How to detect if JavaScript is disabled?

Question

There was a post this morning asking about how many people disable JavaScript. Then I began to wonder what techniques might be used to determine if the user has it disabled.

Answer 1

I assume that you're trying to decide whether or not to deliver JavaScript-enhanced content. The best implementations degrade cleanly, so that the site still operates without JavaScript. I also assume that you mean server-side detection, rather than using the

There is not a good way to perform server-side JavaScript detection. As an alternative it is possible to set a cookie using JavaScript, and then test for that cookie using server-side scripting upon subsequent page views. However this would not be suitable for deciding what content to deliver as it would not be able to distinguish visitors without the cookie from new visitors or visitors who are blocking cookies.