of benefit nowadays?
Remember that a server (especially if you’re in shared hosting) needs to share its resources. Every job that you take from it, will help the server to run faster on those task that are really necessary.
The fact that resources are now higher than before shouldn’t be used as an excuse to relax and be a lousy programmer. You never know how many programs are running at the same time in the computer. So, again, every job that can be done outside the server, it is a benefit for the computer itself… which can dedicate to serve pages faster.
It allows servers to process less and let the end user’s computer use what was mostly underutilized processing power to help alleviate some of the server-side rendering. Which even tho computers/servers have gotten extremely more powerful than they used to be, server-side rendering can still be incredibly hard on a server that’s trying to support hundreds or thousands of simultaneous requests.
On top of that, client-side JavaScript has matured greatly which allows programmers to do more on the client which can result in better user experiences by making applications faster, react to user actions & input, and more intuitive interfaces. As opposed to cold stale static web pages of yester-year when JavaScript wasn’t capable of nearly what it is today. So it’s simply the fact that we can do a lot more now than we used to be able to. Right now, JavaScript is probably the fastest growing and fastest moving field of the entire Software Industry.
Also another trend now that has probably effected it, is for servers to scale Horizontally. Which means they are spread across more, less powerful, servers rather than single, more expensive, servers with more processors than LEDs, like they used to be. Basically once you hit a certain point, it gets exponentially more expensive to add more power to a single machine that would be to buy multiple machines that add up to the same power, instead. And when you’re a large company, you’re talking about reducing costs from millions of dollars, to well down into the thousands. Reducing the amount of time spent on the server for each request by letting the client do the thinking about how to display the information makes a ton of sense.
Another factor to it is that servers can now be done in JavaScript and it’s not just some slow hackey implementation that made it work on the server side. It is an extremely high performing and well done system developed by some of the brightest people in the world, that’s quickly being adopted by many top tech industry players, like Netflix. This is a fairly recent development and is bringing even more people to JavaScript by unifying backend and frontend developers under a single language, which we have never seen before.
I’m probably missing a few things here, so anyone else is free to correct me or add more. I tried the best I could to keep the jargon down.
tl;dr
A Perfect Storm for JavaScript is brewing right now. And it’s going to get worse before it gets better.
That is really unfair comment about ‘The problem with JavaScript’. No matter which IT field, there’s always stupid programmers. No one was born with gifted programming skills. Many times, it’s the mistakes that lead many programmers to be a great programmer. Also, it’s the browser’s user who has the choice to visit the site. If you visit a site where it’s made by amateur programmer then it’s your fault. You are the one who ‘clicked’ it and you ‘risked’ it. The truth is that there’s always a bug on EVERY code. Anyone who says, 'My code is beautiful! It’s perfect and bug free" you should be very weary of that developer. Anyone who says, ‘I expect my code to fail one day and that is why I made sure to create many Javascript Unit tests to prevent it’. There is a difference in this attitude.
As far as JavaScript being required would depend on the requirements. For example, say I need a real time visualization of car traffics then you need JavaScript. Try to do this requirement w/o JavaScript. If it’s simply a static text of your portfolio then JavaScript may not be needed.
Personally, I would never join a project that has the requirement “No JavaScript”. Just IMO.
