Why I roll without JavaScript

Nick replied to a comment I made over at the 37 Signals site complaining that Lightbox ruins websites.

The sky turned black, the lights went out, and a giant gleaming polaroid slammed me in the face. That’s right, I got lightboxed … Lightboxing kills context, and worse, it kills personality … So next time, save us the eye strain and think twice before you start playing with the lightswitch.

I obviously disagree as I use it

I don’t see the big deal – if you middle click you get the image in a new window, or you can disable JS if you like.

I think the main problem is the context of this particular placement – it’s meant for Photography – which is how I use it as a gallery in addition to my Zooomr account on my blog.

I personally hate having to turn on JS to comment on here – or I get some lovely source code… not the 37s I love!

Asking a question that I guess a few people wonder…

Is there a reason you browse with Javascript turned off? Responsible JS usage has surged in the last few years to the point where you’re hobbling yourself unnecessarily by leaving it off.

So here’s my answer…

There are many reasons to turn Javascript off. It speeds up sites, protects my security and most of all as a professional developer I have to develop for accessible and functional sites.

I need to test my work so that it degrades nicely to work without Javascript. This can be for many reasons, these include different browsers such as screen readers.

If I was a blind person reading the site and wanted to comment - I couldn’t. It was just a shame that they picked on somethig that they could quite easily get around and works, when their commenting system fails without Javascript.

Nothing should be designed with Javascript as a precursor to work, only for Javascript to nicen the experience, let allowing the site / application to work without it

So there you go. However I must add one final piece which is to say that in general the people over at 37 Signals get it right - their post about the cable versus plug yesterday was awesome, as are the [Screens around Town] post series.