Check whether Javascript is enabled

Question

Is there a way to check whether Javascript is enabled or supported by the browser? If it's not supported, I would like to redirect the user to a user-friendly error page.

I am using jQuery and the PHP Zend Framework.

Answer 1

<noscript><meta http-equiv="refresh" content="1;url=error.html"></noscript>

This will redirect to an error page if script is disabled. Just replace error.html with the URL of your error page.

Answer 2

As yet another option, you can (though it requires a second page visit) use javascript to set a cookie.

If the cookie exists server-side (they have javascript) render the page as normal. During the absense of the cookie, you can either use a Location redirect, or render the appropriate [stripped-down] template to accommodate their lack of javascript support.

page html

<script type="text/javascript">
  document.cookie = 'hasJS=true';
</script>

page php

if (isset($_COOKIE['hasJS'])){
  // normal page render
}else{
  header('Location: http://mysite.com/index-nojs.php');
}