Ask HN: Is unobtrusive javascript/gracefully degradation important anymore?

Devoting such a significant percentage of your time and resources to what likely amounts to less than 1% of your users doesn't sound like a wise business decision in most circumstances.

I think, yes, for content oriented sites (seo benefit, helps to allow people to continue to view content, etc), but if it's an app/utility site, I think there is no point in adding to your workload...

Yes it's important, no it's not a waste of time. Aside from the people who intentionally turn off JS in their browser, there are people with readers or other interfaces that don't support JS (or, not well), and most bots trying to crawl and find and possibly link to your content are going to behave, at best, unpredictably in the face of a JS-heavy site.

I suppose I'm in the minority here, but at least the way I build applications, I build in the 'vanilla' way first and foremost.<p>Submissions go to another page, as do clicks and all that jazz. It's quicker for me to get the MVP up and running first, and then later add the JS niceties.<p>Obviously, there are use cases where this is flipped around -- mapping, for example, and I'm sure many others -- but at least for me, I don't understand why it's even a hardship to make it work for nonJS users, as that's what I always build first.<p>Workflow aside, you're probably right, at least for end users. Almost every device worth supporting out there is 'modern' enough that they support jQuery, Dojo, et al.<p>The real trick is of course the other important devices that aren't users. Search engines. Crawlers aren't necessarily capable of following your application flow without graceful degradation, and in this day and age, that likely matters as much or nearly as much as actual users.