It’s 2019. No one disables JavaScript.
Actually (cue Adam Conover!)… some people do. They represent about a tenth of a percent (0.1%) of the people who don’t get your JavaScript file, though, and they’ve chosen to browse the web that way, so let’s ignore them for a second.
I see this argument—that one one disables JS in 2019—as an argument for not bothering to care or worry about progressive enhancement. But it’s wrong!
There are plenty of other reasons why people don’t get your JavaScript.
- Your CDN fails
- An ad blocker or filewall got a little overly aggressive
- A JS error (either in your code or something third-party) stops all of the JS from rendering
- The file times out because it’s too big or too slow to parse
Today, I want to focus on that last one.
…
So very much this. Web bloat is becoming a huge issue (incidentally, I was pleased to see that DanQ.me’s homepage Web Bloat Score is in the region of a nice, clean 0.1, but I’m confident that there’s still plenty I could do to improve it); it’s easy to see how developers on their powerful desktops and laptops and with their WiFi-connected high-end smartphones might overlook people on older, less-powerful devices and slower, lower-bandwidth connections.
I’m not saying that Javascript is bad: it’s not! I’m saying that where functionality exists in simpler, more-lightweight technologies (like good old-fashioned links and regular
<input> elements, both of which are routinely reimplemented in the front-end), then those technologies should be used in the first instance. If you
want to build on top of that with Javascript, that’s great! But starting from the ground floor when building for the web is the surest way to support the widest
diversity of potential users (and it makes it easier to achieve your accessibility goals, too!)
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