As a budding web developer I'm trying to walk the fine line of cross-platform usability/compatibility and pizazz(functionality).
Is this as much of a problem as it was a few years ago? The parts of my site that - dare I say - require (aka make my life easier) JavaScript would not be something that a mobile would want to access (although it could if it wanted to).
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp
If you scroll down, it seems to indicate that 95% of computers accessing that site have JavaScript enabled/installed.
Any input from someone who has dealt with this issue would be appreciated.
I don't know anyone these days who has Javascript turned off permanently. The sheer amount of sites that rely on JS means that the web is virtually unusable without it.
The vast majority of people simply leave it on all the time. Most of the really serious security holes that used to make people turn it off have long since been fixed, so it's much less of an issue than it used to be.
There are still some things that worry the paranoid, but even then most people who do disable JS do so on a site-by-site basis using a tool like the Firefox NoScript extension rather than just switching it off. When these people visit a new site, they have to decide whether they trust it enough to enable JS for it.
The other demographic which may be affected is disabled users, using a screen reader or other assistive technology. Many of these people may not be able to use Javascript. (that said though, many of them can; screen readers are not nearly as backward compared with regular browsers as many people imagine)
As the end of the day though, it's up to you really to decide what to do about supporting your visitors who don't have JS. Here are some things to consider:
It depends on what you're doing. I'm a firm believer in Javascript gracefully degrading if it's just adding UI sugar. It's a fine line though, and there's not really one answer. Sometimes you'll be able to make assumptions about about your userbase -- for example, if you're writing a mobile web application, you're pretty much guaranteed good HTML5 support. Other times, you might need to worry about having rock-solid IE6 support. It all comes down to what your audience is and how much time you can afford to spend supporting different configurations.
I would highly recommend that you, as a budding web developer, learn how to do progressive enhancement with your Javascript. It's often the "right" way to approach a problem, even if you don't care about supporting javascript-less browsers; and it's very likely that you'll run into a situation in the future where you've got to support backwards browsers (which is a group you can lump Googlebot into as well).
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