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by valuegram 4253 days ago
This is related to a question I was just pondering. I'm developing a web application that relies heavily on JavaScript for a lot of the interactivity. I was planning on devoting a decent amount of time to implementing JavaScript disabled functionality as well, but realized for my target market (small to medium business), that might not be very important, and could just be a big time waste. Anyone have any experience/insight?
2 comments

I find that a useful way to look at this is to compare the time you would spend on that to the growth you would get by spending time elsewhere.

For example if it takes 1 week to add support for JS disabled clients and they are 1% of your target market but you could spend a week on a feature that would likely add 2% growth, it's a pretty easy decision. The exact numbers are sometimes hard to work out, but the thought process can make the decision easier.

The best argument I've heard made for fallback functionality is accessibility (disabled users: namely blind, and Search Bots which struggle with JS sometimes).

In some countries (in Europe mostly) there are certain legal requirements to make your sites accessible. And while these laws are infrequently enforced, you can be civilly sued if you upset enough people (governments have been sued for badly performing websites).