Another way to put this is, is it worth taking into consideration users who do not have Javascript enabled?

It seems to me that the numbers must be pretty low by now. Maybe less than 5% of all users I would guess.

And as more and more sites demand AJAX its becomes a bit of a dilemma whether to support non-JS users or not.
Purists would say that we should adopt a "progressive enhancement" philosophy but the reality I think is that there are often project constraints which mean making a non-JS solution is sometimes not practical.

What do you think?

Another way to put this is, is it worth taking into consideration users who do not have Javascript enabled

Depends whether you want to consider search engines or not. SEs are the largest group of javascript disabled user agents and probably account for 90%+ of the non-js traffic to any site.
The W3Schools browser stats shows JS disabled UAs at 5%, which in all fairness is biased towards a minute portion of the Internet population so isn't "typical"

It comes down to the "know your audience" and not forgetting that there is legislation in many countries regarding accessibility on some websites.

I have been doing a lot of JS for school... and when at work, my company has filters now that block almost any scripts being run on the internet. I tried enabling everything and now I get warnings that not only block JS but announce every time that my computer is at risk... sheesh! So I would take it into consideration since more companies and firewall programs are clamping down. It's annoying! - but it's happening here...

Makes checking my homework a major pain in the butt!

Originally Posted by chrishirst

Depends whether you want to consider search engines or not. SEs are the largest group of javascript disabled user agents and probably account for 90%+ of the non-js traffic to any site.

That's a great point.

Search engines are script disabled, as Chris points out, and like virtually all robots. That said, they take "graceful depredation" to the extreme - this is why people try to get away with foolishness like <span style="background-color:white; color:white">hidden text goes here</span>. So long as you're turning things that are already there, on the page, on and off, the SEs will see it with no problems. On the other hand, if you're doing lots of document.writeln(), the search engines won't ever see it.

But, I hear you're supposed to design for human visitors. The fact is, some people are still using pre javascript browsers from 1820, some people have dialup, and not everyone has upgraded to fancy color screens. You can't please everybody, but you can waste a lot of time trying.