[neeson]

Author here. Here's the relevant line in the post:

"[..]web browsers are not the only clients that will use Urbantastic. Mobile devices, search engine spiders, screen readers for people with disabilities, and RSS readers all need the same data but in different forms. Accommodating any of these is simply a matter of dropping a different rendering front-end in front of the common JSON data server."

It's not up yet, but I'm working on a front end intended for non-javascript users. It will also serve blackberry users, IE6 users, and spiders.

It will be a /much/ simpler site, but you'll be able to get everything done on it. I figured it's easier to separate it out than try to shoehorn every use into one format.

The general principle is that I'm going to design for the large majority of the users - and use Javascript capability I can to make it an excellent experience. Then create a simplifed mirror for the minority uses. Gmail took this route and I think it's worked well for them.

[tdavis]

So you've taken the idea of progressive enhancement and reversed it? Zeldman would be rolling in his grave... if he were dead, anyway. I've always found it easier to go the other way: make a site that works on everything, then just add bells, whistles, and enhancements with Javascript as you feel compelled to do so. Doing it this way, I find places I was going to use pure JS where there was no real value-add to it.

[icey]

Bizarre. Everything from "The Language" down wasn't there when I read this earlier. I guess I must have been having connection problems.

Anyways, thanks for following up - this is a great way to handle clients without Javascript.