Use of javascript

saint4

Nowadays, I'm seeing websites like the famed facebook that only function with javascript turnt on.

Is it safe to say that you do not have to code for those who may have javascript turnt off?

johanafm

I'd say it depends on whom you code for, the purpose of the site, availability demands and possibly revenue related issues.

Let's say you write a site for government transportation services targetting old or disabled people. In this case, I'd say javascript should be used to enhance the experience, not be required.

For facebook, there is a slight risk that the odd individual might not want to use their site since they don't want to turn on javascript or can't do so. Most people will turn it on, or at least specifically allow Facebook to run javascript. Do they need to care about the loss of a few dollar/euro/whatever per week? And what would the cost be to develop a site working without javascript...

If I personally develop anything, of use to others, and I don't care about revenue at all, I will make certain the site requires javascript and doesn't work in IE. I don't care about reaching a certain amount of people, and if they want to use my services, then they have to adapt to my site. Simply because I don't want to do the extra work needed and don't want to hear any complaints about it.

Last I heard a few months back, js was available in about 98% of the browser requests. But I don't remember where that information comes from. It's possible that the numbers would be 99.9% for certain target groups and <50% for others.
But as a general guideline, I'd still recommend using js as an enhancement only.

And if you require js, then make certain you inform everyone who has it turned off. It's highly annoying to find out a site doesn't work after you start trying to use it instead of straight off...

Kudose

I've taken the stance that if the user has a JavaScript enabled browser and they manually turn it off, it is their loss (mainly done for malicious purposes). All modern browsers support JavaScript by default.

Weedpacket

One significant factor in johanafm's "purpose of the site" criterion is whether it is intended primarily for presenting content or for user interaction.

In the latter case, JavaScript is pretty much expected (for accessibility it ought be possible to use the site with JavaScript turned off, with all the interaction being by bog-standard POST requests, though this may be infeasible in some cases (it's always possible but the interface may be horrible (how would you do an image cropper?) (Then again, it was probably the user's choice to turn off JavaScript)).

In the former case you most probably do not want to require JavaScript except to make things more pleasant for the user. The reason for this is simple: Google (and basically every other search engine out there) does not do JavaScript. If JavaScript is needed to navigate your site, Google won't navigate it.

As one example, on a site I recently worked on, all public-facing pages had to be fully usable and accessible even if JavaScript was turned off. On the other hand, pages requiring users to be registered and log in were allowed to require JavaScript (drag-and-drop arrangement of page components, etc); in fact the login box was rendered in JavaScript so that non-JavaScript clients never even saw it. On the gripping hand, that set technical limitations on who could use the site, but that wasn't my decision.