dtleahy - 6:36 pm on Nov 14, 2006 (gmt 0)

I would encourage you to do some research on "unobtrusive javascript" and "progressive enhancement".

Thanks, Fotiman, I have bookmarked a few sites, and checked out several. I have to say that in the big picture, unobtrusive JavaScript is probably the way to go, but (maybe due to my ignorance) it still seems like the site owner will be forced to pay for more development time to implement a fully functional site for the visitors that choose to browse without using JavaScript.

A few comments:

Scalability: working from the lowest common denominator
Maybe it is ignorance on my part, but it seems like there is a much bigger investment in time for a site that serves up a set of pages that will scale well on a cellphone browser and still look world-class when served on desktop PCs. I would think it might be cheaper for the web site owner to pay for a different set of pages for the micro browser crowd. (My gut reaction to the current crop of micro devices is that they are "quaint", like a Commodore 64. However, it probably won't be long before they grow up, and then web developers will not only need to include them as the lowest common denominator, we will want to.)

Cookies optional?
What about the site visitor to your ecommerce site that prefers to surf with cookies disabled? I suppose there are ways to code everything server side, but again, this extra development time has to be paid for by the site owner - are they getting a smart return on their investment?

JavaScript: vital, fluff, or somewhere between?
Why has it become best practice to build sites that will degrade gracefully in every respect if the user turns JavaScript off? What about the user that decides to turn images off or sound off or CSS off? I wouldn't want to project manage a silent music site, or a text-based art site. I just never understood why JavaScript seemed to be the first technology to be deemed "fluff" by many, and expendable. (Well, it may have been the first, but Flash fell harder.)

Again, this could be ignorance on my part, and there may be ways to code every site function on the client side without using JavaScript, and I just don't know how to do it. I'll give an example: I have an ecommerce site in progress where the user can search (filter) and sort (order) results. I give the user a primary and a secondary sort, presented in 2 clusters of radio buttons. When the user selects a radio button from one cluster, the illogical choices are disabled in the other cluster. This is done with a JavaScript function. With JavaScript turned off, the user could choose to order the results first by price descending, and second by price ascending. The interface thus makes no sense to the user - they don't know how the results will be sorted. Of course, my program logic cannot allow a query like that, so I will force a default of ignoring the secondary sort. This happens in the background, and the user would not know why the results are not sorted by ascending price (which may have been his intent.)

This is not a vital, life-or-death example, but it is fresh in my mind. The only way I know how to do it client side is by JavaScript, and it seems like a crazy thing to do server side (which would probably be painfully slow on a cellphone browser.)

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Again, I would think that the decision to pay for the extra development time to make sites accessible on micro devices, or to remain "fully" functional without JavaScript, cookies, CSS, a video screen or monitor, would be a decision for the site owner.

Dennis