Thanks for your comment.
No, no such joke yet…

Disabling script in IE is definitely not an easy task, so you might be on to something. Naturally, it’s very hard to back this up with facts, everyone has their own way of gathering statistics.

I don’t know if this is the best example, but TheCounter’s JavaScript statistics for May 2005 show a pretty different figure.

I think you omitted what I consider to be the biggest myth of all concerning JavaScript, and that is that 10-15% of users disable it. Has anyone ever tried to disable JS in IE? Do you expect the AVERAGE user to be able to do that, let alone 10-15% of them???

It has long been my personal belief that JavaScript “metrics” have been thrown off by bot traffic and poor user agent detection. But it’s just a theory. I’ve no hard numbers to back it up.

That’s great to hear!

My original intention with this post was to get people to realize all the ways they can accomplish enchancements with JavaScript.

Nicholas,

Welcome here!
Enhancement is the keyword. And yes, drag ‘n’ drop rocks!

Good luck with the sales of your book!

Your article is truly inspiring – I immediately sat down to add some JavaScript to my web site. But not some kind of useless stuff that no-one needs, but a quite sophisticated form checker. It’s not finished yet as I haven’t coded JS for years, but I’m glad I startet. It’s very interesting (especially the DOM, and as long as users without JavaScript don’t have any disadvantages, I don’t have to feel bad.

I’ve read your article now, and I wouldn’t call your point of view tiny!

But in general, you are absolutely right. My purpose with this post is to pique the curiosity about JavaScript and to get those who do’t use it today to start playing around with it.

Me having built a kind of Web OS based on JavaScript some years ago, I then did definitely more than event handling.

With this post, however, what I was looking for was a reasonable introductory level to reach as many as possible. I think to present all the possibilites available with JavaScript at this initial state would be a bit overwhelming for some.

But for those of you interested in delving deeper into JavaScript right away, I recommend you taking a look at Alessandro’s article.

I’m sure it will be.
I really hope it will have some lovely scripts then?

The user being you in this case.

Yes, and all the visitors to the web site that I’ve gotten feedback from that have appreciated a different approach.

But of course it’s always a discussion with the viewport and what risks you’re willing to take.
There will always be a minimum size for a web site to be optimally experienced.

Given, with a certain height of the web browser window it works fine. To me, it was worth the risk with advantages I think the user got.

The user being you in this case. It is the same problem with multi level dropdown navigations. You don’t know the space you have to play with on the visitors’ viewports, and when you only do mouseover (without any delayed hiding)it can be really frustrating for the visitor to try to scroll to see the whole picture and hiding it by that.

This is where flash is cool, as you could shrink the image to fit the size and other shenanigans like that.

Well, call me naive, but I thought it would happen.

And as for the screenshot, it’s a web browser with many extra toolbars, an image in the top line hovered and the page scrolled down a bit.

Given, with a certain height of the web browser window it works fine. To me, it was worth the risk with advantages I think the user got.

But it’s all in the eye of the beholder, I guess…

As you have seen in the screenshot you did not simplyfy my viewing experience at all. Sometimes conventions are there because they proved to be working.

A workaround would be to make the images clickable, and offer a checkbox to turn on the mouseover.

Thanks for your comment. Absolutes might be good sometimes.

Regarding the image gallery:
Yes, maybe a text indicating that images are being loaded should’ve helped before you clicked them. However, my intention was that the initial explanation in the page would help the user to understand that.

It assumes you can use a mouse, but it isn’t a requirement since you can Tab to each image and press Enter.

Also, my main motivation was to break the convention of thumbnail galleries, and to simplify viewing every image without the need to click them or go to another page.

However, albeit separated, I don’t consider your photo site a good example of how JS can enhance usability. I started clicking the images until I realised that you show them on hover.
You broke a convention of thumbnail galleries, and that confuses users. It also assumes I can use a mouse and my screen is big enough to show the image, which it isn’t, as this screenshot proves.

I wrote an example of a DOM/CSS gallery some time ago, that does follow the separation principles and does not break conventions.

More about it here:
http://www.icant.co.uk/articles/dyngallery/

Thank you, and welcome here!

No site should require JS to work

You’re absolutely right, the JavaScript layer is an enhancement layer and there should alwaws be alternatives to it.

Jeroen,

The light is bright and shiny, isn’t it?
Walk towards it, walk!

However…
Generally speaking, this is not about taking over with JavaScript or replacing anything else, it’s about doing that little extra while offering alternatives and not sacrificing accessibility.

Faruk,

Ha ha!

If you want to be a rock star in web developing, you need to be brilliant at JavaScript too!

Sorry, just couldn’t resist. ^_^

With AJAX, the word is getting out (shows what some abbreviation for an old technology can do) and I’ll do my best doing so as well. Wouldn’t mind learning some more myself either