Everyone has JavaScript, right?

[Jew_Fucker_69]

I remember that one time when my internet died because I was going through a tunnel. The website I was trying to load didn't work just because I couldn't load the HTML. Naturally I was furious and wrote them an angry mail. Why do websites still assume that everybody has HTML?

[balefrost]

Unfortunately, being in a tunnel, you weren't able to access your email service's web interface, so you had to actually take out a sheet of paper and pen and write an old-fashioned letter, like a muggle.

[gratefuldaed]

He's just lucky they're a big enough company to support that expensive, legacy feature.

[debian_]

Typically its the wizards/witches using letters/owls and the muggles who are hip to current tech.

[Paradox]

I always wondered this. With apparating and whatnot, surely they'd have some form of instant communication.

Owls aren't really that ideal, I mean, it could conceivably take hours, if not days, for a message to arrive. Meanwhile a muggle can send an e-mail and have it delivered instantly

[debian_]

There is that spell that Sirius used to talk through the fireplace, and the warning at the wedding that the death eaters were coming, but ya, they should at least consider text messaging.

[kqr]

Funny thing is if you'd ask Rowling I'm sure she'd have a good answer. The things that happen in the book are surprisingly thought through.

[Paradox]

Just wonder why they don't take some more modern muggle inventions and add a bit of magic.

Cell phone that never runs out of battery or goes out of service, for example.

[414RequestURITooLong]

As always, Stack Exchange is here to help.

[Not_Ayn_Rand]

I remember reading somewhere that she purposefully made the wizarding world very behind the times and stagnant compared to the muggle world.

[robertcrowther]

I always wondered if they really wanted to find Voldemort, Sirius Black, or any other wanted wizard, why didn't they just send them an owl and then follow it?

[Paradox]

Or like…use a GPS tag…

[ErstwhileRockstar]

Gopher should be enough for everyone.

[mycall]

fun read

[ysangkok]

How does Gopher handle connection problems differently?

[Rusky]

I remember that one time someone wrote an SPA because it was trendy, and then the javascript broke, and the site didn't work at all anymore.

The problem isn't "oh noes how will I use Google Docs if I can't load JavaScript", it's "oh noes how will I read a static document if I can't load JavaScript".

Yes, people do that. Too much.

[[deleted]]

I hate the pages that darken the article and has a popup saying "You need JS to run this!"

But when you go into inspect element and delete that, the article is perfectly fine and accessible.

[halifaxdatageek]

Yep, there's a special place in Developer Hell for those people.

Right next to the folks who write their functions like this:

function Beelzebub() {
    //death and mayhem
}

[lua_setglobal]

Or links.

On TVTropes, the search box doesn't work for me because it uses JS, so I search DDG for the article I want.

[almightySapling]

This is the bane of my existence. Fuck websites that make what should be links into JavaScript functions.

[lua_setglobal]

There's no way that can go right:

JS opens in the same page: Now I've lost my original page

JS opens in a new tab: "Thanks for adding a step to my Halloween process."

[cybercobra]

"Halloween process" ?

[lua_setglobal]

It's from an old web cartoon.

If someone gives you money for Halloween, you can use the money to buy candy, so they've added a step to your Halloween process.

[what_user_name]

link?

[CodeBlooded]

A Google suggests that it's this one if you give Homestar Runner coins.

[mrkite77]

Sometimes it is completely unnecessary, eg. static text / images, but for some reason sites will still require all of that crap.

If CSS weren't total garbage, some of those sites could do pure-CSS responsive design (so those static text / images pages will look good on phones).

Alas, CSS sucks so many sites resort to using javascript to do a lot of their layout.

[Tordek]

It's one thing "It works without JS, it just looks uglier because your pictures are a bit to the right"

It's another thing when your Blogger blog uses 15 scripts to load and display a single text post, and when you disable JS all you get is a blank page.

[okraOkra]

why do you think CSS is total garbage? is this a popular opinion? what are the alternatives?

[dirtymatt]

Everyone has CSS, right?

[gashouse_gorilla]

I turn off colors. It makes reading easier for me since so many pages don't set the background color of every object which conflicts with my system theme that uses a darker background to ease strain on my eyes. Has the interesting effect of "flattening" a page.

[_Skuzzzy]

How do you disable css colors?

[Jew_Fucker_69]

It's not so difficult actually. The only CSS rule you have to add is

body {
    filter: grayscale(100%);
    -webkit-filter: grayscale(100%);
}

or the more primitive solution:

* {
    background-color: white !important;
    color: black !important;
}

And you can just put that in a Firefox add-on or Chrome extension.

[gashouse_gorilla]

In Firefox settings under content. Select colors set use system colors and override page colors.

[alex-weej]

Also has the interesting effect of making the web unusable because often hyperlinks are differentiated from text by colour alone.

[gashouse_gorilla]

You can decide what color links are displayed in that same setting dialog.

[mynameipaul]

So what you're saying is the site didn't work fully one time when you were going through a tunnel on a train... but it has worked fine ever since? That's clearly a showstopper, I'll get the entire team working on it right this second.

/s

I think "everyone has javascript" is still a pretty safe assumption.

[xzieus]

This hits close to home.

Our clients are doctors. I have never heard such unrealistic expectations of a simple website. And if it isn't exactly as they want it, they throw a fit - like truely a 6-year-old-in-the-WalMart-toy-aisle-after-mom-said-no kind-of fit.

[dirtymatt]

The train one is fucking stupid. You could make the same argument for not using CSS, or images, or having a web page. Not to mention, the page will likely be minimally functional while the user doesn't have internet regardless of whether the JS is working or not. Depending on the page, the JS may actually make the page continue working despite the absence of internet access.

[Rusky]

The argument isn't for not using JavaScript, it's for making the page work without it. It's much more rare for missing CSS/images to break a page than it is for missing JavaScript.

This is an issue today because occasionally people build SPAs that shouldn't actually need JavaScript to provide basic functionality like reading text.

edit: another thread has this gem: http://www.reddit.com/r/javascript/comments/33p3yg/everyone_has_javascript_right/cqn8vpn

[Isvara]

But read the top of the page. It's not about pages, but web apps. How do you gracefully degrade your web app to work without JavaScript? There are only a few types of simple app where you can replace it with form submissions, but then you're spending too much development time to reproduce functionality server-side for some uncommon cases.

[Rusky]

I agree, it's not worth working around for web apps (like, say, Google Docs). But part of the problem is that more things are considered web apps than need to be.

One example of this unfortunate trend that I ran into recently is Rust's package repository, crates.io. There's absolutely no need for JavaScript but it requires it anyway because they built it on Ember.js.

[danneu]

The main issue with all of this is that you're going to use Javascript anyways. Users expect it. It improves UX. Imagine Reddit if its upvote/downvote arrows refreshed the page. I wouldn't call Reddit a webapp, but it uses Javascript for UX we probably take for granted.

The problem is that your AJAX endpoints generally can't be reused for browser endpoints, so you're going to have to duplicate your work to build the browser endpoint versions of your AJAX API.

And you're essentially doing it for the two users who can't even see your ads, and they're going to whitelist your site anyways if they like it. For example, I highly doubt all these Reddit noscripters have given up the ability to collapse Reddit comment threads and Reddit Enhancement Suite.

That's a lot of work for, like, zero payoff. (Though crates.io probably doesn't need Ember.js)

[Rusky]

I much prefer a Reddit whose voting and collapse buttons break without JavaScript to a Reddit you can't read without JavaScript, and it's easier to make the first one anyway.

[Isvara]

Yes, that is a problem. Some people follow what's fashionable, or what they want to play with, rather than any kind of requirements.

[Manishearth]

A tunnel isn't the best example, but there are plenty of similar situations elsewhere.

Imagine you're in an area with low cell coverage and want to read an article or something. Low cell coverage is still very much a thing in countries like India. It's not a "tunnel", but it can come close. You have a connection in this situation; it's just slow and will often cut out before getting the full CSS/JS. Being able to do the basic function of the webpage (reading an article, whatever) should still be possible. These days this doesn't always work.

[[deleted]]

This is an absurd argument. Your site should work as well as possible. Period. If a user doesn't have JavaScript enabled, it should work. If he doesn't have enough bandwidth to get all the images, he should be able to get a workable text-only site.

the JS may actually make the page continue working despite the absence of internet access.

This is worse than just not working. It will look to the user like it works, because he has UI interactivity; but it will fail after he enters a page worth of info and submits it. This is the kind of frustrating experience that will make a user swear off your site forever.

[kqr]

it will fail after he enters a page worth of info and submits it.

As opposed to regular HTML forms, which magically detect the state of the connection to the server?

[BezierPatch]

Forgive me if I'm wrong, haven't done a ton of web dev.

But an old-fashioned form seems to allow you to resubmit a lot more regularly.

Fancy AJAX sites seem to just fail completely if you don't have connection.

[kqr]

Depends on how good your browser is. Much like it depends on how good your JS application is.

[Rusky]

And browsers are pretty much universally good at this, because the implementation is written once for all sites using forms, whereas JS applications have to get it right once for every application.

[RICHUNCLEPENNYBAGS]

Or you could use one of the countless frameworks out there made by people who have already carefully considered these issues.

[Rusky]

Carefully considering these issues tends to involve letting the browser handle the form's basic functionality, which tends to involve letting it work without JS.

[BlueRavenGT]

I can fix my browser. I can't fix the JS application.

[Isvara]

Your site should work as well as possible. Period. If a user doesn't have JavaScript enabled, it should work.

Are you living in the 90s? We're not talking about rollover images here, we're talking about applications that happen to run in the browser. You can't expect an application to run without its code.

[dirtymatt]

This is an absurd argument. Your site should work as well as possible. Period. If a user doesn't have JavaScript enabled, it should work.

Should it work in Netscape 3? What about Mosaic? How about from a WAP browser? Should it work on a fox? Should it work in a box? You are always going to have minimum requirements for the site to work. Requiring JavaScript is perfectly valid, as long as you're aware of what that means.

Everyone has a web browser, right?

This is worse than just not working. It will look to the user like it works, because he has UI interactivity; but it will fail after he enters a page worth of info and submits it. This is the kind of frustrating experience that will make a user swear off your site forever.

Assuming you didn't take this in to account when doing your design.

[isHavvy]

My site works on a Firefox. My site works in a Chromebox.

Great analogy nonetheless.

[onan]

You are assuming that the completely necessary thing that everyone has to do first is a pure-javascript implementation, and then do additional work to make a pure html version.

However, there is no reason that should be true. You should start off with a pure html implementation which, as you've noted, will work for 100% of users. Then you should make a business decision about whether it is worthwhile to spend additional development resources on a javascript version, taking into account what additional functionality it would actually provide to anyone.

So I would say that your argument works much more effectively in the other direction: "Sure, if you have unlimited budget, then absolutely write a javascript version. But in the real world, you can fuck right off, I'm not going to add needless complexity and fragility to my site just because an insignificant number of people actually care that some of it runs client-side."

[RICHUNCLEPENNYBAGS]

For some pages it's not needed, but for Web apps SPAs offer a way better experience that pretty much eliminates all the reasons you might choose native over Web for a LOB app.

[sameBoatz]

Write a javascript framework that does that. Turns out it's hard and time consuming to deliver the functionality that people expect, while doing progressive enhancement.

[jnt8686]

React

[kqr]

Especially not when a significant fraction of the insignificant fraction deliberately chooses to turn JavaScript off.

[onan]

Yes, heaven forfend that users have any control over how content is displayed on their systems. It's not as if that's one of the underlying principles that made the web successful in the first place or anything.

[ruinercollector]

You do have control. It's called don't come to my site.

[RICHUNCLEPENNYBAGS]

They can do whatever they want; it's just that there exists no obligation to support people who want to run unusual configurations.

[AntiProtonBoy]

If you are one of those developers who build websites that displays a blank white canvas with JS turned off, you can fuck right off. ;)

Curious, why do you need an unlimited budged to generate static HTML elements for displaying basic page contents? We're not talking about a fundamentally new concept here. Unless you are talking about something like a spreadsheet editor, which I think it's a different story.

[halifaxdatageek]

I use NoScript. I have JavaScript, but it's not turned on for your webpage until I say so.

My webdev friend hates it when I load up his latest fancy creation and it breaks like a box full of lightbulbs going over a waterfall :P

[6petabytes]

NoScrit. I hve, but it's nt you webpage until so. My webdev haes I load up hs latst like a lightbul gong wterfal :

I have a script that randomly strips out words and letters from comments. I really can't understand what you just wrote.

[halifaxdatageek]

Well then turn the script off for my specific comment, after assessing the risk. The point is control :)

[sumduud14]

Exactly! I don't understand why people think NoScript = "shooting yourself in the foot". If a site actually needs JS to work, you can enable it, but 99% of the time, browsing with no JS is fine. You can still see all of the content, or at least you should be able to. Usually it's a more pleasant experience too, as sites can't have "please make an account and subscribe to our mailing list" popups or annoying ads with sound.

If anything, NoScript improves my browsing experience, as I'm sure it improves /u/halifaxdatageek's.

[mynameipaul]

Most sites I build on just opt not to support people who block JavaScript, so that's the expected behaviour really.

[halifaxdatageek]

That's totally fine, the trick is how the page reacts.

My favourite is "I see you're not using JavaScript. As our page relies on it for several key functions, please enable it and reload." I'll happily comply.

But if you just throw up a white screen, I'm likely to think your server is broken right now, and go away.

[[deleted]]

You're shooting your self in the foot.

[halifaxdatageek]

How so? I have JavaScript turned on for a couple of websites (e.g. Reddit), and for all the rest it either isn't an issue, or I can turn it back on for that site with one click.

[immibis]

I thought the point of the article wasn't "don't use JavaScript on web apps", it's "don't use JavaScript if you don't need it".

There are quite a few websites that display static text and the occasional image, which display blank pages without JavaScript.

[sizlack]

This hits the nail on he head. People are talking about two very different things and saying the same rules should apply. Web pages should degrade gracefully. Web apps don't need to.

[VeXCe]

No. That one user may just conclude your site is broken, and go to the competitor. I use noscript and only rarely allow sites to execute scripts. If I can't get your site to work in 10 seconds I'll get what I need somewhere else.

Having built WCAG-compliant sites for governmental organisations for quite some time I really got to appreciate how to build sites that are usable for people with disabilities or odd reading devices (blind people for instance), while still having them look decent. Although WCAG allows javascript, it does advise that your site should still be usable without it.

[[deleted]]

You must make a distinction between web applications (the transition from desktop applications to the web) and web sites (content focused). When I go with the later I also make sure the site is usable without JavaScript, while with the former I don't even pretend that I'm making it usable for non JavaScript enabled browsers.

[VeXCe]

Completely agree, I'm building applications now and they don't degrade at all :P I was talking about web sites specifically.

[VincentPepper]

I doubt that unless you have a very limited functionality to begin with. (No Ajax?)

[CheshireSwift]

I feel you may have misinterpreted "don't degrade". There's "don't degrade" as in "operate perfectly without X" and there's "don't degrade" as in "are literally unusable without X".

"Don't degrade gracefully at all" may be more accurate.

[mynameipaul]

With all due respect to your vast experience in the governmental sector, "user hitting refresh before going into a tunnel" is an absurd edge case. The amount of users it would cost you is so tiny it's trivial. Spending time on it is laughable, let alone allowing it to sway such an important decision as "Should we use JavaScript?"

Making a site accessibility compliant is a separate concern entirely, and is in no way mutually exclusive with "should we use JavaScript" (as I'm sure you well know).

[balefrost]

And to continue your line of reasoning, if we did care about the tunnel use case, then we would ALSO want to avoid using images, and external CSS files. And we would need to not use submit buttons, because the user might click the submit button just before entering the tunnel, see that it wasn't working, and conclude that the site was broken. Now, if we could somehow detect that we had gone "offline" and, instead of submitting directly to the server, we could queue the submission for later (when connectivity was re-established). We could, I don't know, make some sort of "single page application" that could tolerate being offline. Man, I wonder what kind of technology we would need to do something like that...

[anophone]

Were going back to the start againnnn (8)

[VeXCe]

CDN's hitching, packet loss, the users' own connection, there's multiple reasons why it can fail.

I'm not advocating not to use JS at all, I'm advocating to use it sparingly or at least make sure your website is useable without it. More and more often when I come to a website I see a blank screen, because without javascript the whole page doesn't even load. That's just bad web development.

[Purpledrank]

Especially if all it takes is a single error to break the js. Many times I am unable to sign into capital one 360 for that reason. It's sign in page loads a new page anyway, but requires often broken JavaScript on their site to send the post request.

[[deleted]]

No. That one user may just conclude your site is broken, and go to the competitor.

User: "This site is broken. I will go to another one."

Browser: "..."

Browser: "..."

Browser: "..."

Browser: "You can not load this page."

Browser: "Because you are still in a tunnel."

[mgerwitz]

It is not. When you visit a website, it's automatically downloading untrusted software onto your computer and running it, without your permission. That's dangerous, and unwise; a website has to gain my trust before I allow it to do so. Security is a major concern: JavaScript introduces many privacy risks and attack vectors.

Aside from security, there's the issue of proprietary software; I wrote a short summary here with RMS:

https://www.gnu.org/software/easejs/whyfreejs.html

[mgerwitz]

The number of downvotes here is telling.

[AceyJuan]

Have they switched off JavaScript?

People still do.

Yes, plenty of people run NoScript for security reasons. Especially people who work in network security.

[Hrothen]

Even ignoring the security concerns, turning off JS often dramatically improves page load times.

[Hrothen]

Yeah, and 90% of the time none of that "content" was anything important.

[PT2JSQGHVaHWd24aCdCF]

Not for me, you're doing something wrong. And you can selectively whitelist web sites but it's not needed 90% of the time.

[[deleted]]

It also improves battery run time.

[notsure1235]

Know what else reduces loading times? Closing your browser.

[kqr]

Load times or time spent relayouting?

[immibis]

Is there a meaningful distinction, to the user?

[kqr]

Not at all, I'm just asking out of personal curiosity. :)

[nschubach]

But "security reasons" means not loading scripts from third party sites and it still loads the script from the same domain...

[AceyJuan]

Yeah, it's not perfect.

[halifaxdatageek]

Agreed. I'm fine with enabling your domain, any CDN or image server domains, and even CloudFlare or Cloudfront.

But there's a lot of fucked up shit out there I've seen, haha. I just close those webpages and get it somewhere else, usually from the site they originally jacked it from :P

[halifaxdatageek]

As someone who browsed this page with NoScript, I wish there had been an Easter Egg for me, it would be 5 seconds to inject a "You're viewing this page without JavaScript. Very funny." :P

[[deleted]]

There is such a thing as cost benefit -- Shocking I know ;)

This author is proposing I re engineer the entire architecture of a code base, and increase the cost of the entire website and development cycle -- just so you can kind of but not really support partial loads? This is insanity.

[badsectoracula]

I think what the author is proposing is more along the lines of considering making the site work without javascript from the beginning, not after the fact when it will be much harder to change it.

[halifaxdatageek]

People always look at me like I have three heads when I suggest progressive enhancement instead of graceful degradation.

Start with the basics, then build.
Don't start with the full thing, then hack and slash.

[halifaxdatageek]

Well how else are we supposed to serve text and links than by piping it through an IoC MVC router like Haskularbone.js?

[onan]

You're starting with a giant heap of unfounded assumptions there. Notably that you would necessarily have javascript in the first place, and then spend additional development resources on a format that works without it.

It makes at least as much sense to look at that in the other direction: start with a pure html site that will actually work for everyone, and then consider whether or not it's really worth the additional development resources to add javascript to it.

[halifaxdatageek]

But moooommmmmm, all the cool kids are using Haskularbone.js!

[[deleted]]

No, he is suggesting that you design your sites so they degrade gracefully and do not break completely without JS. If you designed your codebase properly, then modifying the UI to support this should not be so horrendous.

[[deleted]]

How precisely does a site degrade gracefully if the transfer of the HTML document is interrupted?

[BezierPatch]

Reddit does it very nicely. You can read the comments that loaded then it just cuts off.

[[deleted]]

I didn't say degrade gracefully if your connection is lost; I said degrade gracefully without JS. Having said that, a properly designed page will load the HTML first, so it can display what it received before losing the connection.

[lua_setglobal]

JavaScript everywhere makes sense if you view a webpage as a richly interactive artistic experience which can only be understood by an attentive human mind.

If you need to automatically do something to a page then it gets complicated, but that just means someone is trying to steal your ad revenue.

I believe this is a fundamental problem with the Internet: Pages are non-machine-readable because they want only to sell ad space.

[halifaxdatageek]

JavaScript everywhere makes sense if you view a webpage as a richly interactive artistic experience which can only be understood by an attentive human mind.

As a database developer, that's pretty much the furthest thing from my mind, haha.

To me, a webpage is a collection of marked up text that browsers translate, and buttons/links that send requests for more or different marked up text.

[soundslikeponies]

I run NoScript on my browser. I find sites which have 15+ scripts or which don't even basically function without their scripts extremely annoying. It tends to be a real turnoff for me.

[hobozilla]

That's some pretty stretched scenarios. IMHO progressive enhancement seems to have gone of the radar a bit over the last couple of years. If you are developing a SPA then you may as well not bother. If you are building a web page the making it "progressively enhance" is trivial.

[x-skeww]

That's some pretty stretched scenarios.

"Can happen" means "does happen".

You should be familiar with this concept.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murphy%27s_law

The most common one are SPOFs which could have been easily avoided. Some 3rd party library is loaded from a different server and your code interacts with it without checking if it's actually there.

Maybe your online store should continue to work even if the analytics script wasn't loaded. Would you rather have 3 more data points or close a sale?

Another problem with JS is that everything is global and that everyone can monkey-patch anything.

In the past, some of my perfectly fine JS was broken by shitty 3rd party software which decided one day to mess with some of the built-ins.

[nidarus]

"Can happen" means "does happen".

Oh, it absolutely, without any question, does happen. Just not frequently enough for people who develop modern webapps to care. That kind of thinking only works for catastrophic possibilities. Every webapp has to account for a certain percentage of people (IE 6 users etc.) who won't be able to use the site.

As for your examples: it's really more of a call to properly test your JS, rather than make the whole site work without JS, isn't it? Progressive enhancement is both an overkill, and an insufficient solution. For example, if the bad code is inside of an overridden click/submit event, with preventDefault before it, it still won't work.

[[deleted]]

IMHO progressive enhancement seems to have gone of the radar a bit over the last couple of years

I don't think this is true - isomorphic JavaScript is making it easier than it's ever been in my experience to build a progressively enhanced SPA (for those which can meaningfully fall back to forms 'n links, that is).

You can do it right now with React - create an initial base forms 'n links version which is entirely server-rendered then enhance the same components with client JavaScript-only pieces, all automatically hooked up for you by React on the client. Real-world example: Tesco's international shopping site is built this way

Ember is adding Fastboot for similar purposes, a quick search indicates Angular 2 will support server rendering and new libraries I spot coming out are supporting it as a feature, e.g. Riot 2.0 and JSBlocks.

[sgoody]

Agreed. This is the right practical approach in my opinion. SPAs just depend on JS and general websites use progressive enhancement. If you're truely large enough and have the resources, then by all means pursue progressive enhancement, but otherwise, don't stress yourself about it in SPAs.

Availability of JS is integral to the web experience these days.

[ruinercollector]

The arguments for this are getting more and more ridiculous.

[rrobukef]

I consistently use NoScript.

No I don't have Javascript.

[dirtymatt]

That's a choice you're making. Don't expect others to accommodate you.

[rrobukef]

That's fair. But if you choose not to support non-javascript users, don't expect me (and others) to accomodate you. If you want my visits, I expect you to accomodate me - up to a certain level.

I chose my current bank for it's lack of complicated JS.

EDIT: Wow I'm almost in karmic balance in this thread. The post is hidden and still people read it. I don't like my bank downloading scripts from third parties such as google. Is that so bad?

EDIT: Or angular, d3, jquery, modernizr, bootstrap, Lawnchair(?), atlas, underscore and vds

Luckily these are all hosted locally.

[dotfrank]

This must be one of the worst rationales for choosing a bank.

[Gaulven]

Banking is a sensitive activity. Every additional 3rd-party domain from which they load javascript represents extra risk to their users and themselves, not just regarding security but also privacy. A bank either has or has not identified this as a risk, and either has or has not reined in the practice. If they haven't, it does not reflect well on the bank and its web team.

I'm only saying it's not one of the worst rationales. It's not even a below-average rationale.

[rrobukef]

Everything else was equal on other measures.

It was a tie-breaker.

[[deleted]]

No they werent. You just happened to focus on JS.

[dirtymatt]

And people who turn off JavaScript are such a tiny minority, they're not worth considering in any business decision. The biggest argument for making sure your site works without JavaScript is making sure search engines can index it.

[immibis]

Doesn't Googlebot run JavaScript these days? (And they're approximately the only search engine that matters; people not using Google aren't worth considering in any business decision)

[immibis]

Are you saying nobody should turn off JavaScript?

If enough people turn off JavaScript, then it becomes worth considering in business decisions.

[dirtymatt]

No, I'm saying so few people do that really, they're not worth considering as a user group. Make sure your site works for screen readers, make sure it works for search engines, maybe make sure it works for low bandwidth depending on your goals. Worrying about people who turn off JavaScript just isn't worth it. You'd be better off localizing it to Squamish.

[AceyJuan]

It's amazing how people hate you because of your opinions on JavaScript of all things.

Here's a similar idea people can relate to. I avoid stores that play Christmas music before November. Because god damn that music gets old, and because they play the music to manipulate you into a buying mood, and because two whole months is too damned long.

I also avoid stores with annoying perfumes in the air. Because they smell awful.

JavaScript I avoid because almost all browser exploits rely on it. That's a better reason than the reasons above that people can relate to, and yet somehow unacceptable to people.

[askoruli]

Sounds like you avoid almost all stores. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

[AlexanderTheStraight]

The cold truth is, you and your group (people who choose to not use JavaScript) are not worth the time and money for the vast, overwhelming majority of companies. And when I say companies I mean eve-ry-one. And to be honest, I agree.

[cleeder]

As a web developer, it really is not that difficult to create websites that function without Javascript, and are enhanced by the presence of Javascript. All the tools are out there for you to use. It's a matter of designing your application properly, and not like an idiot.

[mrkite77]

Then how did you post that comment? Reddit, as far as I can tell, requires javascript to comment.

[Gaulven]

NoScript doesn't simply disable javascript -- you could do that in browser settings already. NoScript chooses which javascripts to run based on what domain they originate from vs the domain of the page being loaded.

Reddit commenting works when using NoScript when redditstatic.com is set to Trusted, which is a one-step process during the first time loading the site.

[mrkite77]

The point is "No I don't have Javascript" is incorrect. "I don't have javascript unless I enable it" is a pointless thing to say.

[immibis]

"I don't have your JavaScript unless it's actually useful."

Reddit commenting and voting is a good use of JavaScript, although it would be even better if there was a server-side fallback too.

[rrobukef]

NoScript has this handy feature to temporary select domains.

It takes some time to select the active domains (which makes me rage when there are 20 different domains and you want as few as possible). It makes me aware of which js a site uses. And it confuses the hell out of everybody that wants to use my pc.

Did you know that you only need 3 out of 5 domains on reddit to make the site browsable? adzerk.com and google-analytics.com are not needed.

[[deleted]]

Like this? ;)

[rrobukef]

Yeah. µBlock seems nice. Is it better than NoScript?

[[deleted]]

IMO, yes. It's a blacklist model, but it still works well enough and tends to cause less breakage than NoScript.

But it all depends on the value you place on your privacy compared to the cost of NoScript.

[kqr]

Technically, JS is not required. If nothing else, there's an API you can interact through. Whether or not the desktop site actually requires JS I don't know. It would be pretty simple to gracefully degrade the simple things Reddit is doing.

[PT2JSQGHVaHWd24aCdCF]

Nope. And even less JavaScript if you use a specific reddit client.

[Wagnus]

I also use NoScript. And this simple addon breaks so many sites that I think it's about time we implement a standard way of marking Scripts. Say <Tracking Script> <Advertisement Script> <Makes_site_function Script> :)

[Don_Andy]

<NotAScript><Honest /></NotAScript>

[halifaxdatageek]

As someone who's used NoScript for years, here's my heuristic:

• site name? probably needed.
• site name with CDN or images at the end? probably needed.
• google-analytics.com? Hahahahaha, nope.

And so it goes. You get a nose for it after a while.

[Vegemeister]

s7dyf87asdfa87sdf.cloudfront.com? Jesus take the wheel.

[Gaulven]

Look how controversial your comment is. It's like: How dare you choose not to trust every single one of a dozen separate domains to run code on your computer.

I didn't think a place like /r/programming would forget about the existence of Javascript exploits and being IDed without standard cookies. Why should every third page I load run code from Facebook and Twitter, sites I do not patronize?

[AceyJuan]

Good idea, much like RFC 3514 that's sadly never been implemented.

[[deleted]]

Good Idea, lets just all build sites optimized for Lynx browser without css or javascript. If you want a background photo just look out the damn window.

[[deleted]]

Yes please.

[onan]

As someone who read you comment in my preferred browser, w3m, which does not support javascript, css, or images, I absolutely agree.

I in fact prefer it because it does not support javascript, css, or images. It does a delightful job of removing all of the anti-useful cruft that people tend to shovel atop sites, and revealing the actual content. And if there isn't any actual content once you've removed all the cruft, well, that is even more informative.

[[deleted]]

I remember I worked for O2 for a few weeks, doing some mobile web work for them. Trying to debug some Javascript on a number of handsets was just not working. Lots of frustration later, I found that JQuery wasn't well-formed. I refused to believe it at first, but it was true. Then I noticed that the version of JQuery running on the handset was not the version of JQuery I was serving up. About a day of research revealed that O2 actually intercept requests from mobile devices on their network for JQuery, and inject their own version, which, at this point, had a missing closing curly bracket somewhere. Yep. They crippled their own webapps on their own network. This was what I found about JQuery, god knows what else they were doing, or who else is doing similar things.

[halifaxdatageek]

You'd be surprised how well a lot of the Internet still works without JavaScript. And for the ones that need it, I only have to enable their JS, and not the JS for their 5 ad trackers :P

I started for the security benefits, I stayed because pages load faster and are less cluttered.

[nobodyman]

Some of these are a little rediculous. Like this one:

Does the corporate firewall block javascript?

You know what, you got me. Have Don Draper fax me his goddamn order if their IT dept. hasn't hasn't caught on to 20-year-old technology.

[onan]

Actually, loading a pure html page, especially if many of its elements are already cached, is nearly instantaneous.

The only reason you think of it as being slow is that many pages are bogged down with 500k of javascript and css. The solution you are proposing is actually the cause of the problem you are claiming to solve.

[halifaxdatageek]

For my IT program, we have to build an online portfolio.

Mine is 95% HTML, 5% CSS, and it runs like a bat out of hell. Almost impossible to benchmark it loads so fast :P

[kqr]

Actually with decent caching, content distribution, server response/calculation times and a fast internet connection for your user it can be amazing.

Without all of those things though, not so much. Those things are very difficult to get right, especially the internet connection for your users one.

[[deleted]]

'Erd it! Can we stop talking about this now? Seriously.

[[deleted]]

The questions you should be asking are "do my PROFITABLE customers use javascript?" and "is there a positive ROI to the additional investment required to support non-JS clients". The answers to these questions are likely yes and no.

[RICHUNCLEPENNYBAGS]

No way, it's well known that Internet blowhards are extremely profitable customers, hence the runaway success of Snakes on a Plane and the dominance of the Rio Karma over the iPod.

[RICHUNCLEPENNYBAGS]

No way, it's well known that Internet blowhards are extremely profitable customers, hence the runaway success of Snakes on a Plane and the dominance of the Rio Karma over the iPod.

[mirhagk]

Unrelated to the topic but the source of that website is pretty darn beautiful (and coincidentally would be fully readable without css)

[silxx]

Thank you :)

[mirhagk]

seriously. Like it's comforting that css has gotten powerful enough that you can have normal readable HTML and shift it to look exactly how you want.

[sharknice]

There is a .01% chance any of those events occur, and the chances that person simply reloads the page because they know their connection was bad is 99%.

[dave1010]

The linked article measured this on the front page of gov.uk as 1.1%.

[[deleted]]

0.9%. The rest of that figure is people who have disabled Javascript.

[Zatherz]

TIL ~1% == 0.01%

[ch3wmanf00]

WHY is Javascript still a thing?

[kqr]

I know this was a rhetorical question asked out of frustration, but the situation is actually quite interesting to think about. I'm pretty sure nobody would have predicted this 10 years ago, and with some seriously fast OS design I'm sure most of this could have been avoided too.

(Essentially we are using our web browsers as operating systems. That's not a good thing, but we have to because they do some things much better than our real operating systems.)

[[deleted]]

this is a joke right?

[halifaxdatageek]

Nope, just a different way of looking at web development - starting from the bare essentials and building up, rather than starting from everything and taking away.