Comment Re:Wow, it's completely barren with JS disabled. (Score 3, Insightful) 141
I just loaded the example site, and it looks like just several lines of text with JavaScript disabled on the site. After enabling JavaScript, the site looks like it's supposed to, but is it really necessary to write a web forum that relies entirely on JavaScript to work? What ever happened to server-side processing spitting out dumb HTML pages and CSS styles?
Most popular message board systems I've seen work perfectly without JS enabled, but others are very ugly (I'm looking at you, Disqus).
The problem is that the vast majority of real web users do not actually care what a site looks like with JS disabled, as they keep it enabled.
You guys with your insistence on no JS completely excludes jquery use and means everything has to work on completely refreshing the page every time you interact with it. Jquery and ajax creates an experience that is much quicker for most users since they only have to wait for very small amounts of JSON data to be sent to and from the server, and don't have to wait for the entire DOM to be reloaded from the server even though only a small part of it changed. Most users prefer this experience.
I actually agree that all decent websites should degrade gracefully when JS is absent as this is how most screen readers (for blind people) render sites. The thing is though that most developers do not care what the blind person view of their website looks like providing it is at least half way usable (often that usability is a mandatory requirement as all government funded stuff has to tick the accessibility box).
The number of real world users who insist on disabling JS seems to be a very low minority so don't be too surprised you are neglected by us web developers more and more. That way of creating websites is dead, and it simply is not coming back no matter how loudly you piss and moan as most people prefer the more modern Ajax feel.