Chacham's Journal: Verbiage: eBay javascript silliness

Having a free moment, i decided to search for something on eBay when the following message popped up on my screen:

Please enable JavaScript

Our new search experience requires JavaScript to be enabled. Please enable JavaScript on your browser, then try again.

To use our basic experience which does not require JavaScript, click here.

The "basic experience which does not require JavaScript" seems fine to me, so i clicked on the link and the same page and modal error message came up.

Even without the non-working old-experience link, there is something wrong with using a modal window to tell me that i can't appreciate the experience.

If you ask me what version of FF i'm using, you're already a lost cause.

Deprecation of compatibility layers

[insanecarbonbasedlif]

I don't know if this is what you encountered, but it sounds like something I've seen a number of times. Systems (web sites and programs) go through a redesign, included support for the older versions, and then when they finally deprecated the earlier versions of things they forget to remove the transition related code.

Re:

[Chacham]

Could be.

But why is it modal? To put it another way, if i can't use it without javascript there is no need to prevent me, because i can't use it anyway.

Re:

[insanecarbonbasedlif]

True - I would guess the logic of committees and redesigns, wherein an original idea gets so many parts replaced it appears Dadaist.