[Bug 10068] Suggest making noscript obsolete but conforming

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





--- Comment #60 from Lee Kowalkowski <lee.kowalkowski@googlemail.com>  2010-08-24 13:49:11 ---
(In reply to comment #59)
> There are very distinct differences between deprecating something and making
> something immediately obsolete.

It says, "suggest making noscript obsolete but conforming", I don't see how
those are compatible then.

> As such, it's
> primitive, and used too frequently to provide annoying messages such as, "You
> don't have JavaScript turned on. Go away."

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.

If your issue is that the NOSCRIPT element is used too frequently to provide
this message, whilst I agree this is probably the case, I don't see how not
having NOSCRIPT would improve it.

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.

> Deprecating noscript is saying that every instance of its use has an
> alternative, better approach. 
> I bet, if we knew the underlying reasons -- the use cases, you mentioned
> earlier-- for the use of noscript, in each and every case, we could find an
> alternative that isn't dependent on noscript.

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.

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.

> Interestingly enough, the proposal to keep noscript should probably be
> asked for, first, because the hypothesis behind its deprecation is that there
> is an alternative approach for every use case provided. 

I don't understand this logic.  Why do we need a proposal to keep something?

There are probably alternatives to every use case for toasters or the
ball-point pen, people should definitely not use them.

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Received on Tuesday, 24 August 2010 13:49:14 UTC