3 ms·

I'm sort of interested in your opinion on this. Care to elaborate?

• derleth 16y ago
  Basically, I'm a little tired of people using JavaScript to implement the basic functionality of a text-oriented website. A blog is, by definition, fundamentally text-oriented, as opposed to, say, a vlog (video log) or a podcast, and so should work acceptably well, if not attractively or with all of the intended features, without JavaScript. Ideally, it should degrade gracefully without CSS, too, but that amount of respect for your readers is probably a lost cause. And it is all about respect for your readers: Books don't demand you read them on a veranda attached to a five-star hotel in New Delhi regardless of how much that would improve the experience. Books are quite happy to be read in a grimy bus terminal in Hoboken, New Jersey, if that's the best the reader can manage. Text-based web pages are quite capable of being read, at an ugly 'bus terminal in Hoboken' level, in browsers like Lynx or Netscape 4 or Internet Explorer 6, and the designer should not presume to demand that their readership have access to first-class tickets booked on Firefox 4 or Chrome 11. Sometimes this isn't possible. Sometimes, you really do want to put video on the web and people who can't handle video are out of luck. However, you and I both know about the impact open formats and captioning and other measures of respect for the audience can have. Finally, I could mention the blind tied to screenreaders, but that's insulting both to the technology of screenreader software, which I hear is fairly advanced these days, and to the authors of web pages, who should not need their noses rubbed in the existence of physical limitations simply to be convinced to show basic consideration for their audience. (Personally, I find a .30-06 at medium range quite suffices.)