I can’t help but wonder, considering the number of websites and web developers who insist on ensuring that their websites are still fully compliant with Internet Explorer 6, which was rendered obsolete long ago, should other non-standard browser configurations be considered as well?
Has anyone ever tried to count how many users run Firefox with the NoScript add-on?
How many users have JavaScript disabled in Google Chrome?
Do a lot of IE users have JavaScript turned off or restricted somehow?
Most importantly, if you added up all of the users with JavaScript unsupported or JavaScript disabled in their web browser, how big of a user group would they be as a percentage of all web users? Would that number be larger than the number of people still using IE 6? If so, wouldn’t it be prudent for website owners and webmasters to ensure that their websites function correctly without JavaScript, especially when so many of the elements using JavaScript are superficial like animated menus?
I for one test every WordPress theme or website template in Firefox with NoScript running to see what it looks like when it “breaks” because JavaScript is not enabled in a browser. If it still doesn’t render and function at a basic level, then I won’t use it.
Does anyone else do something similar?
Can the noscript tag be used effectively enough to compensate for non-JavaScript enabled browsers?