[sclug] XHTML Question

[Matthew Browning]

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On Friday 20 June 2003 14:18, David Ginger wrote:
> As a more general point I would strongly advise against the use of
> Javascript for pages to be made available to the general public.
>
> I do not wish to get heavily involved in a heated debate, or list a
> 100 reasons not to use Javascript. I will just list one general
> reason not to use Javascript.
>
[ snip ]

I don't want a debate either, but:

Agree with the accessibility argument, this was discussed at the last 
Berkshire BCS lecture, but I think that JavaScript suffers from a bit 
of knee-jerkery due to the flaky legacy client-side implementations and 
association with kiddies doing animation.

In the event that W3 DOM is ever reliably implemented across user 
agents client side scripting will become an invaluable tool for the 
delivery of web-based services and may even *yikes* have an application 
in the enhancement of accessibility.

At the present time, the key phrase is `graceful degradation'.  If 
JavaScript can reliably enhance the experience for the majority of 
users then it is arguably a Good Thing, so long as it does not exclude 
user agents without this functionality.


Matthew Browning

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