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Honest question: How large is the noscript population? If I were to chose where to invest my time, catering to the noscript crowd would probably come pretty low

by marcusf 15y ago

Honest question: How large is the noscript population? If I were to chose where to invest my time, catering to the noscript crowd would probably come pretty low on my list of priorities.

toni 15y ago
I think the premise of the OP is not so much "Your site should work perfectly without Javascript because I'm an arrogant prick" but more in the lines of "Earn my respect and don't treat me like an idiot, and I will gladly whitelist your site and will use it with Javascript enabled". If I understand it correctly, OP was redirected to a dumb-down instruction page of how to enable Javascript in his browser. What he actually wants is the reason "why" he must enable Javascript for the site. You can win over noscript population very easily by taking a little bit of time and explaining your app with some amazing screenshots.
- marcusf 15y ago
  Don't get me wrong: I don't disagree with the sentiment, I'm just saying I doubt I'd even put in the effort of redirecting them to a separate page of any kind if I'd decided that my landing pages should be very javascript heavy. My prejudiced view is that it's such a small part of the population it's not worth caring about, though I'd be glad to be proven wrong. If doing pages that require javascript to even run in the first place is a good idea, I think is a different discussion.
  - EvilTerran 15y ago
    <noscript>To enjoy all this awesomesauce, please enable javascript: <img src="/annotated_representative_screenshot_you_should_already_have_for_the_tutorial_page.png" /> </noscript> Wave some CSS at it to center it nicely; done.
  - toni 15y ago
    "My prejudiced view is that it's such a small part of the population it's not worth caring about, though I'd be glad to be proven wrong." It also depends greatly on the kind of web app you are making. If your audience is highly tech-savvy then caring about noscript population will increase your userbase.
    - marcusf 15y ago
      I'll gladly concede the point. It was actually more people running noscript than I thought, and for some markets (I'd also wager tech-savy ones) it might very well be a sizable chunk of users.
romaniv 15y ago
This is not just a question of population size. It would be if the decision to browse without JavaScript was an arbitrary choice, and if designing website relying on JavaScript resulted in better overall design. Neither are the case. Very often websites that don't work without JavaScript have serious design/privacy issues, which better be fixed even if no one disabled scripts. Very often the reason those websites require scripts is because the developers working on them are incapable to conceptualize desired business logic using some simple mental model, so they just throw random code and libraries at the issue until it seems solved. Saying that "it's an app" is a common, but very weak excuse. Most websites are not doing anything that would warrant them an app status. They simply use JavaScript to enhance browsing experience. That's perfectly fine, but the inability to isolate those enhancements from code logic that's required to make the website work is indicative of the problem that I described above.
- marcusf 15y ago
  Agreed. Something like a landing page requiring javascript in the first place certainly is bad form. For my comment, I assumed it as a given. I'm not sure how much time I should spend honing my <noscript> tags if my page doesn't work without Javascript at all. Seems there's bigger flies to swath.
- nkassis 15y ago
  "Very often websites that don't work without JavaScript have serious design/privacy issues, which better be fixed even if no one disabled scripts." I'm not sure I understand your logic here. Many sites use javascript for advanced features not possible otherwise. I don't see how not working without javascript equates to privacy issues.
  - marcusf 15y ago
    I think what the poster's implying that a website not working without JS is indicative of an incompetent team, though I might be reading him wrong.
  - gambler 15y ago
    I don't see how not working without javascript equates to privacy issues. Stuff like including Google's JavaScript by linking to Google's servers equates to privacy issues. The fact that some websites don't work (at all, don't even render) without external scripts is a design issue. These issues often come hand-in-hand, but no one said that one equates to the other. Also, if your notion of "advanced features" includes rendering of text and images and working links, you might consider re-thinking it.
tobiasu 15y ago
It says 2,167,942 users here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/noscript/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/noscript/ Now obviously I don't know how they arrive at that metric, and what influence the direct download from noscript.net has. I wouldn't want to browse with anything but NoScript, CS Lite, RefControl, Adblock Plus and Ghostery. If your site doesn't work, too bad for you. I'm not the person who makes a living selling stuff on the interwebs. The "Gawker Experience" (white page, nothing of value is lost) is quite common, and I like it. There are useful applications of Javascript, but they are rare. You have to show me that it's useful to me, and I will then give you my CPU time. Not the other way round.
- marcusf 15y ago
  Ok, so presumably somewhere in the vicinity one per mille of total users online. Actually more than I thought, and no doubt an important demographic for some types of sites. I guess the only way to know how relevant it is to cater to noscript users is to measure how large a chunk of potential customers your leaving behind relative to the cost of fixing your site to work without JS.
- EvilTerran 15y ago
  > The "Gawker Experience" (white page, nothing of value is lost) Bingo. Since I first installed NoScript, I've started noticing a correlation between how gracefully your mostly-static website degrades without javascript and how worthwhile your content is. Those that fail completely rarely have anything worth looking at on them anyway.
jimktrains2 15y ago
It's also about search engine and disabled accessibility.

by marcusf 15y ago

Honest question: How large is the noscript population? If I were to chose where to invest my time, catering to the noscript crowd would probably come pretty low on my list of priorities.

toni 15y ago

I think the premise of the OP is not so much "Your site should work perfectly without Javascript because I'm an arrogant prick" but more in the lines of "Earn my respect and don't treat me like an idiot, and I will gladly whitelist your site and will use it with Javascript enabled". If I understand it correctly, OP was redirected to a dumb-down instruction page of how to enable Javascript in his browser. What he actually wants is the reason "why" he must enable Javascript for the site. You can win over noscript population very easily by taking a little bit of time and explaining your app with some amazing screenshots.

marcusf 15y ago
Don't get me wrong: I don't disagree with the sentiment, I'm just saying I doubt I'd even put in the effort of redirecting them to a separate page of any kind if I'd decided that my landing pages should be very javascript heavy. My prejudiced view is that it's such a small part of the population it's not worth caring about, though I'd be glad to be proven wrong. If doing pages that require javascript to even run in the first place is a good idea, I think is a different discussion.
- EvilTerran 15y ago
  <noscript>To enjoy all this awesomesauce, please enable javascript: <img src="/annotated_representative_screenshot_you_should_already_have_for_the_tutorial_page.png" /> </noscript> Wave some CSS at it to center it nicely; done.
- toni 15y ago
  "My prejudiced view is that it's such a small part of the population it's not worth caring about, though I'd be glad to be proven wrong." It also depends greatly on the kind of web app you are making. If your audience is highly tech-savvy then caring about noscript population will increase your userbase.
  - marcusf 15y ago
    I'll gladly concede the point. It was actually more people running noscript than I thought, and for some markets (I'd also wager tech-savy ones) it might very well be a sizable chunk of users.

romaniv 15y ago

This is not just a question of population size. It would be if the decision to browse without JavaScript was an arbitrary choice, and if designing website relying on JavaScript resulted in better overall design. Neither are the case. Very often websites that don't work without JavaScript have serious design/privacy issues, which better be fixed even if no one disabled scripts. Very often the reason those websites require scripts is because the developers working on them are incapable to conceptualize desired business logic using some simple mental model, so they just throw random code and libraries at the issue until it seems solved. Saying that "it's an app" is a common, but very weak excuse. Most websites are not doing anything that would warrant them an app status. They simply use JavaScript to enhance browsing experience. That's perfectly fine, but the inability to isolate those enhancements from code logic that's required to make the website work is indicative of the problem that I described above.

marcusf 15y ago
Agreed. Something like a landing page requiring javascript in the first place certainly is bad form. For my comment, I assumed it as a given. I'm not sure how much time I should spend honing my <noscript> tags if my page doesn't work without Javascript at all. Seems there's bigger flies to swath.
nkassis 15y ago
"Very often websites that don't work without JavaScript have serious design/privacy issues, which better be fixed even if no one disabled scripts." I'm not sure I understand your logic here. Many sites use javascript for advanced features not possible otherwise. I don't see how not working without javascript equates to privacy issues.
- marcusf 15y ago
  I think what the poster's implying that a website not working without JS is indicative of an incompetent team, though I might be reading him wrong.
- gambler 15y ago
  I don't see how not working without javascript equates to privacy issues. Stuff like including Google's JavaScript by linking to Google's servers equates to privacy issues. The fact that some websites don't work (at all, don't even render) without external scripts is a design issue. These issues often come hand-in-hand, but no one said that one equates to the other. Also, if your notion of "advanced features" includes rendering of text and images and working links, you might consider re-thinking it.

tobiasu 15y ago

It says 2,167,942 users here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/noscript/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/noscript/ Now obviously I don't know how they arrive at that metric, and what influence the direct download from noscript.net has. I wouldn't want to browse with anything but NoScript, CS Lite, RefControl, Adblock Plus and Ghostery. If your site doesn't work, too bad for you. I'm not the person who makes a living selling stuff on the interwebs. The "Gawker Experience" (white page, nothing of value is lost) is quite common, and I like it. There are useful applications of Javascript, but they are rare. You have to show me that it's useful to me, and I will then give you my CPU time. Not the other way round.

marcusf 15y ago
Ok, so presumably somewhere in the vicinity one per mille of total users online. Actually more than I thought, and no doubt an important demographic for some types of sites. I guess the only way to know how relevant it is to cater to noscript users is to measure how large a chunk of potential customers your leaving behind relative to the cost of fixing your site to work without JS.
EvilTerran 15y ago
> The "Gawker Experience" (white page, nothing of value is lost) Bingo. Since I first installed NoScript, I've started noticing a correlation between how gracefully your mostly-static website degrades without javascript and how worthwhile your content is. Those that fail completely rarely have anything worth looking at on them anyway.

jimktrains2 15y ago

It's also about search engine and disabled accessibility.