How often do you find javascript disabled on browsers?

Question

I have started using ajax/jQuery in our websites / application. There are many plugins that support degrading the javascript to browsers that dont have javascript enabled and techniques to support this. What are peoples thoughts on javascript support, we build applications rather than just websites and are looking to just support javascript enabled browsers as a pre-requisite assuming that most people or companies have javascript enabled. Do you find most people have javascript? do you monitor the percentage of javascript/non-javascript browsers (I guess this can be done with website stats) and what are the numbers regarding this?

Answer 1

Whether you should be worried about this really depends on what sort of website you are creating. For instance, if you're creating a rich javascript app, you have to ask yourself if it's worth your time & effort to worry about javascript disabled browsers, as these users are probably not too concerned with using rich user interfaces anyway. Also do you have time to put in the extra work for these browsers as there will be little extra traffic and profit gained (if it's profit making website).

Also note that if javascript is disabled in these user's browsers, there will be much on the web these people cannot use. So in all likelihood they're not heavy users.