Do you plan for javascript being off?

Question

I'm coding a fairly large and complex site by myself, so do you think I need to support javascript being turned off?

Its a lot of extra work supporting full page postbacks for stuff I could quickly do with JSON and ajax.

Answer 1

I think you should support that. In fact, if your site involves SEO and bot indexing your site and all that, you SHOULD support javascript off.

As a modern web designer, you should first develop your site to be able to support Javascript OFF. then slowly add on effects and Javascript enhancements.

Example would be like:

<a href="page.php?p=2">Continue</a>

Then upgrade to:

<a href="page.php?p=2" onclick="doajax();return false;">Continue</a>

So say if a Javascript user clicks on the link, the AJAX is done but the usual link is disabled. However if a Javascript-OFF user clicks on the link, the user is redirected to the correct page with the same content that would be displayed to the javascript user.

If you're doing postbacks, you can do the same way for both AJAX or not.

The term that you build the site with no Javascript first, then add on the Javascript and AJAX features is called "Progressive Enhancement".