Posted by eclipsme on 12/08/07 22:57

Onideus Mad Hatter wrote:
> On Fri, 07 Dec 2007 12:04:30 -0500, eclipsme <eclipsme@nowhere.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Onideus Mad Hatter wrote:
>> <snip>
>>> To always try and cater to the lowest common denominator (that 6%) is
>>> VERY foolish, especially in business where you want to push most of
>>> your resources into things that will have the LARGEST positive impact
>>> on your business (getting the most bang for your buck). Generally the
>>> ONLY people who are against the practice are those who are foolish
>>> enough to disable javascript and somehow think that the rest of the
>>> world should have to cater to THEIR personal preferences. But when it
>>> comes right down to it, which is more important...trying to entice 6
>>> people to come and buy something from your store...or trying to entice
>>> NINETY FOUR people to come and buy something from your store.
>> If I can entice the 6% without loosing the 94% - well, that is the way I
>> would want to go.
>
> But you forget that, that enticement comes at a price, an investment.
> Yes, you can offer a "<noscript>" form of your site for that 6%, but
> that form has to be built. On some of my sites I create a simple,
> plain text fall back version for those who have scripting shut off.
> It's very basic, has nothing fancy and takes nearly no effort to throw
> together. However if I wanted to offer a more fancy alternative form,
> well at that point I'd essentially be looking at recreating the entire
> site...that takes time...time is money. The question is whether
> enticing that 6% is going to justify wasting the time, effort and
> money in creating an alternate version of your site. In most cases,
> the level of effort that you can justify doesn't extend much farther
> than a plain, simple text version of the site.
>
> --
Well, if you begin by building pages that can run without java script
from the beginning it is not an issue. I recently started learning php
for just this reason. I wanted to pass a variable from one page to a
form on another. I found many java scripts that would do this, but found
it rather simple (once I learned how) to include a snippet of php in the
form to accept the variable. Voila! Anytime I want to do similar, I know
how - no added investment at all. Of course, php being server side, I
have no worries about it not working in *any* browser with *any*
configuration.

Granted, there are times that javascript is just what needs to be. A
client wants a horizontal drop down menu - it can be done in FF with
just css but not IE, so a small js program is needed. If I could find a
script in php I would use it, but couldn't. So I have to provide other
links on the page for those with js turned off. Not a terrible trade
off, at least to me.

I prefer striving for accessibility and standards. I also learn more
that way for next time. JMHO

Harvey

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