11 Good point about analytics

It’s odd that I would forget that most commercial analytics solutions use JavaScript when here we are discussing the requiring of JavaScript in public web applications!

Brandon: You would be surprised at the estimated number of individuals browsing the web without JavaScript and the empirical number of individuals that I’ve measured on the sites I’ve moderated. Between people using accessibility tools, folks that have turned it off without knowing what it is and people using computers under the charge of overly-paranoid IT managers, there are plenty of these folks to go around.

posted at 06:18 pm on March 27, 2007 by John Bradley

12 Horse Barns

…designing for non-javascript users is like building a parking lot with a horse barn just in case someone doesn’t have a car. Those users are a niche group and the handful that they are should probably have their own pda version of a site.
I’ve never in my life used a browser that didn’t have javascript.

It doesn’t really matter if *you’ve* never used a browser with no javascript. There are a number of people who don’t. Having JavaScript turned off isn’t like riding a horse instead of a car. It’s like having a car without cruise control. Imagine a highway, or parking lot, that didn’t allow cars without cruise control. Content should never be replaced by presentation. There is no reason for any web site to hide (intentionally or not) its information from me simply because I have a technology turned off.

There are lots of people who access the web using screen readers which certainly don’t use JavaScript. And the number of users accessing the Web from mobile phones will become greater than the people using PC’s. In some areas, where PC’s aren’t available, a mobile phone is the only way to access the Web.

When I was first learning web design, before I started doing it professionally, I designed sites for IE users only. Even though I was in the majority, I wasn’t the only person out there. So even if you never use a browser without javascript, chances are someone else does.

posted at 06:28 pm on March 27, 2007 by Aaron Burrows

13 Marketing Driven

I think the main reason sites such as lala rely so much on Javascript is because today, Javascript is used in the same way Flash used to be used. It can be done and it looks great so Marketing want it. And when Marketing want something, Marketing generally Marketing get it. The fear is that if they don’t use AJAX everywhere, their competitors will and sales will be lost. I think it’s great to encourage web standards, but we need to change the Marketing mindset of these companies.

Using alistapart.com is a great experience (creep!) and it’s a great experience with virtually no AJAX functionality. We need to show more companies how good websites can be created without a reliance on AJAX and then things will hopefully start to change. It’s all well and good inspiring the coders, but they rarely make the final decisions about how the product functions.

posted at 07:46 pm on March 27, 2007 by Matt Newboult

14 The message buried beneath the poor analogy

I just read somewhere that web 3.0 is really content or words like that. I like the point made in this article and the examples are self-explaining, but this must have been the worse analogy I have read in a long time (and again, very US centred. Try getting service like that in your average French or Dutch restaurant; you won’t. But the food is still great).

On the point of javascript, a lot of large corporations have the habit of letting their proxy servers rip out all javascript from pages served. If your website caters towards professional use within corporations you might find yourself in trouble.

posted at 09:59 pm on March 27, 2007 by Martijn ten Napel

15 JavaScript

Knowing your audience is very important, and I’d say that most people who are swapping albums on the net are probably web geeks, with new shiney dells. I doubt they are using their pda’s.

Geeks don’t use Dells. Friends don’t let friends buy Dell. More important, though, you’re guessing. If you’re designing a website whose users are music lovers, are you sure the will never want to use it in a music store?

It’s just my opinion, but designing for non-javascript users is like building a parking lot with a horse barn just in case someone doesn’t have a car.

More like building a parking lot with handicapped parking spaces. Sure, most of your customers will have two good legs, but can you, or any business, afford to turn away the ones who don’t? Or would you make your parking spaces too small to put a SUV in because you’ve never in your life driven anything bigger than a Honda Civic?

Those users are a niche group and the handful that they are should probably have their own pda version of a site.

Those without JavaScript include: Cell phone users. PDA users. Blind people (wouldn’t they be a prime market for CD swapping?). Search engines. Internet Explorer users who choose maximum security (a wise choice with IE). Again, because they’re so important, search engines. Probably many more that I’ve missed; I need more caffeine.

I’ve never in my life used a browser that didn’t have javascript.

I’ve never in my life owned a SUV, but if I ran a tire store, I’d be a fool not to sell tires for them. It’s not about you.

Commercial website design isn’t about showing off how much you know. It’s not showing off how many “kewl” things you can do. It’s about one thing, and one thing only: Making money move from someone else’s pocket into your own. Whatever makes more of that money move from more pockets is good; whatever impedes the movement of that money, or reduces the number of source pockets, is bad.

For example, if you owned an outdoor goods store, wouldn’t it be a cool idea to have the entrance on the second floor, and have a climbing wall in front to get to it? That would be new! different! unique! But, even leaving out handicapped accessibility requirements (and how much the UPS guy would hate you) do you think any store owner would be that bloody stupid?

Sure, maybe most of the customers would be experienced climbers and would have no problem with the wall. Some might even think it’s fun, not just annoying. But what about the non-climbers shopping for birthday presents for climbers? What about the person who just needs fifty meters of really good rope? What about the person bringing a spouse’s sleeping bag in to get a new zipper? What about the climber with one arm in a cast? For that matter, what about the newspaper reporter coming to do a local business profile on your store? (aka a search engine spider)

How many of those customers can you really afford to turn away at the door?

People don’t use your website to ooh and aah over how kewl your design is. They don’t use it to be impressed with your mastery of the hottest new technologies. They don’t use it to admire how smart you are. They use it to get their stuff done, as quickly, easily, and painlessly as possible. The more experienced on the Web they are, the less impressed they are with glitz and the more they want to just do what they went there for and get it over with. If you put speedbumps in the way of that, whether it’s unnecessary browser requirements, or long load times, or inconvenient navigation systems, or anything else, they’ll go to some other website — namely your competitor’s — where they can just do what they need to do and get back to their lives. And your competitor who knows what it’s all about — who knows it’s about what the customer wants — will eat your lunch.

posted at 10:15 pm on March 27, 2007 by Jean McGuire

16 Boo to conditional comments!

Great article (and thanks for the plug ;)). I’m with you all the way .. except where you talk favourably about conditional comments.

Conditional comments are HTML hacks, and as such, inherently worse than CSS hacks. HTML is content and therefore sacrosanct, but CSS is design and in a sense arbitrary; CSS is the proper place for hacking.

And they’re not just HTML hacks – they’re proprietary HTML hacks! At best they solve a problem for one vendor only; at worse they’re playing the game by IE’s rules, and that puts even more power in Microsoft’s stable … and they have way too much of that already!

posted at 06:14 am on March 28, 2007 by James Edwards

17 Do people even read the articles anymore?

I can appreciate the article. Knowing your audience is very important, and I’d say that most people who are swapping albums on the net are probably web geeks, with new shiney dells. I doubt they are using their pda’s.

Consider this: you’re a Lala user and you’re browsing around a record shop and stumble upon the new Arcade Fire album. You didn’t realize it had come out and you want to add it to your Lala wishlist before you forget. If your phone’s browser doesn’t support JavaScript (or you keep it turned off to reduce your download time/usage fees), you’re gonna be staring at a screen with good information about what Lala is (Figure 1-4), followed by that message saying you need JavaScript to use the site.

Or were you somehow saying that people who buy shiny new Dells aren’t in the same market as people who shiny buy new cellphones?

posted at 07:42 am on March 28, 2007 by Justin Bell

18 Thought out Javascript

I think most of the comments here point to the fact that one cannot assume how someone is viewing your website. That’s the point argued in this article and that’s the bottom line.

I love the approach of building from the ground up. For example. If you build a website with an edit link to edit a users details, then apply Javascript on top. The Javascript’s first job will be to remove the link using DOM scripting and then add something like edit-in-place. The result is an interface that works well with request/response calls to the server and with AJAX. This takes more time but caters for so many more people. All of this involves good design and lots of it.

A point about who we build sites for and why. We need to build sites everyone can use to make money but also to make the web a decent place to be. Catering for all types of people on the web makes life more pleasant for everyone and nobody is excluded. The beauty of web standards is that cowboys are run out of town but who would want them to stay anyway.

posted at 12:19 pm on March 28, 2007 by Matt Newboult

19 Cut down

Jeff Croft:
bq. If Adobe seriously can’t make Photoshop run in less than 512MB of RAM, then I’d rather than require 512MB of RAM than dumb the product down into something that can fit int 128MB

A key difference here is that you can still get older versions of Photoshop that run on 128MB, so you aren’t excluding people altogether.

No-one is saying that every last feature of a website has to be made accessible, if there is no realistically sensible way to achieve this without Javascript (or Flash, or any other technology). Yahoo manages to run a cut-down version of its webmail for people on the lower rungs of the technology ladder, giving them access to their email but without all the bells and whistles that other people get.

posted at 02:48 pm on March 28, 2007 by Stephen Down

20 Minority groups

Brandon Richards:
bq. It’s just my opinion, but designing for non-javascript users is like building a parking lot with a horse barn just in case someone doesn’t have a car. Those users are a niche group and the handful that they are should probably have their own pda version of a site.

I’d say it’s more like providing cycle racks than a horse barn. And up and down the country, more and more shops and businesses are providing cycle racks in their car parks, in recognition of the importance of welcoming all visitors.

There are many reasons why people may be browsing without full Javascript support, and to declare them a niche group unworthy of your time or efforts without a good reason to do so is insufferably arrogant. In the vast majority of cases, there is no good reason why the regular version of a website can’t accommodate those using PDAs/WAP and accessibility technologies, other than laziness and arrogance on behalf of those (ir)responsible for the site.

posted at 02:56 pm on March 28, 2007 by Stephen Down