Great example of a graceful <noscript> handling | Hacker News Reader

Great example of a graceful <noscript> handling

notwerk.com

7 pointshuhtenberg13 comments

That's not graceful. I wasn't sure if it was submitted sarcastically or not.

Graceful degradation would be to work as best as possible without Javascript - even if it means having to create a whole new design that's JS free.

This is graceful enough, practically speaking.

Redoing the site to cater to a NoScript crowd is an extra expense with unclear benefits that is rather hard to justify in many situations.

The primary benefit is that the "NoScript crowd" includes a lot of people with disabilities who do not belong to it by choice, but because screen readers and other assistive technologies generally do not get along well with Javascript.

Mind you, I understand that making a website accessible is not a trivial task and that the expense may indeed be hard to justify for a given project; but the benefits are anything but unclear.

No, not sarcastically. It's the first time I saw the noscript message actually try and explain why exactly the Javascript is needed.

I understand, but (to me) graceful degradation isn't using a noscript tag to explain why you need JS, but rather implementing your site JS-free from the ground-up, then developing JS-based improvements that are loaded into the site for maximum grace and compatibility.

It may be different for me since I've been deploying JS/AJAX on a number of eCommerce sites where you really don't want to lose even a single customer, I suppose. The basic site is designed without any JS, then if we're able to load JQuery and the browser meets our requirements (for instance, we just disable JS on any IE6 or below browsers), it'll load up nice features such as JS presentational effects, AJAX form submission, etc.

EDIT: There's isn't a "budget" for this, it's really minimal extra work.

Well, there you go. You obviously have a budget for this sort of work.

I also suspect that those with JS intentionally disabled don't really add much to the conversion rates even if they are treated nicely. Just look at the replies in this thread - a sense of entitlement to be spoon fed in the format they fancy is frankly disturbing. I wonder if showing them just a blank page would work better.

So they said two things: Presentational and Metrics. Presentational they should do what you said, with graceful degradation, but with metrics I would just give them up. I'd rather not have metrics on a user than lose a user.

My own great example of graceful handling of graceful <noscript> handling: the back button.

That'd be an awful lot of clicking. I submitted this because the page makes an effort to reason with NoScript users, something that I haven't seen done before... and judging by your snarky reply is probably altogether pointless.

It takes just one click to get away from the website, which is what people like myself would instantly do. I enable scripts to run on websites that are useful to me and require JS for functionality. Stumbling across a random website isn't going to be enough.

TLDR

Instead of that meaningless message, they could have a static webpage with the same content the real "notwerk.com" has, but in plain text - after all, it's less text than the <noscript> message!

Or, heck, actually put that noscript in a noscript tag. Instead of on another page.

EDIT: Oh, they actually do.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com

Great example of a graceful &lt;noscript&gt; handling

Great example of a graceful <noscript> handling