When writing a web backend for a system, is it important the code can still work without Javascript?

Question

Is it alright to expect that the user using the back end will have Javascript enabled?

I guess the answer I'll get is 'it depends on your target users'. I am developing a system for fun that will hopefully be used by other people. I would like to hear from other people developing back end systems, and what did they decide to do and why?

SEO I'm not concerned with, and semantics aern't of as much importance.

Answer 1

Personally I would expect the failover, but there are circumstances (particularly low profile sites, intranets, e-learning content) where you can assume JS.

Mostly you can even go with a simple "You require JS / This works better with JS" and I would consider that good enough, but there's a couple of instances where I would demand real failover:

• .gov or other public service sites (legal requirements)

• sites for web-tech companies (you need to demonstrate your ability to do this)

• very high traffic sites (where the 3% of non-JS users becomes a high absolute number)

• sites (or pages) for mobile devices (most of these haven't got JS reliably)

In general, it's reasonably easy to provide some kind of noscript, so why not do it anyway?

Answer 2

if its for fun please go ahead and require javascript.