? for webmasters. I find that about 10% of my users disable javascript. I am assuming these are people who like text-only browsers, or who are old fuddy-duddies who were told at one point or another that JS will be bad for their systems. Any idea what percent of your visitors disable JS? What's your take on the demographic that might do this?
I suppose there are some "old fuddy-duddies", but they're not the ones disabling js. The folks that purposely don't have javascript enabled are more likely to be very tech savvy, and totally annoyed by the usual stuff seen in javascript augmented pages. They might even use it as a litmus test for developer clue, moving on to another site if the developer is so silly or incompetent as to require javascript to simply use the page. Corporate IT depts may disable javascript due to very real security issues, eg. cross site scripting attacks, that various browsers, well, mainly IE, may or may not have thoroughly fixed. (Think, too, of IE and its many ActiveX vulnerabilities. Shutting down ActiveX kills javascript, too.) Assistive technologies, for the most part, would be confusing to the user were they to support the dynamic effects of javascript; so they don't. Most mobile technologies, i.e. cell phones, PDAs, &c., don't support javascript for the same reasons assistive technologies don't, it would cause user confusion due to the very small viewports, and to conserve memory, processing power and battery life. As a developer, you have no—that's zero—control over the user's UA, its configuration or capabilities. The only thing you can depend on is POSH (Plain Old Semantic Html). All browsers understand POSH. If you start there, you can add presentation (css) and behavior (javascript) layers, confident that no matter what your visitor is using, he'll have a functioning page with as many of your bells and whistles as his browser supports. cheers, gary
I have both activex and javascript disabled for security issues. As no browser is 100% secure, too much crap can happen to your computer if either are enabled.
well so far on my site (at least according to analytics) only 1% of my users have it disabled...though i don't have a huge amount of users to get a more reliable number from either... and the demographic that i think would do this more are the paranoid (not in a bad way) internet literate people that know what harm can be done from it...
Are you referring to Google Analytics? In which case, it can in no way tally javascript usage. If javascript is disabled/not supported, the Urchin application has no knowledge of the visit, and can tally nothing. I think you're looking at the Java stats. Java is not javascript. The average non-technical home users and teenagers are not aware of the option to disable nor are they aware of the reasons. Teenagers, especially, will blithely download every spyware/adware plugin some sleazy site says is necessary. No way are they concerned about security. (I had to totally bar my niece from my machines.) cheers, gary
I personally have Javascript disabled on all sites, except ones that I specify and frequent often. I am very conscious of the malicious things that people will try to interject into their websites and do as much as I possibly can to prevent it. I suppose the % of users disabling javascript will vary from site to site. If you where to get the statistics from an Arcade site and compare them to the statistics of a Computer Security site, I am sure they would vary significantly.
yup...i was being slow ...lol what programs do you use to check on whether your visitors enable javascript?
See http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=317479 post#10. But really, I don't care how many, if any, have javascript capability. Whether the visitor has javascript or not does not affect his ability to fully use my pages. Any javascript, and css for that matter, is there to enhance his experience, but is in no way necessary. Were any javascript functionality required for usability, the function would be handled server side, where I could guarantee its availability. Had the OP done due diligence, and searched before posting, he wouldn't have posted such a totally redundant query, especially considering the other thread is only a week old. cheers, gary