The Ajaxian Blog talks about issues with Ajax when JavaScript is turned off. I agree with them—I don't know anyone who deliberately turns off JavaScript—but there are some people out there who can't use Ajax applications anyway:
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People who use an outdated browser—there are certainly more IE 4.0 users than people with JavaScript turned off.
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People whose misconfigured corporate firewalls, security software, or corporate-mandated IE security settings prevent JavaScript from working correctly.
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Those wacky nonconformists who use Opera, Safari, or something else as their primary browser (although they are increasingly being supported.)
And then there's the small matter of Accessibility, of course.
1. Lots of us turn off ActiveX on Internet Explorer (for security reasons, and also because it often results in less obnoxious ads).
ActiveX is not the same as Javascript (I only know a few people who turn that off on purpose), but in many contexts (ajax, etc), "javascript" implicitly includes ActiveX commands which, if disabled, break the whole javascript app.
Posted at 5:49AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Travis Wilson