How do I turn on JavaScript support?

Is coding websites for non-JavaScript fallback support really still necessary?

• Are there any prominent browsers or devices that don't support JavaScript at this point? Is there any prominent demographic left who still browses with JavaScript explicitly disabled, except on a testing basis?

• Answer:

  In short, no. It's probably a good idea to detect missing Javascript support and pop up a message, rather than allowing the few users without Javascript enabled to find a completely, inexplicably broken website. Beyond that, no, it's not worth the effort. Most websites are now interactive enough that Javascript is necessary for their core functionality. The amount of effort you'll have to expend to create clumsy workarounds for those with Javascript turned off is immense. The payoff, conversely, is tiny -- it's only a few people, and frankly, the weirdos who go around with NoScript running, or who are browsing via the web browser component in EMACS or whatever, are probably not your target audience because they're weird screwballs whom you won't be able to monetize and wouldn't want to be in a room with anyway. That said, for a website that's not richly interactive (a blog or whatever), you should be able to write your Javascript in such a way that all that happens to those weird nutjobs is that they're missing some features. If things like basic page layouts and navigation are dependent on Javascript, you're doing it wrong. And almost certainly hurting usability even for people who are running Javascript. But for anything involving any substantial interaction -- submitting info into a form (beyond, maybe, say search terms or an email address), interacting with and visualizing data, etc., there's no way you really can provide a decent user experience without Javascript, so there's no point in doing a lot of extra work to try to make the site slightly less painful for the tiny cadre of people without Javascript support. Much better to disable the site for them completely. They can close their terminal window and launch Chrome if they really want to use your awesome web application.