8 ms·

How many users have JavaScript disabled?

63 points by brandonkm 16y ago

eiji 16y ago
The follow-up question is "Why users disable JS?". How many do it unintentional because they think JS is Java(applets ...), or the browser does not support it. I'm also wondering how many people change the advanced JS settings in the browser (do browser other than Firefox even support them?). I'm one of those 2% for different reasons(open for discussion): - it blocks 90% of ads, because most banners are JS driven - I consider JS as a privacy and security vulnerability - disabled JS saves bandwidth It never takes more than 2 seconds to get an idea if a page does work without JS, and another 2 seconds to decide if it is worth it to enable JS.
- jcromartie 16y ago
  I'd reckon that most of them are FOSS weenies and/or security paranoid. At least, that's the common thread among my peers who disable JS as a matter of principle. They are proud of it, and they are happy to find a reason (like requiring JS) to snub your web app. Then there are the NoScript people, who are willing to whitelist your site to allow JS if they think there is value in it. These people skew the numbers but are pretty reasonable when it comes to turning JS on.
  - Natsu 16y ago
    I'm one of those NoScript users. Most sites get temporary permissions if they actually need them for something I want to do, trusted sites get whitelisted if I visit them often enough. Pretty much all of the attacks against Mozilla that might have actually affected me have been mitigated to some extent by NoScript, so it's pretty useful.
  - prodigal_erik 16y ago
    Paranoid is assuming attackers are out to get you. I just assume attackers are abusing automation and out to get everyone, because we have already seen that happen several times, and there's no reason to believe javascript sandboxes are suddenly flawless despite their disappointing history. I also have scripting off because I tend to be curious about the diligence and talent of the authors at a site.
- DjDarkman 16y ago
  FFS, use Adblock You are so fuckin wrong, JS is not a security vulnerability it's a programing language. Wikipedia: JavaScript is an implementation of the ECMAScript language standard and is typically used to enable programmatic access to computational objects within a host environment. If you want real privacy, then why not just disable cookies? ohhh your login won't work... well then just disable your internet connection then. Disabling JS wastes bandwidth because you can't do partial page replacements. OMG so much stupidity. Edit: So many downvoting trolls. Edit #2: Even more trolls who can't even leave a reply.
  - carussell 16y ago
    Your post was poorly reasoned, and quoting Wikipedia was frivolous. Furthermore, it was written in a way that's grating for many people, regardless of your (poorly reasoned) points, because it a) reinforces the notion that you didn't care enough about your message to spend 15 seconds longer on it to write it properly, a feeling which already existed in readers' minds because of the presence of your (poorly reasoned) points, and b) requires readers to spend longer parsing your comment before being able to comprehend the (poorly reasoned) points you were attempting to make.
    - DjDarkman 16y ago
      The comment I was replying to was even more poorly reasoned. And I actually written a larger post regarding this.
- kd0amg 16y ago
  I'm one of those 2% for different reasons(open for discussion): - it blocks 90% of ads, because most banners are JS driven ... disabled JS saves bandwidth These are my usual reasons. I've run into a lot of sites with orders of magnitude more ads, fluff, formatting scripts, etc. than they have content (e.g. thereifixedit and related sites typically take me a full minute to load with JavaScript and often under a second without). I don't make much effort to block ads that don't make the page load much slower.
marknutter 16y ago
That's 2% I could do without, no problem.
- mirkules 16y ago
  Explain that to a potential investor. "We snubbed 2% of our potential user base because we were too lazy to make sure that our site degrades gracefully." From the article, that's _6 million_ of Yahoo!'s 300M+ user base. I really don't understand what's the big deal about making sure your site works without JS, it's just some extra work that you're going to have to do anyway later down the line (and it will be more complex then).
  - DjDarkman 16y ago
    We were too lazy to spend at least twice the time creating the product. Shorter version: 2x more work does not justify 2%
  - metageek 16y ago
    It's potentially a lot of extra work. If your site's UI is heavy on the AJAX, a non-JS option basically means writing a completely separate UI. Explain to an investor, "We don't have features X, Y, and Z, which our competitors have, because we were spending time maintaining the non-JS version for 2% of our user base.".
    - jamesaguilar 16y ago
      Also, non-Javascript Luddism may correlate with other forms of Luddism. For example, non-eCommerce Luddism or non-ads-clicking Luddism. So it might be that you're doing all that work for people who are not going to benefit your bottom line as much as the typical user. It's something each business probably has to measure for itself, but the people saying, "I don't see what the big deal is," just aren't looking hard enough.
      - wtallis 16y ago
        I don't think Luddites are savvy enough to figure out how to disable JavaScript, and most of the people who disable JavaScript are probably at the opposite end of the spectrum: people who know the privacy and security risks of JavaScript, and who would rather a website be obviously broken on the first visit than have it be subversively annoying and ad-laden. If an e-commerce site won't let me get to their product list and see prices without cookies and Javascript, I won't buy from them if there are alternatives. There's no real justification for making a simple online store 100% AJAX for even the most basic features, so the sites that do that don't get my money. (They probably don't do to well from an SEO perspective, either.) Blogs that require cookies and JavaScript before they'll show their content are obviously more concerned with spamming me than being of use to me, so they also get closed immediately.
ZeroMinx 16y ago
It obviously depends on 1) who your target audience is, and 2) what your website is. If the target is HN type people I'm guessing the number of non-Javascript goes up. If the website is pure information, why not provide it even to people who telnet to port 80? But if the website is a rich interactive application, even if it could fall back on simple form submissions, I'd say it's fair that non-JS users sees a "This requires Javascript" message. (my answer is very different if the "interactive application" was powered with something vendor/platform-specific)
jessor 16y ago
NoScript has 74,459,688 downloads so far (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/722/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/722/). You'd have to do some calculations with this to get closer to a real user number, though ;) I'd wager that the average NoScript user has at least two machines, so the total number of NoScript users is probably less than 2.7 million. (http://blog.brandonbloom.name/2010/06/noscript-add-on-install-base.html http://blog.brandonbloom.name/2010/06/noscript-add-on-instal...)
- lukifer 16y ago
  I'm also guessing the majority of NoScript users have exceptions whitelisted for many trusted sites, given how many sites are completely useless without JS.
  - Xurinos 16y ago
    Yes, and I happen to have Yahoo! sites on my whitelist, which tells me that their stat is not reliable. The actual percent of users who block JavaScript may be higher, given selective blocking, as provided by Opera and Firefox's NoScript.
michaelchisari 16y ago
Could the argument be made that the minority who surf with Javascript disabled don't necessarily have to be catered to, since they will enable Javascript if they trust the site or find it useful?
- daten 16y ago
  There may be lots of reasons to disable javascript or not have it available at all such as security policies, bandwidth restrictions, limited hardware devices or other things you haven't anticipated. I think it depends on what content you're providing and which users you want to reach. I've seen text-only blogs that involve javascript in their visual design and cannot be read without it. I've also seen websites where the site navigation links are rendered by javascript. In both cases the sites are inaccessible to non-javascript users. In my opinion if you can provide the same content without requiring active scripting, you should. If you're providing an interactive experience that can't be achieved without scripting at least be aware that you're limiting your user base. Even if users have scripting available but disabled by choice, they may decide that your content is not worth enabling scripting for. I'm also concerned that technical users who disable javascript by choice might not frequent a site like "yahoo" as much as non-technical users. I'm curious if a more neutral but still popular site would have a larger percentage of non-javascript visitors.
  - michaelchisari 16y ago
    Very good response, I agree that the base functionality should exist without Javascript, and I would assume that most who disable it are willing to forego bells and whistles, but will still use your site if the basics work. This also ties into best practices of having Javascript which degrades properly.
- jamesbritt 16y ago
  "Could the argument be made that the minority who surf with Javascript disabled don't necessarily have to be catered to, since they will enable Javascript if they trust the site or find it useful?" That's certainly true for me. I don't care that a site requires scripting, but I do care when there's nothing to indicate that I'd be better off if I allowed javascript. This is especially true for sites that let a user begin some set of actions (write a lengthy comment, or fill out a multi-step form), and then simply fail at the end because scripting is disabled. It is trivial to add a "This site requires JavaScript" message. Leaving it out says you either don't give a shit or don't know what you're doing.
shaggy 16y ago
I'm a NoScript user and generally only whitelist JS on sites I use all the time and trust. I'm not overly paranoid about security, but the experience on the web with NoScript is far superior than without it in my opinion. What drives me absolutely insane is when a website is 100% useless unless JS is whitelisted. That instantly gets put on my list of sites to never ever go to again.
- estel 16y ago
  Doesn't that depend on what the website is trying to achieve? Clearly there are plenty of sites out there whose functionality is necessarily dependant on JS. As long as they make clear that this is the case and what the website is supposed to do, is it all that bad if a website becomes otherwise useless without JS?
  - gxti 16y ago
    It's the sites that shouldn't depend on JS that irritate me. Sites that load completely static content, dynamically. Newspapers where you get a blank layout instead of an article. They're more common than you think. I don't mind temporarily whitelisting a site to play with some cool thing but if it's something that shouldn't require javascript at all, let alone need to degrade gracefully, I often just go somewhere else. And then there's sites like this: http://partiallystapled.com/~gxti/trash/2010/10/09-javascript-hell.png http://partiallystapled.com/~gxti/trash/2010/10/09-javascrip...
  - acqq 16y ago
    There are very few sites with a relevant content that are really "necessarily dependant on JS." The worse the content is, or the more amateurish it is, the more probable is that the creator thinks that the "cool menus" are a good substitute for content. It was always so. MARQUEE and BLINK of 1996. You can almost recognize who's mostly in charge for some site: -- needs JavaScript only to bring me to another page: some bad "programmer" whose best achievement was that he learned JS. -- needs Flash only to bring me to another page: some "decision maker" who wants "dynamic" or a "programmer" whose best achievement was that he learned Flash. - needs a magnifying glass to read the text set in 5 pt font: some "designer" who doesn't care for the text anyway. But look how good colors he selected. And everybody has the same screen resolution as it's on his computer, got it? -- needs a magnifying glass to read the text, the menus are half JS behind images, half Flash: you tell me, but there's higher chance it's made by a West European guy. etc.
Locke1689 16y ago
But how many of those 6 million are bots and scripts like mechanize scraping the site?
- techiferous 16y ago
  From the article: "We took a combination of access logs and beacon data (previously included in the page) and filtered out all of the automated requests, leaving us with a set of requests we could confirm were sent by actual users."
mike-cardwell 16y ago
If your website relies on JavaScript to work, then you're excluding people who can't use JavaScript. Disabled people with screen readers. If you don't cater for those people, put some money aside for lawyers.
- dmpayton 16y ago
  I'm not sure why this was downvoted. While his remark about lawyering up may be overkill (unless you work for a federal agency and have to abide by Section 508 rules), his point about excluding those who rely on screen readers is dead on. I've found that one of the major complaints that blind users have is that it's a total bitch to work with dynamically updating pages. If more developers paid attention to web accessibility, a lot of the major problems to disabled folks would be greatly alleviated. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Accessibility_Initiative http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Accessibility_Initiative http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Content_Accessibility_Guidelines http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Content_Accessibility_Guide... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_508_Amendment_to_the_Rehabilitation_Act_of_1973 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_508_Amendment_to_the_Re... I say this as a visually impaired developer with several blind friends and family. To me, web accessibility is serious business.
- kls 16y ago
  This is a straw man argument that is not grounded in fact: http://www.dojotoolkit.org/reference-guide/dijit-a11y-statement.html http://www.dojotoolkit.org/reference-guide/dijit-a11y-statem... I have built many sites with the specific criteria that it work with JAWS. I do not use Server Side web frameworks and my UI logic is implemented entirely in JavaScript. I am an authority in the usability and accessibility field and am hired as such by many of the big boys. JavaScript has nothing to do with accessibility and in fact can be used to increase usability for the disabled. People confuse JavaScript with bad UX design that hinders accessibility.
  - mike-cardwell 16y ago
    You'll forgive me if I listen to a combination of common sense, and the guy who said "I say this as a visually impaired developer with several blind friends and family" instead of the guy with a vested interest.
mike-cardwell 16y ago
I use NoScript mainly due to the prevalence of XSS attacks. If a website doesn't require me to enable javascript, even a trusted website, I wont. All it does is open you up to XSS attacks. Lets not forget that google, facebook, twitter, paypal, hotmail, yahoo and countless other big name websites have all fallen prey to these flaws, and will continue to fall prey to them.
- olalonde 16y ago
  I'm willing to open up to a very unlikely XSS attack in exchange of a better user experience. Do you know many people who say: "I won't run C applications because they are vulnerable to buffer overflows."
  - acqq 16y ago
    I'm one of those who browse without JavaScript and Flash and for me that IS a better experience. Try it once and see how much better signal to noise ratio is. I also like the additional benefit of having much less chance to be attacked through the browser. And I also use Opera, exactly because I can enable using the built in browser settings both JS and Flash only for a few sites where I need it (like youtube). I have just checked again: I don't have JS turned on for HN. It just works.
    - BCM43 16y ago
      Really? It does not work with noscript. I get a blank page when I attempt to vote.
      - acqq 16y ago
        You're right. The vote is counted, so I consider that as "works." The result is certainly ugly, but I'd name that a "minor display issue" as I can hit "back." Of course it would be nice if that "back" step wouldn't be needed.
        16y ago
bphogan 16y ago
If you haven't got the experience, then yes, it's going to seem like two times the work. But I am a low vision user who disables JavaScript often because developers don't understand that jut because I stopped moving my mouse doesn't mean I want to see a popup definition of the word I hovered on which obscures my viewport. (I'm zoomed in now as I type this). I'm saddend (and a little angry) at the number of developers here who absolutely insist it's so much extra work to build a site that doesn't require JavaScript. If you follow best practices, it's not a big deal. Web apps create, retrieve, update, and delete records. No matter how fancy your new startup's idea is, you have to realize that it's all the same task over and over again, and you can do that with simple web forms that don't require AJAX. A little unobtrusive JS to capture clicks, hide boring interfaces, and transform your dull non-JS interface can go a LONG way. Plus you can test that the underlying functionality of your site works very early. I'm required by law (Section 508) to build accessible web sites at my day job. It's much easier to make Section 508 compliant websites without JS. Then we put the icing on the cake to satisfy the other 98% of our users.
- andrewf 16y ago
  (This is an academic point for me right now - I'm building an app in Facebook, and Facebook requires Javascript.) It seems like your zoom software interacts badly with behaviour that's common on some websites. Disabling Javascript seems like a reasonable workaround, but not without cost. I'm curious - why are web developers the target of your aggravation, rather than the people who wrote your zoom software? It seems to me that a lot of expensive accessibility software copes well with computing circa 1998. But then it hit a wall. Most of the advocacy and lobbying around this issue seems to focus on forcing most developers to adapt to the limitations of this accessibility software, rather than pressuring accessibility software vendors to provide software which (a) delivers innovation and utilizes advanced technology, as you'd expect in 2010 and (b) deals with common patterns in modern software development.
  - bphogan 16y ago
    I am aggravated by the developers because developers are the ones who confuse interactions (clicks) with invitations to interact (hovers). When I move my mouse, my viewport moves. That's by design, as the mouse pointer can be placed near words so I can see it. Keeping the mouse pointer visible is important when you can't see it well. Now imagine I'm surfing as a blind user, and I follow a link from HN, and my screen reader starts reading the page, only to be interrupted by a "take this survey" modal DIV. After a couple of times I'm turning off the JS, cos that's really annoying. The people who make my zoom software make OSX (it's built into the operating system and it works amazingly well for me except for applications which fire events when I hover. Following the principles of UJS and web standards makes it infinitely easier, in my experience, to develop web sites that work with screen readers and still use that advanced technology that everyone's gaga over. But if you can't write JS easily that works across multiple browsers, how do you ever expect assistive technology to be able to interpret it correctly? :)

63 points by brandonkm 16y ago

eiji 16y ago

The follow-up question is "Why users disable JS?". How many do it unintentional because they think JS is Java(applets ...), or the browser does not support it. I'm also wondering how many people change the advanced JS settings in the browser (do browser other than Firefox even support them?). I'm one of those 2% for different reasons(open for discussion): - it blocks 90% of ads, because most banners are JS driven - I consider JS as a privacy and security vulnerability - disabled JS saves bandwidth It never takes more than 2 seconds to get an idea if a page does work without JS, and another 2 seconds to decide if it is worth it to enable JS.

jcromartie 16y ago
I'd reckon that most of them are FOSS weenies and/or security paranoid. At least, that's the common thread among my peers who disable JS as a matter of principle. They are proud of it, and they are happy to find a reason (like requiring JS) to snub your web app. Then there are the NoScript people, who are willing to whitelist your site to allow JS if they think there is value in it. These people skew the numbers but are pretty reasonable when it comes to turning JS on.
- Natsu 16y ago
  I'm one of those NoScript users. Most sites get temporary permissions if they actually need them for something I want to do, trusted sites get whitelisted if I visit them often enough. Pretty much all of the attacks against Mozilla that might have actually affected me have been mitigated to some extent by NoScript, so it's pretty useful.
- prodigal_erik 16y ago
  Paranoid is assuming attackers are out to get you. I just assume attackers are abusing automation and out to get everyone, because we have already seen that happen several times, and there's no reason to believe javascript sandboxes are suddenly flawless despite their disappointing history. I also have scripting off because I tend to be curious about the diligence and talent of the authors at a site.
DjDarkman 16y ago
FFS, use Adblock You are so fuckin wrong, JS is not a security vulnerability it's a programing language. Wikipedia: JavaScript is an implementation of the ECMAScript language standard and is typically used to enable programmatic access to computational objects within a host environment. If you want real privacy, then why not just disable cookies? ohhh your login won't work... well then just disable your internet connection then. Disabling JS wastes bandwidth because you can't do partial page replacements. OMG so much stupidity. Edit: So many downvoting trolls. Edit #2: Even more trolls who can't even leave a reply.
- carussell 16y ago
  Your post was poorly reasoned, and quoting Wikipedia was frivolous. Furthermore, it was written in a way that's grating for many people, regardless of your (poorly reasoned) points, because it a) reinforces the notion that you didn't care enough about your message to spend 15 seconds longer on it to write it properly, a feeling which already existed in readers' minds because of the presence of your (poorly reasoned) points, and b) requires readers to spend longer parsing your comment before being able to comprehend the (poorly reasoned) points you were attempting to make.
  - DjDarkman 16y ago
    The comment I was replying to was even more poorly reasoned. And I actually written a larger post regarding this.
kd0amg 16y ago
I'm one of those 2% for different reasons(open for discussion): - it blocks 90% of ads, because most banners are JS driven ... disabled JS saves bandwidth These are my usual reasons. I've run into a lot of sites with orders of magnitude more ads, fluff, formatting scripts, etc. than they have content (e.g. thereifixedit and related sites typically take me a full minute to load with JavaScript and often under a second without). I don't make much effort to block ads that don't make the page load much slower.

marknutter 16y ago

That's 2% I could do without, no problem.

mirkules 16y ago
Explain that to a potential investor. "We snubbed 2% of our potential user base because we were too lazy to make sure that our site degrades gracefully." From the article, that's _6 million_ of Yahoo!'s 300M+ user base. I really don't understand what's the big deal about making sure your site works without JS, it's just some extra work that you're going to have to do anyway later down the line (and it will be more complex then).
- DjDarkman 16y ago
  We were too lazy to spend at least twice the time creating the product. Shorter version: 2x more work does not justify 2%
- metageek 16y ago
  It's potentially a lot of extra work. If your site's UI is heavy on the AJAX, a non-JS option basically means writing a completely separate UI. Explain to an investor, "We don't have features X, Y, and Z, which our competitors have, because we were spending time maintaining the non-JS version for 2% of our user base.".
  - jamesaguilar 16y ago
    Also, non-Javascript Luddism may correlate with other forms of Luddism. For example, non-eCommerce Luddism or non-ads-clicking Luddism. So it might be that you're doing all that work for people who are not going to benefit your bottom line as much as the typical user. It's something each business probably has to measure for itself, but the people saying, "I don't see what the big deal is," just aren't looking hard enough.
    - wtallis 16y ago
      I don't think Luddites are savvy enough to figure out how to disable JavaScript, and most of the people who disable JavaScript are probably at the opposite end of the spectrum: people who know the privacy and security risks of JavaScript, and who would rather a website be obviously broken on the first visit than have it be subversively annoying and ad-laden. If an e-commerce site won't let me get to their product list and see prices without cookies and Javascript, I won't buy from them if there are alternatives. There's no real justification for making a simple online store 100% AJAX for even the most basic features, so the sites that do that don't get my money. (They probably don't do to well from an SEO perspective, either.) Blogs that require cookies and JavaScript before they'll show their content are obviously more concerned with spamming me than being of use to me, so they also get closed immediately.

ZeroMinx 16y ago

It obviously depends on 1) who your target audience is, and 2) what your website is. If the target is HN type people I'm guessing the number of non-Javascript goes up. If the website is pure information, why not provide it even to people who telnet to port 80? But if the website is a rich interactive application, even if it could fall back on simple form submissions, I'd say it's fair that non-JS users sees a "This requires Javascript" message. (my answer is very different if the "interactive application" was powered with something vendor/platform-specific)

jessor 16y ago

NoScript has 74,459,688 downloads so far (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/722/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/722/). You'd have to do some calculations with this to get closer to a real user number, though ;) I'd wager that the average NoScript user has at least two machines, so the total number of NoScript users is probably less than 2.7 million. (http://blog.brandonbloom.name/2010/06/noscript-add-on-install-base.html http://blog.brandonbloom.name/2010/06/noscript-add-on-instal...)

lukifer 16y ago
I'm also guessing the majority of NoScript users have exceptions whitelisted for many trusted sites, given how many sites are completely useless without JS.
- Xurinos 16y ago
  Yes, and I happen to have Yahoo! sites on my whitelist, which tells me that their stat is not reliable. The actual percent of users who block JavaScript may be higher, given selective blocking, as provided by Opera and Firefox's NoScript.

michaelchisari 16y ago

Could the argument be made that the minority who surf with Javascript disabled don't necessarily have to be catered to, since they will enable Javascript if they trust the site or find it useful?

daten 16y ago
There may be lots of reasons to disable javascript or not have it available at all such as security policies, bandwidth restrictions, limited hardware devices or other things you haven't anticipated. I think it depends on what content you're providing and which users you want to reach. I've seen text-only blogs that involve javascript in their visual design and cannot be read without it. I've also seen websites where the site navigation links are rendered by javascript. In both cases the sites are inaccessible to non-javascript users. In my opinion if you can provide the same content without requiring active scripting, you should. If you're providing an interactive experience that can't be achieved without scripting at least be aware that you're limiting your user base. Even if users have scripting available but disabled by choice, they may decide that your content is not worth enabling scripting for. I'm also concerned that technical users who disable javascript by choice might not frequent a site like "yahoo" as much as non-technical users. I'm curious if a more neutral but still popular site would have a larger percentage of non-javascript visitors.
- michaelchisari 16y ago
  Very good response, I agree that the base functionality should exist without Javascript, and I would assume that most who disable it are willing to forego bells and whistles, but will still use your site if the basics work. This also ties into best practices of having Javascript which degrades properly.
jamesbritt 16y ago
"Could the argument be made that the minority who surf with Javascript disabled don't necessarily have to be catered to, since they will enable Javascript if they trust the site or find it useful?" That's certainly true for me. I don't care that a site requires scripting, but I do care when there's nothing to indicate that I'd be better off if I allowed javascript. This is especially true for sites that let a user begin some set of actions (write a lengthy comment, or fill out a multi-step form), and then simply fail at the end because scripting is disabled. It is trivial to add a "This site requires JavaScript" message. Leaving it out says you either don't give a shit or don't know what you're doing.

shaggy 16y ago

I'm a NoScript user and generally only whitelist JS on sites I use all the time and trust. I'm not overly paranoid about security, but the experience on the web with NoScript is far superior than without it in my opinion. What drives me absolutely insane is when a website is 100% useless unless JS is whitelisted. That instantly gets put on my list of sites to never ever go to again.

estel 16y ago
Doesn't that depend on what the website is trying to achieve? Clearly there are plenty of sites out there whose functionality is necessarily dependant on JS. As long as they make clear that this is the case and what the website is supposed to do, is it all that bad if a website becomes otherwise useless without JS?
- gxti 16y ago
  It's the sites that shouldn't depend on JS that irritate me. Sites that load completely static content, dynamically. Newspapers where you get a blank layout instead of an article. They're more common than you think. I don't mind temporarily whitelisting a site to play with some cool thing but if it's something that shouldn't require javascript at all, let alone need to degrade gracefully, I often just go somewhere else. And then there's sites like this: http://partiallystapled.com/~gxti/trash/2010/10/09-javascript-hell.png http://partiallystapled.com/~gxti/trash/2010/10/09-javascrip...
- acqq 16y ago
  There are very few sites with a relevant content that are really "necessarily dependant on JS." The worse the content is, or the more amateurish it is, the more probable is that the creator thinks that the "cool menus" are a good substitute for content. It was always so. MARQUEE and BLINK of 1996. You can almost recognize who's mostly in charge for some site: -- needs JavaScript only to bring me to another page: some bad "programmer" whose best achievement was that he learned JS. -- needs Flash only to bring me to another page: some "decision maker" who wants "dynamic" or a "programmer" whose best achievement was that he learned Flash. - needs a magnifying glass to read the text set in 5 pt font: some "designer" who doesn't care for the text anyway. But look how good colors he selected. And everybody has the same screen resolution as it's on his computer, got it? -- needs a magnifying glass to read the text, the menus are half JS behind images, half Flash: you tell me, but there's higher chance it's made by a West European guy. etc.

Locke1689 16y ago

But how many of those 6 million are bots and scripts like mechanize scraping the site?

techiferous 16y ago
From the article: "We took a combination of access logs and beacon data (previously included in the page) and filtered out all of the automated requests, leaving us with a set of requests we could confirm were sent by actual users."

mike-cardwell 16y ago

If your website relies on JavaScript to work, then you're excluding people who can't use JavaScript. Disabled people with screen readers. If you don't cater for those people, put some money aside for lawyers.

dmpayton 16y ago
I'm not sure why this was downvoted. While his remark about lawyering up may be overkill (unless you work for a federal agency and have to abide by Section 508 rules), his point about excluding those who rely on screen readers is dead on. I've found that one of the major complaints that blind users have is that it's a total bitch to work with dynamically updating pages. If more developers paid attention to web accessibility, a lot of the major problems to disabled folks would be greatly alleviated. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Accessibility_Initiative http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Accessibility_Initiative http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Content_Accessibility_Guidelines http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Content_Accessibility_Guide... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_508_Amendment_to_the_Rehabilitation_Act_of_1973 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_508_Amendment_to_the_Re... I say this as a visually impaired developer with several blind friends and family. To me, web accessibility is serious business.
kls 16y ago
This is a straw man argument that is not grounded in fact: http://www.dojotoolkit.org/reference-guide/dijit-a11y-statement.html http://www.dojotoolkit.org/reference-guide/dijit-a11y-statem... I have built many sites with the specific criteria that it work with JAWS. I do not use Server Side web frameworks and my UI logic is implemented entirely in JavaScript. I am an authority in the usability and accessibility field and am hired as such by many of the big boys. JavaScript has nothing to do with accessibility and in fact can be used to increase usability for the disabled. People confuse JavaScript with bad UX design that hinders accessibility.
- mike-cardwell 16y ago
  You'll forgive me if I listen to a combination of common sense, and the guy who said "I say this as a visually impaired developer with several blind friends and family" instead of the guy with a vested interest.

mike-cardwell 16y ago

I use NoScript mainly due to the prevalence of XSS attacks. If a website doesn't require me to enable javascript, even a trusted website, I wont. All it does is open you up to XSS attacks. Lets not forget that google, facebook, twitter, paypal, hotmail, yahoo and countless other big name websites have all fallen prey to these flaws, and will continue to fall prey to them.

olalonde 16y ago
I'm willing to open up to a very unlikely XSS attack in exchange of a better user experience. Do you know many people who say: "I won't run C applications because they are vulnerable to buffer overflows."
- acqq 16y ago
  I'm one of those who browse without JavaScript and Flash and for me that IS a better experience. Try it once and see how much better signal to noise ratio is. I also like the additional benefit of having much less chance to be attacked through the browser. And I also use Opera, exactly because I can enable using the built in browser settings both JS and Flash only for a few sites where I need it (like youtube). I have just checked again: I don't have JS turned on for HN. It just works.
  - BCM43 16y ago
    Really? It does not work with noscript. I get a blank page when I attempt to vote.
    - acqq 16y ago
      You're right. The vote is counted, so I consider that as "works." The result is certainly ugly, but I'd name that a "minor display issue" as I can hit "back." Of course it would be nice if that "back" step wouldn't be needed.
      - 16y ago

bphogan 16y ago

If you haven't got the experience, then yes, it's going to seem like two times the work. But I am a low vision user who disables JavaScript often because developers don't understand that jut because I stopped moving my mouse doesn't mean I want to see a popup definition of the word I hovered on which obscures my viewport. (I'm zoomed in now as I type this). I'm saddend (and a little angry) at the number of developers here who absolutely insist it's so much extra work to build a site that doesn't require JavaScript. If you follow best practices, it's not a big deal. Web apps create, retrieve, update, and delete records. No matter how fancy your new startup's idea is, you have to realize that it's all the same task over and over again, and you can do that with simple web forms that don't require AJAX. A little unobtrusive JS to capture clicks, hide boring interfaces, and transform your dull non-JS interface can go a LONG way. Plus you can test that the underlying functionality of your site works very early. I'm required by law (Section 508) to build accessible web sites at my day job. It's much easier to make Section 508 compliant websites without JS. Then we put the icing on the cake to satisfy the other 98% of our users.

andrewf 16y ago
(This is an academic point for me right now - I'm building an app in Facebook, and Facebook requires Javascript.) It seems like your zoom software interacts badly with behaviour that's common on some websites. Disabling Javascript seems like a reasonable workaround, but not without cost. I'm curious - why are web developers the target of your aggravation, rather than the people who wrote your zoom software? It seems to me that a lot of expensive accessibility software copes well with computing circa 1998. But then it hit a wall. Most of the advocacy and lobbying around this issue seems to focus on forcing most developers to adapt to the limitations of this accessibility software, rather than pressuring accessibility software vendors to provide software which (a) delivers innovation and utilizes advanced technology, as you'd expect in 2010 and (b) deals with common patterns in modern software development.
- bphogan 16y ago
  I am aggravated by the developers because developers are the ones who confuse interactions (clicks) with invitations to interact (hovers). When I move my mouse, my viewport moves. That's by design, as the mouse pointer can be placed near words so I can see it. Keeping the mouse pointer visible is important when you can't see it well. Now imagine I'm surfing as a blind user, and I follow a link from HN, and my screen reader starts reading the page, only to be interrupted by a "take this survey" modal DIV. After a couple of times I'm turning off the JS, cos that's really annoying. The people who make my zoom software make OSX (it's built into the operating system and it works amazingly well for me except for applications which fire events when I hover. Following the principles of UJS and web standards makes it infinitely easier, in my experience, to develop web sites that work with screen readers and still use that advanced technology that everyone's gaga over. But if you can't write JS easily that works across multiple browsers, how do you ever expect assistive technology to be able to interpret it correctly? :)