Why we should support users with no Javascript
If you take The Guardian as an example, the current average visitors per day is around 2,200,000. 1.3% of that is 28,600 users browsing without Javascript. Per day.
While I had always believed in progressive enhancement and the need to ensure that my sites work without JavaScript, this article almost convinced me to change my mind, by using weak argumentation.
While it still makes sense for content websites, providing a non-JavaScript and usable fallback for modern web apps is really a significant effort. For what benefit? Support for 1.3% users (I hope that this number excludes bots). With such a small number it really becomes a business decision: is it worth spending extra money (usually much more than 1.3% of the cost of development) to support that group?
Ability to link to a page and letting crawlers in are worth extra effort, though. But optimization of user experience for 1.3% of users who disable JS, sometimes for misguided reasons? Show me the money from that investment first.
