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Is it worth it to code different functionality for users with javascript disabled?
I've just learned in this question that an ASP.NET webforms application will have issues to run properly in a browser with disabled Javascript (unless I don't use certain controls and features).
So this is a kind of a follow-up question. For my current web application which will only have a small number of users I can postulate to enable Javascript.
But how to deal with this question in general? As I can see (with my rather small knowledge about web development until now) Javascript is all around, especially the more a web site is "dynamic" or "RIA" like.
Is it worth at all to take care about the few users during web app development who disable Javascript in their browsers?
Are they really "few"? (I actually have no clue, I just don't know anyone who has Javascript disabled.)
I'm a bit inclined to tell them: "If you want a nice interactive page, don't disable Javascript." or "You cannot enter this website without Javascript. Go away!" Because I don't want to double code and development time for some mavericks (if they are mavericks). Does it indeed add a lot more time to get a website working with Javascript and without Javascript as well?
For what reason does someone disable Javascript at all in his/her browser? Well, I've heard: "Security!" How unsecure is Javascript actually? And does that mean in the end that millions of pages are unsecure and almost every website I am using is a risk for me? Are there other reasons except security?
Are there any branches or environments where it is usual or even mandatory to disable Javascript for security (or other) reasons? (For instance I have security services, offices in defense ministries or a bank in mind.)
Are there any trends in development to see to add more Javascript to web sites, thus making it more and more necessary to let Javascript enabled in the browser? Or is there rather a counter motion?
Thank you for some feedback in advance!
Whether or not to care about users who turn off javascript should be done on a case by case basis. If you believe that it is ok to turn away users that do not have it enabled then that is a decision that you can make and is made by many apps.
Keep in mind that it is not necessarily a conscious decision to have javascript disabled or at a limited capacity. Screen readers, for example have a very stripped version of javascript and a site that uses it throughout will often be inaccessible. Depending on the website, this may actually be illegal.
If a website is properly constructed with progressive enhancement from the beginning, then creating versions that work without javascript should not be too much additional work. Therein lies one of the major issues with webforms - it is difficult to gain control over markup and javascript tends to be very tightly coupled.
My personal view is the number of people who completely disable javascript to the extent that .net web sites stop functioning is very small - For some government sites I have been responsible for, I don't recall getting any complaints from "non-javascript" users.
My concern would be more about making sure your site was xhtml compliant, with valid markup (which earlier versions of Visual Studio did not generate), valid css, and intelligent use of javascript.
Having a disclaimer somewhere on your site - that is accessible to those few with javascript disabled telling people that javascript is required for the site to function correctly would be a good thing.
Depends on your audience. For one thing, if the site is completely nonfunctional without JavaScript, accessibility (e.g. to those who must use a screen reader) may be an issue, so if you expect any blind users, you might need to consider that.
In most situations, I'd say, you're probably fine just using <noscript> tags to drop in a quick disclaimer along the lines of "JavaScript is required to use this web site."
While I have no solid numbers -- and I presume I'm in the distinct minority -- I, and many of the more savvy users I know, disable JavaScript by default (a la NoScript). I enable it on websites on a case by case basis. Most novice users (I'm ignoring the 25% in the upper/middle of experience) don't even know what "JavaScript" means.
As a developer I see the cost/benefit of supporting JS-less users
as boiling down to one question:
Do your users need the site more, or do you need your users more?
One of my current projects makes heavy use of JavaScript and Flash and does not function at all without it. But as it's installed at the employer's site and the visitors are the employees using it for their job, that requirement is completely reasonable.
However, if I were working on a revenue-generating site where losing users meant losing money, I'd seriously think about crafting the site to work w/o JS -- albeit less quickly with more page reloads. (Perhaps by asking advice here.)
As a random thought -- you could probably devise a special method to determine how many of your current users do and don't have JS enabled.
Related
When making websites accessible, I usually assume that if someone doesn't have javascript, they don't have flash either. Is this true, or is there a group of users who don't have javascript but who would still benefit from flash embedded directly into the page?
I realise that it's technically possible, but I would like to find out whether there is a meaningful quantity of users in that situation.
Sure they will be a segment of users with such a configuration, but I suppose it will be very small. Only user which are afraid lots about their privacy disable javascript. These users will never install flash if they aren't forced to do so.
If you use progressive enhancement then you may not have to code explicitly for this particular (and probably vanishingly small) demographic.
Is it OK if everything looking OK but HTML and CSS are not valid , for CMS Admin/control panel?
Should we only consider Web-standards for site, not necessary for site-management tools?
for example
:http://example.com/wp-admin
:http://example.com/admin/
Well, the point of standards compliance is to make everything work correctly for every user. Even though admin areas are only accessible to a few select users per site, if you are building a CMS you have to consider that many, many people might use your script which would add additional users who will be needing to access those admin panels. It's best to make everything standards compliant, that's why they create them. If an admin can't get the admin panel working properly, they'll ditch the script.
I agree it may not be worthwhile to to make everything valid. As long as you've done your testing and it working then it's probably not worth the time to make everything valid.
Some validation errors matter, some don't. The spec is a bit ridiculous in its requirements in places. What is important is that all open tags are closed and they are nested correctly as if this is not done there can be many subtle errors both now and in the future. As for non-encoded entities, using rel's and targets when you shouldn't - it doesn't matter so much.
Since you (usually) can control the access to the admin area (rather than normally having every single device and platform access it) it certainly matters less. The time would probably be better spent adding more features and fixing real bugs rather than aiming for 100% compliance. Don't tell any standards advocates I said that though. :)
Easy question. I used to develop websites back in the days of "classic" ASP, and when I'm asked to do a quick and dirty website for family or friends now, I still resort to direct HTML/ASP and some basic CSS and Javascript - I can get the sites up pretty quickly this way. However, I've had a few requests to design and develop some sites for pay, and thought I should catch up on my web skills. I have been using .NET 3.5, XAML/WPF, etc. for Windows apps, so I'm up on .NET, I'm just behind on the web end.
To the question: If I want to design/code a site that looks identical on all (at least somewhat recent) browsers and platforms, should I be using ASP.NET and AJAX? There might be a little database activity on the site, but not much, so I don't need an enterprise level, multi-tier extendable architecture... just something that looks good and works on multiple platforms without having to code all variations for each browser. After looking at all the ASP.NET books at the bookstore, it seems they all focus mostly on data and postback stuff. Is it still a legit option to use some basic, boring html and javascript with some Flash embedded where needed?
Let me know if I need to clarify the question. Thanks for your advice in advance!
Your question is more loaded than you think, but let me try to address a few points that I think are relevant.
First, how a site looks is almost completely dependent on the HTML/CSS you use and how you code the front end of the site and only slightly dependent on the server technology. So if you want your site to function across browsers and platforms, learn to code following web standards, with semantic markup. (Search on those terms for more info).
Also, ASP.NET comes in two flavors now: ASP.NET MVC and normal ASP.NET. I highly recommend, if you are going to get into ASP.NET, that you follow the MVC platform. It closely follows similar technologies (like Ruby on Rails) and will make the transition to other MVC platforms easier on you. Also, the MVC platform doesn't try to output as much pre-made HTML as straight ASP.NET will when you use their "drag and drop" controls.
Secondly, it really depends on the sites you are building, but straight JS (or JS + jQuery), CSS, and HTML -- and please don't use Flash unless you are embedding a video -- will actually work for a number of basic sites. If you need some things to happen on the server, PHP makes for a great platform. If you are working with advanced database access, and program flow, and since you are already familiar with .NET, then stick with it... MS has some great tools and resources to help you out.
Finally, a lot of developers use a favorite CMS or blogging platform as the backend of simple sites that still need the ability to manage the content easily. Expression Engine (CMS) and WordPress (Blog/Lite-CMS) are often used (both PHP based) but there are tons out there.
Good luck stepping up your game!
I would recommend learning jQuery. This will give you a browser independent abstraction for your JavaScript.
ASP.NET controls will render it's controls in a browser independent way, but that doesn't mean your site will automagically be browser independent. You still need to know how elements are rendered differently in different browsers.
I'd also recommend using a CSS Reset sheet as a starting point for your CSS.
All in all, if you've been developing old school ASP, you'll probably really love ASP.NET as it will save you a lot of time and looping. You may want to jump right in to ASP.NET MVC too.
To the root of your question, I'd learn ASP.NET if you're doing anything more than a simple brochure site. If you have .NET experience, and classic web development experience, then learning ASP.NET is not going to be a big hurdle and will be well worth the effort.
I agree with Aaron Daniels' answer about learning jQuery. jQuery helps a lot with cross-browser compatibility in JavaScript and some CSS-based effects.
However, you should also look into ensuring your site uses well-formed, valid HTML, and doesn't use too many CSS 2+ features. This should ensure that your site is standards compliant, which will mean it will play well with Firefox, Safari, Opera, and even later versions of IE to an extent. You will still need to do manual tweaking for IE - it's been too broken for too long for MS to be able to fix it properly in one go - so look into conditional comments for applying a separate stylesheet for IE users.
AJAX is a handy technology for "desktopifying" your web app. It provides a mechanism for asynchronous callbacks to the web server, so you can pass data to and fro without reloading the page in the browser window. This is how the voting buttons work on StackOverflow, for example.
Lastly, ASP.NET doesn't really have much effect on the end user's experience in terms of the look and feel of the site. It is a server technology that provides for writing complex applications to be delivered over the web to a browser. Having said that, MS have put in some extra goodies to make working with AJAX a little easier.
Hope that helps!
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I'm into my first 3 months of web development and I have been dabbling with some server side scripting in the form of ColdFusion, along with some Javascript, JQuery and CSS.
I have read about CSS optimization and would like to know what are the other pertinent factors contributing to the better performance of a website. What all factors can a developer profile and optimize?
How much part does picking (or rather I should say recommending) a particular browser play in this performance hunt?
cheers
Install YSlow and Pagespeed plugins for Firefox. Then start looking at all of the ways your site is unoptimized. This will be much like trying to take a sip of water from a fire hydrant.
Using minified ( and possibly aggregated ) Javascript and CSS along with a good, healthy far-future-expires is a really good way to start.
Don't forget to gzip.
And use Etags.
And put your CSS at the top of the document.
And put the javascript at the end.
And use separate domains for static resources.
And avoid URL redirects.
And remove duplicate javascript and CSS.
And... see what I mean about the fire hydrant!
Just to sum the stuff up from above:
The speed of a website depends on a few things:
Server
Connection
Client
And on each of this part you can do improvements.
Server: if you rely on a database, check if you queries are cached, and more importantly check if your data is cached. For example if on every page you get a menu from the database, then you can cache that result. In addition you can check your code and see if there is room for optimization.
Also the hardware itself plays a role. If you are on a shared hosting plan, maybe the server is full of other not-optimized apps that take a toll on the server.
Connection: Here the YSlow and Pagespeed come in handy, as well as Fiddler. You can do some caching of static content (CSS and JS). Set their expire date far in the future. Using GZIP to make their contents smaller, and combining the static files helps to a certain extent.
In addition maybe the server has a low bandwidth.
Client: if you do wacky javascript or have slow css selectors, this might hurt performance on the client. But this depends on the speed of the client's computer.
I'd recommend reading Best Practices for Speeding Up Your Web Site and all of the content on Yahoo!'s Exceptional Performance page.
If you like books, you may be interested in High Performance Websites (note that a lot of the content in this is in the Best Practices for Speeding Up Your Web Site article) and Even Faster Websites.
Here are a few of my favourite rules from Best Practices for Speeding Up Your Web Site:
Minimize HTTP Requests
Add an Expires or a Cache-Control Header
Gzip Components
Make JavaScript and CSS External
Minify JavaScript and CSS
Also, smush.it is good for compressing images (which have a big impact on how fast a webpage loads).
As far as browsers go, Safari 4 claims it is "the world's fastest browser", and I can say that the Mac version is certainly nice and fast (not to mention elegant!). However, the above suggestions will make much more of a difference than which browser you're using.
Steve
With ColdFusion you will want to make sure your queries are being cached. Use query analyzer (if using mssql server) to make sure a slow loading page isn't the result of a bad query. On the database end you'll also want to ensure proper indexing.
A big factor in performance is how many HTTP requests are sent for images, files, etc. YSlow will show you this info. Its only available for firefox.
I'd recommend this book.
Google is currently collecting all sorts of performance tips on their new 'Let's make the web faster'-page here: http://code.google.com/intl/de-CH/speed/articles/
FYI: Not all information on these pages are valid, particularily the PHP tips are way off.
There is a really great plugin for for Firefox called Dust-Me Selectors. It scans your css files and lets you find selectors that aren't used/have become redundant in your markup.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5392
You should also be delivering your static content off a CDN. Parallel downloads of static files will speed up your page renders. A better explanation here: http://www.sitecheck.be/tips/speed-up-your-site-using-a-cdn/
You shouldn't recommend any particular browser, but design your webpage to current standards with some fixes for older models, if necessary. From my perspective everything can have a speed impact, but CSS is the least important one and in real world examples the user will not notice this. In most cases a clear separation of html and style declarations will do the job. What really has an impact? First of all you can simply throw money at the problem by getting a better hosting contract (maybe a dedicated server). Another thing to improve the speed a website takes to load is to reduce the quality of your images and the usage of CSS-Sprites. Very often on dynamic webpages the database is a bottleneck and therefore caching and a good database abstraction layer can improve things (PHP: PDO instead of simply using mysql()). GZip your output to the user. There are so much more things, but a lot of them are very language dependent..
I recommend the use of FireBug and loadimpact.com for testing.
Less files are more - CSS sprites may be something to consider. In my experience, you have to balance your CSS file between speed and maintainability - one rule more or less won't make the difference between night and day...
For IE, see http://www.fiddler2.com/fiddler/Perf/
The new neXpert plugin for Fiddler (http://www.fiddler2.com/fiddler2/addons/nexpert.asp) offers features similar to those found in YSlow and PageSpeed.
The biggest problem I have is creating fast-running, beautifully designed pages with rich content. This is one thing that is extremely hard to do with today's technology.
If you have lots of javascript you might wanna use Javascript compression. Dojo provides one such tool SHRINKSAFE to compress your javascript. Find the link below:
http://www.dojotoolkit.org/docs/shrinksafe
There is another tool open sourced by google called page speed, which can help you optimize the website performance. It was used internally before it was open sourced to everyone recently.
http://google-code-updates.blogspot.com/2009/06/introducing-page-speed.html
http://code.google.com/speed/page-speed/
Hope it helps.
A couple of very basic rules of performance testing:
Performance means nothing if the program/web page/whatever is wrong.
Do not try to improve performance without having a reliable form of measurement.
You must profile your site/program/whatever to find out what is making things slow.
Corrolary: Do not just change things at random to see if things get better.
Cache everything (web server and browser caching).
Statically publish as much as possible (i.e. to reduce the amount of database calls)
Also add multiple waiting icons to your website.
Show icons in such way that every time user should get different waiting icon, which should be effective to engage user. And mean while your website will get loaded.
There are probably thousands of applications out there like 'Google Web Accelerator' and all kinds of popup blockers. Then theres header blocking personal firewalls, full site blockers, and paranoid cookie monsters.
Fortunately Web Accelerator is now defunct (I suggest you read the above article - its actually quite funny what issues it caused) but there are so many other plugins and third party apps out there that its impossible to test them all with your app until its out in the wild.
What I'm looking for is advice on the most important things to remember when writing a web-app (whatever technology) with respect to ensuring the user's environment isnt going to break it. Kind of like a checklist.
Whats the craziest thing you've experienced?
PS. I may have linked to net-nanny above, but I'm not trying to make a porn site
The best advice I can give is to program defensively. For example, don't assume that all of your scripts may be loaded. I've seen cases where AdBlocker Plus will block 1/10 scripts that are included in a page just because it has the word "ad" in the name or path. While you can work around this by renaming the file, it's still good to check that a particular object exists before using it.
The weirdest thing I've seen wasn't so much a browser plugin but a firewall/proxy configuration at a user's workplace. They were using a squid proxy that was trying to remove ads by replacing any image HTTP request that it thought was an ad with a single pixel GIF image. Unfortunately it did this for non-GIF images too so when our iPhone application was expecting a PNG image and got a GIF, it would crash.
Internet Explorer 6. :)
No, but seriously. Firefox plugins like noscript and greasemonkey for one, though those are likely to be a very small minority.
Sometimes the user's environment means a screen reader (or even a braille interface like this). If your layout is in any way critical to the content being delivered as intended, you've got a problem right there.
Web pages break, fact of life; the closer you have been coding and designing up against standards, the less your fault it is.
Something I have checked in the past is loading some of the more popular toolbars that people tend to install (Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc) and seeing how that affects the users experience.
To a certain extent it is difficult to preempt which of the products you mentioned will be used by your users since there are so many. I would say your best bet is to test for the most frequent products that your user base may employ and roll with the punches for the rest. If you have the time to test other possible scenarios, by all means do.
Also, making it easy for your users to report possible issues also helps lessen the time it takes to get a fix in place should it be something you can work around.