5 ms·

Ask N.YC: How hard should we work to support those who don't use cookies or javascript?

8 points by falsestprophet 18y ago

...or who don't use css or who use a really low resolution? what does today's audience expect?

jws 18y ago
Frequently your low resolution visitors are vision impaired and compensate by making bigger pixels.
rw 18y ago
JS' foremost use is to serve ads. I block JS using NoScript. So, I conjecture that a lot of people block JS for the same reason.
- t0pj 18y ago
  @rw: It seems some people disagree with your sentiment. With a mouse (to downmod) and no keyboard (to enter the discussion), I'd just assume they hold a lot of contempt for you blocking everyone's wonderful javascript. @topic: I agree with Hexstream above. It's still important to simply not rely on the javascript, css, etc. Make the logic and interface simple and upgrade to "bells and whistles" mode if additional features are available on the client.
  - immad 18y ago
    I think the downmod was to say that the statement "javascript 's foremost use is for ads" was wrong, since clearly javascript is used for a lot more.
- breily 18y ago
  It seems like it'd be a lot easier to use something like Adblock to block ads - if you block Javascript you can't use GMail, Google Reader, etc. Also, that sucks you were downmodded so much without replies. Edit: I guess you could use GMail, but without the fancy look.
  - immad 18y ago
    noscript can allow specific sites. its pretty flexible
  - rw 18y ago
    While it's true that JS is used for a lot else besides serving up ads, the most profitable way, on the margin, to use it (say, per line of code per site) is by serving ads. If you really disagree, let me know of a something that produces per profit per line of code!
    - daleharvey 18y ago
      thats a pretty strange metric to discern a technologies use. profitability per line of code is a pretty vague metric, and using the same logic you can say emails foremost use is spam, therefore block all email.
      - rw 18y ago
        Or not. Consider: Email is used for many business transactions, and for other types of meaningful communication between people. So, it can be estimated that email tends to enable profit due to this relationship-building and information-carrying ability.
  - davidw 18y ago
    > Also, that sucks you were downmodded so much without replies. And for simply being wrong, rather than offensive, a troll, or whatever.
- xenoterracide 18y ago
  I use noscript to prevent malicious and crappy js. (I've had js that locked my browser) I allow on an as needed basis.
- brlewis 18y ago
  If you block JS on OurDoings you'll still see the ads. You'll just get a less slick interface in a few places.
mark-t 18y ago
Who's your audience?
Hexstream 18y ago
Personally I expect cookie support since it's much harder to support a login mechanism otherwise. On the other hand, I'd use javascript only to enable nice interactive additional features but the site should degrade gracefully when it's not. In fact I should probably state that as: The site works normally without javascript and "upgrades" if it's enabled. The "degrades gracefully" sounds like "semi-supported, absolute last resort". I wouldn't do an all-ajax site...
mpk 18y ago
That really depends on what you're building. Using cookies to run sessions is pretty much the norm, so trying to support stateful application behavior for people that refuse to use cookies sounds like a good way to waste a lot of time. JavaScript .. well, if you're a public website then the whole thing should just work without JS and degrade gracefully where you do use it. Having specific functionality JS-only is fine for certain applications, but it's considered good form (and for some government contracts - a requirement) to present an alternative non-JS interface for accessibility purposes. Check out http://maps.google.com http://maps.google.com with JS disabled, for a good example.
- xirium 18y ago
  > trying to support stateful application behavior for people that refuse to use cookies sounds like a good way to waste a lot of time. Some frameworks handle this automatically. At worst, you append a parameter to each internal URL. > JavaScript ... considered good form Making your website degrade also helps visibility in search engines. Feel free to ignore this consideration but those who provide graceful degradation will have a small and sustained advantage over your efforts.
paul 18y ago
It's good to make content accessible without cookies, js, etc so that it can easily be crawled by Google. I wouldn't waste time making the interactive parts work without it though. Moving the session cookie into the url is a bad idea -- it creates security holes (urls leak via referrers). Ironically, fear of cookies has actually hurt privacy and security.
ssanders82 18y ago
It might just be me, but it sounds like you're asking "how much should I sell my car for" without telling us what kind of car you're selling. Ok, ok, maybe that's a bad analogy. Honestly, at this point in my development career when I'm designing a first iteration of a web app, I don't even worry about people with 800x600 rez, or no cookies, or no Javascript. Again, it might just be me, but that's like worrying about scaling to 1 million concurrent users when you're first building your app - not worth the time. Sure, it would be nice, and sure, some gov't agencies (I've worked for one, the Florida Division of Emergency Management) require adhering to some handicapped guidelines. However, you time is valuable. Keep that in mind. You're trying to maximize the total utility to your users, and making 2 complete apps for JS/No JS (a la GMail) isn't maximizing your time. Later, when you have xx,xxx,xxx users - yeah, go for it; you could be turning away thousands of non-JS users. But, let me ask you, do you have 1E8 users? Don't initially spend 20% of your time on 2% of your audience...
daleharvey 18y ago
This came up at the hackers meetup in london last night. Its a matter of the extra dev time vs reach of audience, which varies from site to site, I would say on average, I assume a reasonable resolution, with js and cookies enabled. I dont think every person crippling functionality to cater for the maximum possible market is a good thing for the individual sites or the industry in general. flickr came up as an example, but when flickr launched their 'organizr', you could count a handful of large sites that used heavy js / ajax interfaces, there were also a large number of photo sharing sites, while it wasnt the reason flickr won the photo sharing wars, providing an incredibly powerful and usable tool to let people work with their photos gave them a very good start. Obviously for some sites (wikipedia) catering for handicapped users provides a huge benefit with very little negative impact on the standard user. However I dont think a strict requirement, and if your application benefits a lot from scripted interface elements, go for it. If everyone sat and served static text pages. handicapped users will never get to enjoy the benefits of a fully featured scripted interface that will inevitably be created through new demand. http://ejohn.org/blog/ajax-accessibility/ http://ejohn.org/blog/ajax-accessibility/ is also worth a read
mattmaroon 18y ago
The simple answer is it's all about optimizing. Does making the screen wider make your product more appealing to the 97% of people with >=1024px wide screens? It wouldn't take much to compensate for the 3% of people who have to sidescroll. Same with Javascript. Who in your audience doesn't have that? If you're building an app people will want to use on mobile phones, clearly you should have an html only view. If you're making a project designed mainly for desktops, then 99% of people have js and cookies on. If it adds any good functionality at all, it has to be worth it. The question, as posed, is to generalized to have a meaningful answer.
tlrobinson 18y ago
It really depends on what type of site you're building. If it's a simple website where the JavaScript just makes things a little slicker or easier to use, then you should gracefully degrade for browsers with JavaScript disabled. Same with CSS and low res. If it's a complex web application, don't worry about the people without JavaScript enabled. As for cookies, I think it's pretty much expected that they be enabled for any sort of login mechanism. The alternative is to pass a session token around in every URL, but the moment they close the browser or open a different URL that gets lost.
bigbee 18y ago
Start by building your best thing that works for most users. Most people work in 1024 resolution or higher, and don't bother with disabling cookies or javascript. Trying to support everyone right away is just like premature optimization. Get something out first, then work to support exceptions if you see that you actually have users that would want that.
johnm 18y ago
The most important part of the JavaScript (and Flash and Java Applets and...) vs. non-JavaScript, et al question is much less about users and much more about making sure that you site is coherently crawlable by the search engines. If you're site isn't easily crawlable by the search engines then you're pretty well hosed because that's where most users come from these days for most sites.

...or who don't use css or who use a really low resolution? what does today's audience expect?

jws 18y ago

Frequently your low resolution visitors are vision impaired and compensate by making bigger pixels.

rw 18y ago

JS' foremost use is to serve ads. I block JS using NoScript. So, I conjecture that a lot of people block JS for the same reason.

t0pj 18y ago
@rw: It seems some people disagree with your sentiment. With a mouse (to downmod) and no keyboard (to enter the discussion), I'd just assume they hold a lot of contempt for you blocking everyone's wonderful javascript. @topic: I agree with Hexstream above. It's still important to simply not rely on the javascript, css, etc. Make the logic and interface simple and upgrade to "bells and whistles" mode if additional features are available on the client.
- immad 18y ago
  I think the downmod was to say that the statement "javascript 's foremost use is for ads" was wrong, since clearly javascript is used for a lot more.
breily 18y ago
It seems like it'd be a lot easier to use something like Adblock to block ads - if you block Javascript you can't use GMail, Google Reader, etc. Also, that sucks you were downmodded so much without replies. Edit: I guess you could use GMail, but without the fancy look.
- immad 18y ago
  noscript can allow specific sites. its pretty flexible
- rw 18y ago
  While it's true that JS is used for a lot else besides serving up ads, the most profitable way, on the margin, to use it (say, per line of code per site) is by serving ads. If you really disagree, let me know of a something that produces per profit per line of code!
  - daleharvey 18y ago
    thats a pretty strange metric to discern a technologies use. profitability per line of code is a pretty vague metric, and using the same logic you can say emails foremost use is spam, therefore block all email.
    - rw 18y ago
      Or not. Consider: Email is used for many business transactions, and for other types of meaningful communication between people. So, it can be estimated that email tends to enable profit due to this relationship-building and information-carrying ability.
- davidw 18y ago
  > Also, that sucks you were downmodded so much without replies. And for simply being wrong, rather than offensive, a troll, or whatever.
xenoterracide 18y ago
I use noscript to prevent malicious and crappy js. (I've had js that locked my browser) I allow on an as needed basis.
brlewis 18y ago
If you block JS on OurDoings you'll still see the ads. You'll just get a less slick interface in a few places.

mark-t 18y ago

Who's your audience?

Hexstream 18y ago

Personally I expect cookie support since it's much harder to support a login mechanism otherwise. On the other hand, I'd use javascript only to enable nice interactive additional features but the site should degrade gracefully when it's not. In fact I should probably state that as: The site works normally without javascript and "upgrades" if it's enabled. The "degrades gracefully" sounds like "semi-supported, absolute last resort". I wouldn't do an all-ajax site...

mpk 18y ago

That really depends on what you're building. Using cookies to run sessions is pretty much the norm, so trying to support stateful application behavior for people that refuse to use cookies sounds like a good way to waste a lot of time. JavaScript .. well, if you're a public website then the whole thing should just work without JS and degrade gracefully where you do use it. Having specific functionality JS-only is fine for certain applications, but it's considered good form (and for some government contracts - a requirement) to present an alternative non-JS interface for accessibility purposes. Check out http://maps.google.com http://maps.google.com with JS disabled, for a good example.

xirium 18y ago
> trying to support stateful application behavior for people that refuse to use cookies sounds like a good way to waste a lot of time. Some frameworks handle this automatically. At worst, you append a parameter to each internal URL. > JavaScript ... considered good form Making your website degrade also helps visibility in search engines. Feel free to ignore this consideration but those who provide graceful degradation will have a small and sustained advantage over your efforts.

paul 18y ago

It's good to make content accessible without cookies, js, etc so that it can easily be crawled by Google. I wouldn't waste time making the interactive parts work without it though. Moving the session cookie into the url is a bad idea -- it creates security holes (urls leak via referrers). Ironically, fear of cookies has actually hurt privacy and security.

ssanders82 18y ago

It might just be me, but it sounds like you're asking "how much should I sell my car for" without telling us what kind of car you're selling. Ok, ok, maybe that's a bad analogy. Honestly, at this point in my development career when I'm designing a first iteration of a web app, I don't even worry about people with 800x600 rez, or no cookies, or no Javascript. Again, it might just be me, but that's like worrying about scaling to 1 million concurrent users when you're first building your app - not worth the time. Sure, it would be nice, and sure, some gov't agencies (I've worked for one, the Florida Division of Emergency Management) require adhering to some handicapped guidelines. However, you time is valuable. Keep that in mind. You're trying to maximize the total utility to your users, and making 2 complete apps for JS/No JS (a la GMail) isn't maximizing your time. Later, when you have xx,xxx,xxx users - yeah, go for it; you could be turning away thousands of non-JS users. But, let me ask you, do you have 1E8 users? Don't initially spend 20% of your time on 2% of your audience...

daleharvey 18y ago

This came up at the hackers meetup in london last night. Its a matter of the extra dev time vs reach of audience, which varies from site to site, I would say on average, I assume a reasonable resolution, with js and cookies enabled. I dont think every person crippling functionality to cater for the maximum possible market is a good thing for the individual sites or the industry in general. flickr came up as an example, but when flickr launched their 'organizr', you could count a handful of large sites that used heavy js / ajax interfaces, there were also a large number of photo sharing sites, while it wasnt the reason flickr won the photo sharing wars, providing an incredibly powerful and usable tool to let people work with their photos gave them a very good start. Obviously for some sites (wikipedia) catering for handicapped users provides a huge benefit with very little negative impact on the standard user. However I dont think a strict requirement, and if your application benefits a lot from scripted interface elements, go for it. If everyone sat and served static text pages. handicapped users will never get to enjoy the benefits of a fully featured scripted interface that will inevitably be created through new demand. http://ejohn.org/blog/ajax-accessibility/ http://ejohn.org/blog/ajax-accessibility/ is also worth a read

mattmaroon 18y ago

The simple answer is it's all about optimizing. Does making the screen wider make your product more appealing to the 97% of people with >=1024px wide screens? It wouldn't take much to compensate for the 3% of people who have to sidescroll. Same with Javascript. Who in your audience doesn't have that? If you're building an app people will want to use on mobile phones, clearly you should have an html only view. If you're making a project designed mainly for desktops, then 99% of people have js and cookies on. If it adds any good functionality at all, it has to be worth it. The question, as posed, is to generalized to have a meaningful answer.

tlrobinson 18y ago

It really depends on what type of site you're building. If it's a simple website where the JavaScript just makes things a little slicker or easier to use, then you should gracefully degrade for browsers with JavaScript disabled. Same with CSS and low res. If it's a complex web application, don't worry about the people without JavaScript enabled. As for cookies, I think it's pretty much expected that they be enabled for any sort of login mechanism. The alternative is to pass a session token around in every URL, but the moment they close the browser or open a different URL that gets lost.

bigbee 18y ago

Start by building your best thing that works for most users. Most people work in 1024 resolution or higher, and don't bother with disabling cookies or javascript. Trying to support everyone right away is just like premature optimization. Get something out first, then work to support exceptions if you see that you actually have users that would want that.

johnm 18y ago

The most important part of the JavaScript (and Flash and Java Applets and...) vs. non-JavaScript, et al question is much less about users and much more about making sure that you site is coherently crawlable by the search engines. If you're site isn't easily crawlable by the search engines then you're pretty well hosed because that's where most users come from these days for most sites.