Re: pros and cons of Ajax
On Sat, 27 Nov 2010, Patricia Shanahan wrote:
Tom Anderson wrote:
...
The usual responses to that are mobile browsers - where the more basic
phones still have very limited javascript support (eg my dreadful
18-month-old Blackberry Curve, where you have to go into a menu to enable
javascript on each page you need it on, whereupon it proceeds to reload the
page) and screenreaders used by the visually impaired.
Really, though, fallback is more about people with old browsers - you may
not need to fall back to a complete lack of javascript, but not everyone
has the latest features, so you should be able to do something sensible if
they don't. There's a whole field of polyfills, shims, browser resets and
so on to do this. As you said, mostly encapsulated in standard libraries.
So what is the correct fix for the visually impaired dependent on screen
readers?
There's bound to be something in jQuery for them!
My personal opinion is that sites should work with just the HTML, without
any CSS or javascript, and use semantic markup, so that they are
universally accessible - to people with old browsers, mobile phones,
screenreaders, text-mode browsers, web-to-ham-radio gateways, or whatever.
All the other stuff should build on top of that to create a happy fun time
experience for people with capable browsers, but should never be
essential. I think this is not only a humane policy, but one that leads to
good engineering, because it puts the fundamentals of the system in the
fundamental layer.
The trouble is that the business and the javascript fanboys (jCrazies?),
IME, don't see it that way. If it works in IE6 and upwards, then that's
good enough for them, and if building a page so that it falls back all the
way means dispensing with the latest jQuery gizmo, or it taking more skill
or effort to implement, then they aren't interested.
tom
--
Interesting, but possibly aimed at madmen. -- Charlie Brooker, on
Torchwood