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This is a worrying trend I've been noticing as well. The last couple of years especially I've noticed a very large increase in people just not caring about grac

This is a worrying trend I've been noticing as well. The last couple of years especially I've noticed a very large increase in people just not caring about graceful downgrading as well as people just not even testing in other browsers. I've had many conversations with people that are huge fans of Angular and Backbone and similar frameworks and when I mention people without Javascript I just get the canned "but everyone has Javascript turned on anyway and if they don't, too bad" response. Interestingly enough every one of them were also people who developed and tested only against Chrome and never even bothered to acknowledge other browsers. I know someone who is a developer who actually likes IE and uses it as their main browser and for years they've dealt with breaking bugs on sites like Github and other popular tech sites because people just don't even test in other browsers any more. The cynic in me wants to say that this mentality is pushed for by companies like Google because no Javascript means no spying. But honestly I think it really just comes down to laziness. So few people truly care about their craft.

agentS 12y ago
Out of curiosity, what form of "spying" do you think is enabled by Javascript that would not be possible without Javascript? Edit: And since I replied to a small part of your comment, I should say that I disagree completely with your "few people truly care about their craft" statement. At least, I think that writing code that handles a lack of Javascript is only valuable if you have enough users to justify it. i.e. if you spend 20% of your time working on features for 0.1% of users, then you are doing a disservice to the rest of your users. Even more so if you have to compromise the experience for everyone else such that degrading is an option. In some cases, you go out of your way to accommodate small fractions of your audience. ARIA and catering to those with disabilities is a good example. But turning off JS is a choice; one I respect, but feel no obligation to cater to. I think pages should show a noscript warning, but other than that, its a matter of engineering tradeoffs.
- cpeterso 12y ago
  Some analytics companies track mouse movements to watch how people interact with web pages. They can also use JavaScript to fingerprint browsers beyond what is available with cookies.

agentS 12y ago

Out of curiosity, what form of "spying" do you think is enabled by Javascript that would not be possible without Javascript? Edit: And since I replied to a small part of your comment, I should say that I disagree completely with your "few people truly care about their craft" statement. At least, I think that writing code that handles a lack of Javascript is only valuable if you have enough users to justify it. i.e. if you spend 20% of your time working on features for 0.1% of users, then you are doing a disservice to the rest of your users. Even more so if you have to compromise the experience for everyone else such that degrading is an option. In some cases, you go out of your way to accommodate small fractions of your audience. ARIA and catering to those with disabilities is a good example. But turning off JS is a choice; one I respect, but feel no obligation to cater to. I think pages should show a noscript warning, but other than that, its a matter of engineering tradeoffs.

cpeterso 12y ago
Some analytics companies track mouse movements to watch how people interact with web pages. They can also use JavaScript to fingerprint browsers beyond what is available with cookies.