[thelist] Questinging JS was "AJAX Calls Working Intermittently in IE"

[Duncan Hill]

On Thu, 13 Mar 2008 02:08:20 -0000, Joshua Olson <joshua at waetech.com>  
wrote:


> In the last few years I've gotten so frustrated with wasted time that  
> I've
> jumped on the bandwagon to force users to use JS for some things.  You
> know--none of my clients have received a complaint, and none of the  
> visitors
> have ever complained.
Consider that, being 'forced' to go the javascript route may have  
prevented visitors from even getting far enough into the site to have  
reason to complain ..... it's simpler to move on to another site.
>
> I strongly encourage non-JS solutions for things like navigation so that
> search engine ranking isn't hindered, but for things like paging through  
> an
> uber-slick photo gallery, I say let the JS enabled browsers have all the
> fun.
Isn't this losing sight of the finishing line a little bit, if we code  
with the visitor in mind, the search engines don't have any problem at  
all, and it really doesn't matter how well the search engines place the  
site if all visitors can't at least get something from it.

Chris, (in a later post) differentiates between Progressive Enhancement  
and Graceful Degradation, I certainly won't argue over terms, but to me  
they are just looking at the same thing from different ends, and go hand  
in hand to encourage the reasonable practice of catering for the visitor.
Whichever you call it, neither is difficult or lengthy to apply, if you  
use the 'correct' three level approach:
HTML for the structure and content markup.
CSS for the styling and decoration.
Scripting and multimedia, applications etc. for the enhancements.

Simple accessibility, where anyone can get in and use the basic site,  
whether they have a fully enabled browser or a braille reader. It also  
shows consideration for the users who may not have a high speed connection  
or may be otherwise limited on download capabilities.
Surely that is a Win - Win situation, you could probably term that Win -  
Win - Win, because the search engines will get a much more comprehensive  
view of the site as well.


Duncan