Do web sites really need to cater for browsers that don't have Javascript enabled? [closed]

Answer 1

Many of the text oriented browsers like Lynx that are used by people with braille terminals do not support JavaScript. It would be very rude to exclude these people from having access to sites.

Learn more about Web Accessibility Initiative.

Edit: Do not confuse the text browser Lynx with the graphical browser Links

Answer 2

Most users are not techinical, and thus they dont know/care what javascript is, so if it is turned on by default,then that is what they use. So, if they see your site, and it does not work, they are not gonna come back.

Answer 3

Think mobile phones, not whether people turn JS on or off. There are millions of people who view the web on their phones (not exclusively of course). That alone is a reason to cater for non-JS users.

Answer 4

Wow... I guess I'll be the first one to say it but... "To hell with all the people who disable JavaScript." If your site requires JavaScript to run, forget all those people that have it turned off. Seriously. If your site really is good enough to worry about losing a substantial audience, it's probably good enough for people to turn on their JavaScript.

Case in point, go to Facebook, YouTube, Google Docs, Google Maps, or Digg (heck, try to do some of the more cool stuff with SO) with JS turned off and see what you can do (not a whole lot).

The web browser is turning into more of a cloud-based operating system than a portal to "web sites". There are just so many compelling reasons to allow JavaScript to run and, IMO, so few reasons not to. To me, turning off JS is akin to, like, enabling UAC in Windows Vista. Yeah... it's there to help prevent you from making mistakes but having it on is sooooo annoying (but the reverse logic... :-).

So, anyways... I might get a lot of flack for this answer but I feel that my reasons are sound and backed up by a lot of incredibly successful web sites and web applications.

Just make sure that pages you want indexed by Google (and most other spiders) are able to be accessed without JavaScript on.

Answer 5

Worth worrying about a small percentage of people, or striving towards best practices? Graceful failure is something web developers should shoot for, regardless of the user base affected. John Resig's talk at Yahoo "The DOM is Messy" makes a good case for accommodating users of all browsers and configurations.

Answer 6

I generally don't accomodate people with javascript off, but I am sure to let them know that because they have it turned off, certain features will be unavailable to them.

I think its unacceptable to 'break' your website if there is no javascript, but its acceptable, imo, to have a minimum standard of what is required to use your website.

For my websites this works...your audience may have different needs.