[Bug 10068] Suggest making noscript obsolete but conforming

http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=10068





--- Comment #62 from Lee Kowalkowski <lee.kowalkowski@googlemail.com>  2010-08-24 15:48:45 ---
(In reply to comment #61)
> > This is annoying when the JS functionality can be easily implemented in HTML or
> > on the server, but if this is not viable (e.g. arcade games).  Then the only
> > option you have is to tell the user they'll need JavaScript if they'd like to
> > use the feature.
> >
> Certainly shouldn't use noscript for this. There should be an intro page that
> describes the game, the rules, and what you need to have to play. 

Right, and on the game page, what if somebody goes straight to that?

> > You're treating a technique as a scapegoat.  If it was commonplace for sites to
> > provide such annoying messages as a default and use progressive enhancement to
> > enable everything, would such messages suck less?  No.  Would PE start to get a
> > bad reputation and people advocate that it must not be used?  I hope not.  Is
> > the overall user experience any better just because PE was used?  Of course
> > not.
> > 
> We could say the same about font, or any other presentational attribute, can't
> we? After all, when we deprecated these items, we were making the techniques
> into a scapegoat. Weren't we?

I haven't seen anybody accusing those techniques for annoying messages.

> > Just because it is possible to use PE to upgrade away from the annoying
> > message, is no justification for doing so.  Let's face it, using PE from a
> > non-functional starting point is just not the spirit of progressive
> > enhancement, because there's nothing progressive about it at all.
> >
> No justification for doing so? In other words, we should defend crappy
> techniques, and sloppy coding? Creating unusable web pages that perform poorly?

Creating something that depends on JavaScript, if appropriate, does not infer
that the technique will be crappy, the coding sloppy, the page unusable or the
performace poor.  Nor does using PE infer that the opposite will be true.

> Progressive enhancement is a starting point. It is a design principle. It is a
> philosophy, a technique, and an approach to building web pages. You can't get
> more "starting point" then this.

No, the starting point is the annoying message.  It's an annoying message
despite the method it arrived at the users screen.

> > Insisting that if something is possible to do using PE then it must be, is
> > going to lead to same abuse of PE that NOSCRIPT receives, or lead people to
> > realise that it wasn't NOSCRIPT that was bad after all, it was the web page
> > developers.
> >
> Sorry, you really lost me here.

You were blaming NOSCRIPT for annoying messages...

> > > Interestingly enough, the proposal to keep noscript should probably be
> > > asked for, first, > > 
> > I don't understand this logic.  Why do we need a proposal to keep something?
> >
> Well, they don't have to provide any. Which means that the change proposal
> probably is accepted by default.

I admit I don't really know the process, but can a change proposal can not be
challenged directly?  A counter-proposal must be raised otherwise the change
proposal is automatically accepted?  Oh well, it's just a proposal I suppose.

> > > because the hypothesis behind its deprecation is that there
> > > is an alternative approach for every use case provided. 
> > There are probably alternatives to every use case for toasters or the
> > ball-point pen, people should definitely not use them.
> What?

Just because there are alternatives to something doesn't make that thing
useless.  Having alternatives also doesn't automatically mean the alternatives
will be better.  The existence of alternative approaches isn't in itself a
rational argument to deprecate anything.

I don't consider having a fallback "you need javascript" message as the default
response, then progressively enhancing the functionality over the top of it to
be a very elegant use of PE.  I'd consider that particular use of PE to be a
waste, and frankly, a display of lack of knowledge of what PE is and should be
used for.

I personally do not consider NOSCRIPT to be an element of graceful degradation
(I certainly don't use it as such), but that of fallback content, just like the
alt attribute.  So I do not argue that we have PE therefore we don't need
NOSCRIPT.

-- 
Configure bugmail: http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/userprefs.cgi?tab=email
------- You are receiving this mail because: -------
You are the QA contact for the bug.

Received on Tuesday, 24 August 2010 15:48:48 UTC