I started writing a longer post, branched off from this thread lol.

One thing that I seem to always disagree with a few people is pages in a website working even without having javascript enabled.

I think that to a website, its "major" core feature(s) should perhaps work without javascript, but really I don't let it impede my designs. You can make some really rich web applications with ajax/js, and for the small minority that doesn't have it turned on I guess it sucks for them.

I guess I thought, if facebook doesn't support browsers w/o javascript, then I can too!

What are your guys thoughts about this? Is it really that big of a deal if your designing a community sort of site, and not like a "financial" application where its pretty much required?

I try to use PHP where I can.

Facebook is huge enough where they can just shrug it off and not have to worry about that demographic. You aren't anywhere close to being as large as Facebook so you shouldn't conform to what they do unless you can completely say "I don't need their business". Large scale business practices don't necessarily translate to small businesses.

quote Monferno

I try to use PHP where I can.

PHP doesn't offer the same interactivity as JS, however.

quote Vermillion

quote Monferno

I try to use PHP where I can.

PHP doesn't offer the same interactivity as JS, however.

PHP is server-side, and so gets parsed in (most cases) before page load. JS can be used to change text on a page, etc without reload.

I pretty much totally agree with you, Bobbnow. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect a user to have a modern browser, but it is of course totally audience independent. At my work our website registration forms depend on AJAX and don't work without - the main reason being it looks nice and our online financial trading app is pretty heavily JS based anyway.

I absolutely despise working with Javascript, but the fact is it does have a lot of nice features (primarily AJAX) that can't really be achieved in other ways.

My colleague at work has a reference book 'Javascript: The Good Parts' - it's only 150 pages long, and the last 50 pages or so of that covers 'The Awful Parts' - I think that just about sums it up for me.

You hate working with JavaScript, Liam? Have you tried looking at libraries like Prototype (with Scriptalicious for animation), Mootools with Mootools More or jQuery? All three offer a different experience.
Protoype is mainly focussed on interactivity (with AJAX/ XHR) and has a robust classes (-like) system like that found in other languages. Scriptalicious can do some amazingly fluid animation rivaling Flash.
Mootools also gives you classes.
jQuery lets you code your own style. Its main goal is to let you "select stuff in the DOM and do stuff in the DOM". jQuery's greatest strengths are simplicity and a large, active community. It doesn't feature 'classes emulation' like other libraries, it uses JavaScript's quirky (but pretty cool) prototype system and a pretty well-thought out plugin system.

Examples:

code

// Mootools $('myElement').addClass('myClass'); $$('.myClass').removeClass('myClass'); // $$() for CSS selectors // jQuery $('#myElement').addClass('myClass'); $('.myClass').removeClass('myClass'); // Native way el = document.getElementById('myElement'); el.className = el.className + ' myClass '; for(el in document.getElementsByClassName('myClass')) el.className = el.className.replace('myClass', ''); // Simple POST request with jQuery: var data = { name:'John Doe', poll_id:32, voted_on:16 } $.post('index.php', data, function() { alert('If you see this message, your vote has been accepted.'); });

Yes, I mainly use jQuery and Prototype (Rails has built in prototype helpers). They definitely make it a nicer experience. I think the main problem I have with Javascript is IE compatibility, which can often be a pain in the backside - even with the frameworks.