I am a long time lurker here, though not a programmer, but a system admin and professional manager, open source enthusiast. A trend which I am seeing is that websites may use latest programming paradigms and designs to make them beautiful and stunning, yet they are so engrossed in javascript and 'awesome' interactive graphics and images, that a website cannot be viewed without javascript and images disabled. To save bandwidth or during slow wireless speeds, it is desirable to run browser without javascript and images disabled but websites don't have any kind of 'text only' versions for such use. In an ideal situation, every website should have 'text only' version which can be opened in CLI browser like Links. As an example, this startup http://qfusionlabs.com/ website looks like blowing a bubble without javascript and images disabled.
Edit: I am glad that Hacker News works perfectly without javascript and images disabled! Why can't all of discrete websites be like this.
The "proper" approach to this is 'progressive enhancement', ie. that every site is <i>already</i> a text only version. Then, on top of that, you can add images, stylesheets, Javascript, etc. as necessary. This used to work well, since that was also the easiest approach to building a site (unless you used Flash...)<p>I think frameworks have inverted things: the easiest approach these days is to load the default config of some framework/CMS, which will make heavy use of Javascript/images/CSS/etc. in order to entice developers to use it (otherwise, why use a framework at all ;) ). In this world, <i>turning off</i> a feature takes more effort than leaving it on, and we end up with ideas like special "text only" alternatives.<p>I think there's definitely a burden on the developers of frameworks to make them degrade as gracefully as possible. Of course, this isn't always possible (especially those designed to be completely in client-side JS), but in those instances where it is possible, it can have a large impact. For example, if the developer of some popular Wordpress theme spent a little extra effort on graceful fallbacks, it would improve the situation for all sites using that theme.<p>Disclaimer: I used to develop a CMS with crazy-strict adherence to, among other things, accessibility standards ;)
It depends on your business model.<p>Model 1: ecommerce. The website exists to sell your product. Having an alternate version is a simple cost/benefit decision: will people buy your thing from a low-overhead site? This may be combined with a mobile-friendly rendition.<p>Model 2: advertising. The website exists to catch attention long enough to show ads. You need seven tracking systems and eleven ad networks; all of them need JS and graphics and won't make money for you otherwise.<p>Model 3: public service. The focus is on providing information, not on making a sale or showing ads. The benefit of a low-overhead version is clear, but you need to keep the costs low, so you can't spend much extra time or money on it.<p>Model 4: SAAS. The website is the service, so user satisfaction is the top concern. Understand how your users want to use your service, and provide that for them.
Because it isn't worth it, basically. It's a relatively simple economic decision - making a text only backup version takes time, programming, adds an extra possibility for failure, etc. etc. - and the people who want a text only version are an extremely small minority.<p>I know that sounds a little heartless and "not caring about the web", but it's the reality.
Because the business case isn't there, in terms of the cost/benefit. It's a lot of work (maybe not initially, but maintaining that functionality on an ongoing basis slows development), to support a tiny number of users, who you can't make any money advertising to (if you're ad-supported) and who are probably not the kind of users who buy much (if you sell directly).
As someone who lives without constant broadband and as someone who works with people who enjoy accessibility settings in software, I think the current web design trend you describe is disastrous.
I think main reason is that number of users with JS disabled these days is just too small to care.<p>Another thing is even if the effort of enabling is small, people responsible for the website are not even aware of the problem.<p>As an experiment I would drop a note to a few websites broken with JS disabled about a problem, providing a reasoning why it should be fixed and check how many respond.
When are we going to get over the idea of turning off javascript? No one asks "why doesn't my Java app run properly when I turn off the JVM?" I would argue that the open web is getting to that point with javascript.<p>JS is an open standard, highly performant, and implemented well by almost every single browser out there. The only people I know who regularly browse without JS are old-timers who got into the habit 10 years ago, before Spidermonkey, V8, Nitro, JavascriptCore etc. revolutionized performance, and before AJAX revolutionized architectures.<p>Let me propose a different way of looking at things. The concerns you actually expressed are performance, download size, and CLI browser compatibility.<p>Performance - I don't know of a reason that javascript apps cannot be performant enough, even on low-bandwidth connections. AJAX was invented to improve performance over static websites, by reducing network traffic to just the bits that change with each user action.<p>Download size - Javascript obviously has nothing to do with how many images or videos a site embeds.<p>CLI browser - Why can't the CLI browsers implement a javascript engine, and then render the results, just like any other browser? There is nothing about JS that requires a GUI.<p>edit- speling
From a dead user, Diti, whose sentiments match my own:<p>> To me, any website implementing good accessibility (<a href="http://www.w3.org/WAI/" rel="nofollow">http://www.w3.org/WAI/</a>) is likely to be perfectly viewable and browsable per what you said. But most webmasters don't know about WAI.<p>I'd add "or don't care".
It's cheaper to make a fancy box around a pinecone than to deliver a Fabrege egg. Content that stands on its own is harder than a flock of spinning googaws. That's why Facebook fills your feed with CandyCrush.
This reminds me of the rarely-used print stylesheet[0]. In fact, the only place I've ever seen it in use is on websites run by the Dutch government (perhaps other governments do so too, but I've never needed to check them out).<p>EDIT: A bit of online searching mainly shows people *complaining8 about print sheets, so perhaps I'm completely out of the loop and simply haven't printed anything in a long time.<p>It's not much - just stripping out menu bars and other stuff that makes no sense in print, plus a few typographical changes, such as a change in font from sans serif (screen) to serif (paper).<p>Similar to the other comment, there isn't a clear business case for it very often, but whenever there's a website with a "print version"-link to their articles I don't see why they wouldn't do this instead. Well, aside from the fact that nobody would expect this functionality to be there, which isn't minor I guess.<p>[0] <a href="http://alistapart.com/article/goingtoprint" rel="nofollow">http://alistapart.com/article/goingtoprint</a>
The lazy answer is that >95% of users have images and JavaScript enabled, and of that 95%, those who have a slow connection are getting the same experience across a number of websites, so they probably won't be turned off by a slow site.<p>The better answer is that unless you think about it from the start, providing a no-JS fallback can be hard to do well and may require a fair bit of re-architecturing of your website or web app - something that you probably won't bother doing to do for a single digit percentage of your visitors (text-only support probably has a lower priority than supporting <IE9 and Opera Mini). Finding out that images won't work is also pretty hard - they're no way that I know of finding out if images are enabled or not without using JavaScript, which is probably disabled as well.<p>I've actually been creating a reasonably complex web-based application recently, and for fun every few weeks I test it using Lynx[0]. Technically, using forms and very basic CSS results in a fairly usable service. I managed to get a working CSS3-only (no JS) fallback for tabs, some toggle buttons and some other UI goodies. The only problem is that I end up duplicating a lot of stuff on the backend of the app (because I have to deal with both form submissions AND ajax), and there are a lot of things that you can only really do with JavaScript and images (e.g. games, most interactive stuff without reloads, anything to do with images obviously).<p>EDIT: regarding advertising, rarely do (effective) advertisers online want the <i>largest</i> audience specifically, they want the most engaged audience. Is this no-JS and no-images user interested in downloading an app or a pop album? Probably not, so it's not worth putting in the effort to make them see your ads.<p>[0] <a href="http://lynx.isc.org/" rel="nofollow">http://lynx.isc.org/</a>
To me, it seems almost as if the web dev is saying "if you don't have the latest, most up-to-date, most powerful device/whatever, then we don't want you looking at our ads". Seriously? I thought the idea of advertising was to get as many eyeballs as possible. That way of thinking seems so counter-productive to me, plus I can't imagine the advertiser being very happy with that approach. Thinking back to my days working in recording studios, we always mixed stuff in a way that it would sound good on both a giant audio system or a small, cheesy boom-box, with the idea that we wanted everyone who listens to have a good experience no matter what system they were using. I'm not quite sure why this methodology can't be applied here.
If you are a manager, then you will surely understand.<p>It's mostly because the website owner/responsible believes that the cost of producing a "text only" version would be bigger than the benefits achieved. If the decision is right or not, I wouldn't know - and, frankly, neither most of people who make the decision (albeit being "confident"). I seriously doubt that any thorough analysis is done on the subject, people just believe that almost everyone uses JS and images. And they might be right, or not.<p>Sometimes it might also be a matter of ignorance. It might happen that the responsible is not aware of this question (and neither is "made aware" by the technical people).
Yes, this very much annoys me.<p>It's not text-only versions we need, but sensible use of progressive enhancement. I'm totally fine with 'web apps' requiring Javascript and CSS (but please, at least give me a message to that effect, and don't leave me with an infinite spinner!) but simple web pages are increasingly broken without scripting.<p>It's frustrating, because it's not like progressive enhancement is hard, either.
It basically amounts to two alternatives:<p>1) they make it intentional for whatever purpose - stop scrappers, prevent search engine indexing, pull in ads etc.<p>2) they make it out of incompetence - probably somebody with insufficient web development skills just used some popular JavaScript framework to quickly cook up a site<p>Now the majority of the customers won't care, but if you're targeting a professional audience, this will not score you any points. If you were a software development company hiring and I were to reply to your invitation, I would first go to your website. If I saw a blank screen in my browser, my first question to you would be why a serious company does have a broken site. Depending on what I heard I might skip you altogether.<p>Personally, I don't think there are any difficulties in doing a "text-only" version as you call it. That's how I always approach things - do a classic version then add some gradual enhancements. I can't imagine doing it the other way around actually.<p>And yes, you can call me out of touch with the times, but text pages rank higher and more credible in my eyes then all of the JavaScript toys I see around.
>>> every website should have 'text only' version which can be opened in CLI browser like Links.<p>every website has a target audience and it simply doesn't make sense to spend time and effort for this support. It's just not worth it.
(Playing devil's advocate marketing guy) Why would I allow you to see my product being website, web-based service or simply my advertising without the full experience? If I offer options to see a stripped down version then I am creating a consumer that will talk about the stripped down version and it will taint my brand. If you were to go to my site then when people ask you about it then I want you to tell them that your actions gave a non-optimal experience. (Non-optimal being my opinion of what I think you as a customer should be and not you a reasonable person should be)
To answer that, you have to ask yourself why somebody would not want to create an abstraction between content and presentation for their website. It's a basic aspect of modern web design, and even when it gets implemented, it's only ever used to present in one way. Why would someone do that? I'm sure there are a multitude of answers, the most basic of which is "they didn't feel like it." They probably didn't feel like it because they didn't think their efforts would be rewarded, or it wasn't personally fulfilling to them.
It used to be an SEO technique, to make sure that the important parts of a page rendered without javascript. I think the Google is now running javascript in its spider, so that is less of a factor now.
What you're describing sounds like an edge case and goes against the design & development methodologies used in today's websites. Rarely are we building things with static content, and we're leveraging the power of AJAX to minimize the number of times a browser must refresh the entire window to load new content.<p>Current trends aside, from a pragmatic perspective, I would anticipate something like this increasing development costs (labor & money) between 10-50%, and would likely have a very low ROI.
> Why can't all of discrete websites be like this.<p>Because most people never turn javascript off OR use links to browser the web.<p>Of course javascript-less websites have many advantages: easier end to end testing, speed of execution, loading speed,work on a wider range of browsers without hacks...
I guess that it is too much work, and perhaps because of ads. However, I believe there should be a project for a server that does a url screengrab and runs it through some scanning and OCR and perhaps some AI, that accomplishes what you are asking.<p>(Any takers?)
Not the answer to the question, but that particular site is somewhat (a little of the text and one or two images) readable without the JavaScript if you turn the styles off.<p>I've just tried it with JS, actually it's a very little of the whole content.
That's not the way to help people with low bandwith or very high latency connections. They need more javascript, not less.<p>SPA designs can actually make CRUD apps significantly more useable on slow or unreliable connections.
Because the modern "developers" don't know how to do so. They barely manage to bolt together a backend that scaffolded everything magically for them, to react, less, and other "magic" they followed pavlovian style from blog postings.