Browsers with JS disabled

Question

Years ago I used to design with JavaScript disabled browsers in mind. How important is it nowadays?

Is it really something you need to worry about? I've never come across a user in real life who has JavaScript disabled. Anyone got any figures?

Answer 1

The NoScript plugin for Firefox has been downloaded 73,063,406 times.

Your site should be usable without JS (so don't replace links with JS voodoo unless you absolutely have to).

Also people that need special output devices (like Braille Readers) will prefer sites that that work without JS.

Answer 2

Here's a couple of general guidelines. People who use different browsers with accessibility in mind, or run in a terminal with no graphics toolkit (text based) are most likely to not run JavaScript. If you want to cater to these people, all you need to do is use JavaScript if you want, but only use it to enhance, not provide the content.

By this, I mean, for example, you can enhance a table by adding sort controls with JavaScript, but don't use JavaScript to parse a data file and create the table. Use a server-side program to handle a database or data file instead.

However, there becomes a grey area, and this all has to do with what kind of user base you are targeting. If you are writing a Chrome experiment then by all means, write it all in JavaScript; it's about the JavaScript.

If, however, your website aims to provide information, it's best to avoid using JavaScript to provide content wherever possible; only enhance it.

Answer 3

Having had my own company for a year and working at another for a couple of years, none of my direct clients has ever had JavaScript disabled, in one single instance I've had one of my clients customers have JavaScript disabled, so my current guess (purely anecdotal evidence) is about 1/50.000.

My biggest worry when working with JavaScript is and has always been cross browser compliance, what works in FF doesn't always work in Chrome, what works in FF and Chrome doesn't always work in IE 8, and what works in all of the above... doesn't always work in IE 7.....

And then there is IE 6.

Edit, yay data: By July 31, 2009 firefox had 1 billion downloads

Noscript has as of September 14, 2010 73 million downloads

That tells us that about 7% of the times FF users has downloaded the browser, they have also installed the noscript plugin.

Edit addendum Making this community wiki, add your math people.

Answer 4

You're right: straight up disabling of Javascript is pretty uncommon these days because it is used by so many sites.

However most browsers have more fine-tuned control; ie to turn it on/off per site, which may still be used by paranoid.. uh, security-conscious users.

Even more likely, there's a Firefox extension called NoScript which is actually very popular. This extension gives the user even more control over when to allow Javascript. I don't know whether there's similar plug-ins for other browsers, but I expect so.

Finally, many disabled users will be running screen-readers or other accessibility browsers which may still not run Javascript properly/at all. If you want to support these users, then you'll need to be aware of the unique environments they work in.

So yes, it is still a good idea to support non-JS users, even if they are in the minority. That said, I don't think you need to make everything work for them, as long as your basic site functionality works (ie add to basket, checkout, etc), there's no need to get too stressed about them not getting the bells and whistles.

Answer 5

My tips would be:

Designing a site with a fallback to no JS is usually entirely possible and not all that difficult. You should consider doing it, regardless of what the statistics about JS-disabled browsers say.

However, don't let this stop you from being creative. If you must rely on JS and there's no workaround, don't hesitate. If someone wants full browsing experience and works with JS off, it's his/her fault.

Encoding emails using JS unescape() is always a good idea. In a JS-disabled browser, just display nothing.

Answer 6

I agree that disabling javascript is uncommon and i also agree that it's important to build websites while taking javascript-disabled browsers in mind.

BUT javascript is strongly invloved in modern & large websites now (google, youtube, facebook). without javascript you can't build AJAX supported websites and you can't also use the power of jQuery or any js library.

and if you are worry about cross browser compliance, you might wanna consider using jQuery because it abstracts away the famous cross-browser issue.

personally, i'll be always using javascript in any website i build :).