RE: Any examples of <NOSCRIPT>?

At 05:24 PM 2/20/2001, Jim Thatcher wrote:
>I really didn't expect any, and good for you for finding a "real life" use
>of NOSCRIPT. This one at http://www.section508.gov, of all places, is
>certainly real life and it is effective. What it does is provide text at the
>top of the page that in effect says "we use JavaScript for XYZ and since you
>don't support JavaScript you are out of lunch as regards XYZ."

Actually I am not entirely sure it says that.  It looks like they
are trying to say "if you had javascript, you'd see <x>, but since
you don't, we will tell you the content you are missing; in other
words, the content of the popup."

>I really think that is kind of an ingenious idea. "We're using JavaScript
>and you don't get the benefit of it, so TOUGH!"

Hmmm.  I've seen sites that do that, I don't think this is the case
though.  I think they are trying to do it right, even though I think
they don't do it particularly well.

>I guess I would say the instance is certainly not ideal. The prescription
>for NOSCRIPT is that authors will provide alternate content when scripting
>is not available. This example does not do that because I read "alternate"
>do be in some sense equivalent.
>Do you agree?

Not really.  I think they are well-meaning but they did not consider
overall usability, just accessibility.  Surely this does indeed provide
the content in an alternate form; it's just awful clumsy.  I think a
better idea would have been for them to provide the same functionality
in a different way; for example, making each link go to the page in
question with a pop-up (as now) if javascript is enabled, and making
it go to an "exit page" if javascript is not enabled.  That might
work better than this <noscript> message, which I honestly would have
put somewhere near the bottom of the page.  But at least they allow
you to skip it, I think.

--Kynn


-- 
Kynn Bartlett <kynn@reef.com>
Technical Developer Liaison
Customer Management/Edapta
Reef North America
Tel +1 949-567-7006
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Received on Tuesday, 20 February 2001 20:37:34 UTC