If you've got JavaScript disabled, no one is interested in catering to you. You are the pathological customer in the ad-driven content consumption world of the Internet. It's impossible to make money off of you.
Sure, you enable JavaScript but you don't disable AdBlock and so now you're just consuming resources and contributing negatively to the site you're visiting's bottom line.
I understand the myriad justifications for disabling JavaScript, but I don't really care. There aren't enough people with JavaScript disabled to warrant giving it any attention.
It's the same with Flash. If you don't have Flash, I will show you how to get it, but I'm not going to spend the time telling you why you ought to get it, because I don't care to argue the point. There aren't enough people without Flash for it to be a concern.
With respect, I feel you are wrong. I browse the web with my iPad more than I browse it with my laptop. There is no way that I can run Flash on this device. There are now a significant numbers of folks who are doing the same as me.
If you have to use Flash, then that's fine. But the author of the article is right IMO. You need to provide a compelling reason for me to hop off my iPad and boot up my workstation/laptop to look at your website.
I have long considered that Unobtrusive Javascript to be one of the best paradigms for websites. It shouldn't be that hard to do. In fact, even in web applications there should be a clear seperation of content and behaviour, just as there is to seperate content and style. I was looking at a VMware product the other day that does ITSM, and it was the most god-awful mix of bad Javascript and HTML that I was most surprised. Not only did it not use Javascript in a sensible way (ala jquery, YUI, etc.), but it used stupid tricks like document.all - and in fact the webpages that it loaded entirely relied on Javascript working.
Therefore, I submit to you that by not designing your websites with Unobtrusive Javascript, that you are a. causing accessibility issues (and NOT just for disabled users), and b. you probably haven't developed your website very well anyway.
Please, I urge you to convince your users WHY they need to turn on Javascript to use your site. If you can't provide a compelling case, then I'd suggest that you probably don't have a good reason to require it!
Yes, the Flash analogy was probably a poor one considering the ubiquity of iOS - you can no longer make the argument about not having to cater to people without Flash, because at this point there are so many of them.
I think the same can be applied to requiring Javascript however. Personally, I've never seen a website that delivers content that absolutely needed it. Certainly the ones that do use it well do it to enhance the site you are browsing, but if you turn off the Javascript then you only have a slightly less full featured experience.
If you can't access a website because Javascript is turned off, then I think you are overcomplicating things anyway. There are obviously cases where it is required, but as the author states, it should be pretty easy to explain why you need to enable scripting!
What about their content requires JavaScript? Absolutely nothing. You have to enable scripts from three different places to see the content. The irony is that this website is called LifeHacker, for people who like to hack things (but turning off Javascript is just pure sorcery)
-click search, it drops down a search bar without reloading the page. Fast, nice.
I posit that the search bar should be static, that is, always visible. It actually took me a while to find out that I was supposed to click the little magnifying glass.
- actually do the search - updates in place.
Again, confusing. It wasn't immediately apparent that the search results actually displayed below the search bar.
- on the sidebar, no reload for switching between "most popular" and "latest"
This is a good use case for Javascript. However, if Javascript is not present why would it not default to just opening separate pages for each of the tabs?
- Commenting: again, why does it need Javascript? Slashdot commenting system works just fine without Javascript, as an example.
I'm not questioning WHY they are using Javascript - obviously, you are getting plenty of use from that method. I am questioning why it is necessary to have those features to view content?
For a start, I dont think we should be second guessing their design. No doubt they have the customer development, usage figures, A/B tests, design tests, etc, to know that this is right for them.
But if you think a static version would be better (for most people), you're dreaming. At this point I suspect there's no point continuing the conversation - we have dramatically different world views if you think there's a comparison.
So the remaining question is, should they also have a no-javascript version for the 2% of people who turn off JS? Since it costs them double the effort, I can see why they chose not to.
"For a start, I dont think we should be second guessing their design"
Really? I guess you are right that this conversation is over. I'm sorry, but Lifehacker is not the end-all-be-all design mecca of the 21st century, quite the contrary, in fact. I only picked on the Javascript issue -- there are plenty more issues to discuss if you want to discuss design.
It's not about 2% of the population who don't use Javascript. It's about the fact that they're doing something fundamentally wrong if they require Javascript for displaying a simple web page with some content.
I just reread my previous comment and I apologize for how aggressively I came across. I guess it's hard to say "I disagree incredibly strongly" in a non-aggressive way, but that wasn't what I intended.
I'm not saying it's the be-all-and-end-all at all, there are lots of design problems. But arguing UX design with someone who believes sites shouldn't be using JS? It's just not a credible position.
Simple web pages are not simple. What makes them simple is that the complexity is hidden. JS is a major part of hiding that complexity, whether it's for preloading data, "don't make me click", or just hiding away things you don't need yet.
The search is a great example: I suspect almost nobody uses search, and I also suspect that those who use search use it a great deal. I suspect that Lifehacker has those "where do people click" charts that show them that information, and that as a result they made it powerful, but decided against giving it a whole bar.
Likewise comments. They hid away most of the commenting chrome because 99% of people dont comment, and they want to engage them with the existing comments.
There is no such thing as "a simple web page with some content". It is naive to think that it is, and I believe (please correct me if I'm wrong) that it shows that you have not spent significant time working on web UX issues in a cross-browser environment.
It's not that folks are upset about the use of Javascript - it's that you are required to have it to view content. I personally love well designed Javascript - it makes the user experience better and my life easier. But if someone turns off Javascript, they should have a degraded experience, not NO experience!
I disagree with saying "should" here. It's to do with business priorities. How many resources should go into making "they should have a degraded experience, not no experience" true. Well, how many customers will they gain, and how much more money will they make.
Don't forget that LifeHacker is part of Gawker. There's about a dozen sites in that network, probably all using the same codebase. What proportion of Jezebel readers do you think use NoScript?
The answer to that's "none" because they can't view the site with no script turned on :-) what a business should do and what they actually do are, unfortunately two different things. I wouldn't call life hacker a paragon on good design, but then I don't frequent that site very often. And, for the record, I don't use no script, or browse with JavaScript turned off! :-)
I doubt there is a good value proposition for Lifehacker to implement something that works with NoScript. Saying that they should do it, without that, makes no sense.
Lifehacker is a terrible offender. Any of their pages contains the source code of the relevant content enclosed in a javascript object. I could just eval() the contents of the right <script> tag, append the created object to the DOM and get a readable page.
"Personally, I've never seen a website that delivers content that absolutely needed it."
Really? Etherpad, Google Wave, Google Docs. Every HTML5 game I've ever seen. Aviary, Picnik, Picozu. etc.
I generally agree with the point that most sites that present text to a screen don't absolutely NEED JS to work, but there are a myriad of apps out there that do.
I don't disagree with you in any way :-) these are web apps, not just plain websites with something like a commenting system.
Even with these web apps, I think its best to explain why JavaScript is needed. Except for google analytics, I'm still a huge fan of Unobtrusive JavaScript, if only because it makes for cleaner site organisation and code separation.
One of the big ones I can think of is that the web is becoming a system of platforms, Twitter, Facebook, Google etc. are all platforms, when I build web application it is almost guaranteed that my app will be a JavaScript based UI that couples those platforms services into a work flow with my own platform in some novel way. The way we build apps is changing they are becoming UI's that front end the cloud where the cloud is an assortment of services that provide data and content from different sources. JavaScript is a key enabler in the new web as a platform.
Agreed. I think it's important for geeks not to be too influenced by certain preferences held by a fraction of their peers at the expense of more work that could have been spent making your product better for 99.5% Reminds me of people griping about lack of ogg vorbis support.
I agree sometimes the dogma in tech can cloud peoples perspective. If we get down to brass tacks their is no "right" way to develop for the web, when talking about using JavaScript or not. It is a preference, opinion and bias issue as such it is a persons prerogative if someone want to build apps based on those constraints, but to hold it out as if it is the "right" way is disingenuous. I personally make my decisions based on data, specifically how many users are doing what, in the real world the amount of people who do not support JavaScript for whatever reason is insignificant, in my organizations we tend to redirect the funds that it would cost to chase them to mobile efforts because their is a more significant market and ROI. For us that is the right way, for other it may not be.
The last time I checked, GitHub has 0 ads on it. And they're clearly not making any money off of their users, because features like paid accounts don't exist. It's impossible to monetize a product without slapping tons of intrusive advertisements all over the place.
https://github.com/settings/billing says otherwise, mate. I assume the sarcasm was to the fact that you can't make money without ads, as opposed to being sarcastic about having no paid accounts.
Likewise. AdBlock feels slightly scummy to me - it's going out of your way to subvert the site's business model. NoScript doesn't automatically discriminate between ads and content, which feels... fairer.
In fact, if I like your site, and it happens that NoScript is blocking your ads, I'll make a point of letting them through. http://www.projectwonderful.com/ is on my whitelist, for instance.
>it's going out of your way to subvert the site's business model
When people sneak snacks into a movie theater they are not thinking "I am going to subvert this theater's business model". They are thinking "The normal way of getting snacks at the theater is unacceptable to me".
The same is true with AdBlock. Nobody thinks "Mwahahaha, I'm going to financially ruin some content creators." They think "if I see one more punch-the-monkey ad, I'm going to punch an actual monkey".
I mute TV commercials, I change the station on the radio when the commercials start, and I use AdBlock by default. If I really like a site, I will turn AdBlock off and see if its ads are acceptable. Usually, though, I turn it right back on.
Personally, I like Adblock Plus (Good Karma Edition). By default, it allows ads through, but blocking them on a website that uses them badly (which for me means flashing or making noise) is only a click away. My reason for using adblock is aesthetic, not paranoiac, so I'm willing to give sites the benefit of the doubt.
I can relate to that feeling. I usually don't start enabling Adblock until a site I frequent does something particularly noxious.
One example was my local newspaper, which put this flash overlay of a local bigmouth car deal floating in the middle of the screen -- in a area that you typically click on.
I click it by mistake and end up with a high-volume "it's huuuge" booming across my office. Screw that... adblock=on.
... okay, a lot of them are pretty terrible. But I suspect a lot of the terrible ones are drawn in by a desire to ride on the coat-tails of the not-so-terrible ones (Dr McNinja, SMBC, etc).
AdBlock(afaik) directly blocks loading ads at all. Therefore, they are not counted as a view, because it isn't. I think it'd be a lot scummier if it loaded them, but didn't display them. That would wreck havoc with ad statistics and would drive down ad revenue.
Ads are pay per click almost exclusively. Adblock saves money by avoiding rendering and distribution costs. Adblock users don't click ads even when Adblock is off.
I'm assuming you meant Ads are Pay Per VIEW almost exclusively. There is usually an incentive or you will be blocked if your click rate is incredibly low but very few ad systems pay on only a pay per click system.
I have to agree with this somewhat. I can run through and disable various features in my browser, that's my prerogative. But I can't then expect other people to cater to my specific set up. If I am deny myself what is undeniably quite a key feature on the modern web, I must live with the outcome and accept that I will miss content.
There definitely is a good argument for catering to those who cannot use some features, like Flash, but to those imposing these restrictions upon themselves, you know how to solve it.
I consider myself fairly "tech-savvy" as well and have not seen more reasoning behind turning JS off than for leaving it on.
Personal projects (and internal projects) I do always require JavaScript. The reason is because I can write much cleaner code by offloading some processing to the client. It's not about ads or content consumption. That stuff works fine without Javascript. It's about spending less time coding and having less server code to contain bugs or security problems.
I, like a lot of people, do a fair amount of browsing on my iPad and iPhone, I don't see how you can lump this in with no-JavaScript users, it's a completely different set of people.
Also, the amount of no-Flash users is increasing and will most likely do for years.
Sure, you enable JavaScript but you don't disable AdBlock and so now you're just consuming resources and contributing negatively to the site you're visiting's bottom line.
I understand the myriad justifications for disabling JavaScript, but I don't really care. There aren't enough people with JavaScript disabled to warrant giving it any attention.
It's the same with Flash. If you don't have Flash, I will show you how to get it, but I'm not going to spend the time telling you why you ought to get it, because I don't care to argue the point. There aren't enough people without Flash for it to be a concern.