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An interesting blog post from the UK Government digital team on progressive enhancement, suggesting from their findings that 0.9% of visits to a national govern

by g_p 5y ago

An interesting blog post from the UK Government digital team on progressive enhancement, suggesting from their findings that 0.9% of visits to a national government site are from people without functioning JavaScript, who haven't intentionally turned it off. https://technology.blog.gov.uk/2016/09/19/why-we-use-progressive-enhancement-to-build-gov-uk/ https://technology.blog.gov.uk/2016/09/19/why-we-use-progres... And the original research is available at https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2013/10/21/how-many-people-are-missing-out-on-javascript-enhancement/ https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2013/10/21/how-many-people-are-missi...

Wowfunhappy 5y ago
Their research was conducted in 2013, so I do wonder how applicable it is today. For example, as I recall Blackberries didn't support Javascript in most cases, and there were probably still a lot of those in active use as of 2013. Not so much in 2021.
- rhdunn 5y ago
  I used lynx on a computer of mine a while ago when an upgrade broke the login. I could switch to a different terminal to do that, find the issue, then run the commands to fix it. I've also used the Raspberry Pi as a computer in the past and used Dillo (or similar browser) as it was lightweight.
  - Wowfunhappy 5y ago
    I don’t doubt that there are still plenty of users on browsers without Javascript (many of them here on HN), but I wonder if they would still constitute 0.9% of visits.
    - spookthesunset 5y ago
      Probably <0.1%. If you sorted your site traffic by visits per user agent, it probably would be lost in the long tail of noise.
      - grayhatter 5y ago
        I mean if you consider your uncommon users noise, I kinda get why you wouldn't want to make any effort to support them.
- jlokier 5y ago
  I encountered the "your ISP injects broken Javascript into all HTTP pages" problem around 2016. Someone thought I had done a poor job on a site I built for them. It turned out the Javascript on the page wasn't from the site I built, it was injected by the ISP, one of the UK's largest mobile data providers. We fixed the problem by switching to HTTPS.

by g_p 5y ago

Wowfunhappy 5y ago

Their research was conducted in 2013, so I do wonder how applicable it is today. For example, as I recall Blackberries didn't support Javascript in most cases, and there were probably still a lot of those in active use as of 2013. Not so much in 2021.

rhdunn 5y ago
I used lynx on a computer of mine a while ago when an upgrade broke the login. I could switch to a different terminal to do that, find the issue, then run the commands to fix it. I've also used the Raspberry Pi as a computer in the past and used Dillo (or similar browser) as it was lightweight.
- Wowfunhappy 5y ago
  I don’t doubt that there are still plenty of users on browsers without Javascript (many of them here on HN), but I wonder if they would still constitute 0.9% of visits.
  - spookthesunset 5y ago
    Probably <0.1%. If you sorted your site traffic by visits per user agent, it probably would be lost in the long tail of noise.
    - grayhatter 5y ago
      I mean if you consider your uncommon users noise, I kinda get why you wouldn't want to make any effort to support them.
jlokier 5y ago
I encountered the "your ISP injects broken Javascript into all HTTP pages" problem around 2016. Someone thought I had done a poor job on a site I built for them. It turned out the Javascript on the page wasn't from the site I built, it was injected by the ISP, one of the UK's largest mobile data providers. We fixed the problem by switching to HTTPS.