Handling browsers with Javascript turned off: W3C way?

[Brian]

Re: Handling browsers with Javascript turned off: W3C way?

(at the risk of killing the joke by repetition)

David Hasather wrote:[color=blue]
> Brian wrote ...
>[color=green]
>> BTW, where can I find the HTML 1.0 spec?[/color]
>
> Doesn't exist.[/color]

Erm, I think you need your sarcasm detector serviced.

--
Brian (follow directions in my address to email me)

http://www.tsmchughs.com/

[Kris]

Re: Handling browsers with Javascript turned off: W3C way?

In article <4e9c40c6.04021 40846.744cd00@p osting.google.c om>,
retlak@go.com (Retlak) wrote:
[color=blue][color=green]
> > <noscript>
> > It seems your javascript is not available in your browser. [thing that
> > the site is or does] requires the availability of JavaScript to work for
> > you. We apologize for any inconvenience. <a
> > href="/more.html">Sugg estions</a>
> > </noscript>[/color]
>
> Presumably that's what the authors of the HTML 4.01 spec had in mind,
> but think for a moment about what the user sees: a message about
> needing to enable javascript to make the page work, followed by a page
> of stuff that doesn't work because javascript isn't enabled. That
> seems like terrible user-interface design to me. Stuff that is not
> going to work should not be presented to the user at all.[/color]

Then why not auto-redirect through JavaScript to a page where the
application is and leave the NOSCRIPT folks stranded on the index page,
with all the info they need in the NOSCRIPT section. Will help Google
too, btw.

Don't forget to add a link on that page that people can follow manually
if they choose to enable JavaScript afterwards or when your
auto-redirection fails.

--
Kris
<kristiaan@xs4a ll.netherlands> (nl)
<http://www.cinnamon.nl/>

[Daniel R. Tobias]

Re: Handling browsers with Javascript turned off: W3C way?

Brian wrote:
[color=blue]
> Because they abandoned version 5 after they started to develop it. I
> don't think that's terribly stupid, since calling the first Gecko
> browser version 5 might have caused confusion within Netscape.[/color]

Although even the latest Mozilla and Firefox builds, regardless of their
version numbers (the Mozilla suite is in 1.x versions, while Firefox
[formerly Firebird, formerly Phoenix] is in 0.x), have user agent
strings that start with Mozilla/5.0. It would obviously not have been a
good idea to reset it to Mozilla/1.0, despite the actual Mozilla suite
version, because that would be mis-detected as Netscape 1.0 by all the
browser sniffers out there... but now that they've been frozen at "5.0"
for a few years, the developer consensus seems to be that they're
deathly afraid ever to change it again, for fear of triggering clueless
browser exclusion scripts, so we might be stuck at 5.0 forever no matter
how much Mozilla and its descendants change from now on.

--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/

[Daniel R. Tobias]

Re: Handling browsers with Javascript turned off: W3C way?

Harlan Messinger wrote:
[color=blue]
> <digression>I remember when fast food restaurants stopped carrying the
> cups that used to be called "small". So I'd go to a restaurant and ask
> for a small cola, and the server would say, "We have medium, large, or
> extra-large." Well, excuse me for not being aware of the official
> terminology, but when someone asks for a "small", you can assume that
> whatever the sizes are called, he means, "the smallest one you
> have"!</digression>[/color]

Well, at Starbucks, I don't remember all their goofy names for coffee
sizes, but one thing I do recall is that the smallest size they have is
"Grande" (which means "big" in Spanish, and maybe in Italian too, since
the rest of their size names seem to be from that language). Just one
more example of how, when you put Marketing Types in charge of anything,
logic always gets shot to hell.
[color=blue]
> I suspect that whoever labeled it 2.0 did so, not because they were
> just feeling kookie one day, saying, "Hey, just for kicks, let's call
> the first version 2.0." I suspect, whether you've ever seen any direct
> evidence of it or not, that there was a 1.0 at some point.[/color]

There were versions of HTML in use before 2.0, but no formal spec
described them. I believe the creators of the HTML 2.0 spec merely
decided to consider all HTML that went before to constitute the de facto
"1.x" versions, though not actually labeled as such at the time, so that
the new, more rigorously defined, HTML would be 2.0. Then, later, there
was a proposed recommendation for HTML 3.0 that was never approved, so
that's yet another HTML version that "doesn't exist"; the numbering
still continued past it to 3.2 and then 4.0.

--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/

[Neal]

Re: Handling browsers with Javascript turned off: W3C way?

On Sat, 14 Feb 2004 18:01:01 +0100, Bertilo Wennergren <bertilow@gmx.n et>
wrote:
[color=blue]
> On the other hand, if the user sees the stuff that he can't use (most of
> it at least), then he might realise that he does want to use it, and
> might make the descision to activate JavaScript for that page. If he
> sees nothing, then he might not be able to judge if it's worth it or not.
>[/color]

"This page offers a (description) powered by Javascript. If you are able
to enable Javascript on your browser, you may do so to activate this
feature."

[Neal]

Re: Handling browsers with Javascript turned off: W3C way?

On Sat, 14 Feb 2004 12:13:03 -0500, Harlan Messinger
<hmessinger.rem ovethis@comcast .net> wrote:
[color=blue]
> Excuse me, but have I called you any names, asswipe?[/color]

Only just now.

I'm sorry I called you a ninny. It was the most benign way I could come up
with at the moment to communicate that I thought the analogy was
absolutely silly. Slighting you personally was never my intent.
[color=blue][color=green]
>> They read the
>> requirements before they buy. How many websites which won't work without
>> JS actualy warn you and provide an alternate or at least a "sorry"?[/color]
>
> Exactly what the OP was trying to accomplish.[/color]

Point is, the way you tell them should not be "You ought to enable JS"
because that alienates those who cannot do so, and insults those who
prefer not to do so. If the author notes that he's offered a feature, and
if the user can switch on the JS he can take advantage of that, you've
respected their right to choose, as well as arranged the page to
accomodate no-JS visitors, and as a result your page is improved over
every JS site I've ever seen - all of which either assume JS is on and
available or lambaste the visitor for not having it on (whether it CAN go
on or not).

Why more authors don't take this route, I have no idea. It's a respectful
approach.

And whether it applies to the OP or not, I can't recall, but it is
important to be said.

[Bertilo Wennergren]

Re: Handling browsers with Javascript turned off: W3C way?

Neal:
[color=blue]
> On Sat, 14 Feb 2004 18:01:01 +0100, Bertilo Wennergren <bertilow@gmx.n et>
> wrote:[/color]
[color=blue][color=green]
>> On the other hand, if the user sees the stuff that he can't use (most of
>> it at least), then he might realise that he does want to use it, and
>> might make the descision to activate JavaScript for that page. If he
>> sees nothing, then he might not be able to judge if it's worth it or not.[/color][/color]
[color=blue]
> "This page offers a (description) powered by Javascript. If you are able
> to enable Javascript on your browser, you may do so to activate this
> feature."[/color]

That could be enough, for some such pages. For others it could be hard
to describe the service well. Actually showing the toys (or most of
them) - in their initial (inactive) state - could then be a better option.

"This page offers a (description) with all the wonderful toys you see
below. They are however powered by Javascript, without which they
won't work. If you are able to enable Javascript on your browser, you
may do so to activate all of this wonderful stuff."

--
Bertilo Wennergren <bertilow@gmx.n et> <http://www.bertilow.co m>

[Andy Dingley]

Re: Handling browsers with Javascript turned off: W3C way?

On Sat, 14 Feb 2004 18:01:01 +0100, Bertilo Wennergren
<bertilow@gmx.n et> wrote:
[color=blue]
>There is no such thing. Instead you generate the entire JavaScript
>dependant part with JavaScript ("document.writ e", DOM stuff ...).[/color]

I do this regularly, but you don't need to document.write( ) the whole
thing - just set it as static HTML with CSS display: none; then change
the display mode with JavaScript.

[Alan J. Flavell]

Re: Handling browsers with Javascript turned off: W3C way?

On Sat, 14 Feb 2004, Bertilo Wennergren wrote:
[color=blue]
> "This page offers a (description) with all the wonderful toys you see
> below. They are however powered by Javascript, without which they
> won't work. If you are able to enable Javascript on your browser, you
> may do so to activate all of this wonderful stuff."[/color]

Speaking of sites that demand things to be turned on, I stumbled on a
site the other day that, on visiting the main page of the site, wanted
to set a cookie (I've got prompting enabled, so I notice these
things). I refused it, and the main page was displayed. So far, so
good.

I noticed that the main page had a link to a privacy policy page, so I
tried to take a look at that, whereupon it again tried to set a cookie
before it would let me read their privacy policy. This was too much,
so I took the "refuse all cookies from this site" option.

Thereupon it went into a frenzy, redirecting to the same URL and
hurling cookies, until some minutes later the browser (IE in this
case) reported that the web site was currently unavailable.

It did much the same with other browsers, except that Mozilla
helpfully stopped the rot after some tens of seconds and reported that
the max number of redirections had been reached.

Opera appeared to be willing to contine the game indefinitely. I
considered leaving it overnight...

ho hum.

[Harlan Messinger]

Re: Handling browsers with Javascript turned off: W3C way?

"Daniel R. Tobias" <dan@tobias.nam e> wrote:
[color=blue]
>There were versions of HTML in use before 2.0, but no formal spec
>described them. I believe the creators of the HTML 2.0 spec merely
>decided to consider all HTML that went before to constitute the de facto
>"1.x" versions, though not actually labeled as such at the time, so that
>the new, more rigorously defined, HTML would be 2.0. Then, later, there
>was a proposed recommendation for HTML 3.0 that was never approved, so
>that's yet another HTML version that "doesn't exist"; the numbering
>still continued past it to 3.2 and then 4.0.[/color]

I take issue with the idea that if a version wasn't established in
published form, then it didn't exist. It seems apparent to me that
from the point of view of the people who denominated the versions,
there *was* at same point a 1.0, as well as a 3.0, however informal or
fuzzily conceived they might have been.

--
Harlan Messinger
Remove the first dot from my e-mail address.
Veuillez ôter le premier point de mon adresse de courriel.

[Jukka K. Korpela]

Re: Handling browsers with Javascript turned off: W3C way?

Harlan Messinger <hmessinger.rem ovethis@comcast .net> wrote:
[color=blue]
> But I think that the assumption that the first version of HTML would
> have been 1.0 was reasonable, even if not guaranteed to be correct.[/color]

Quite right. That's why people who don't know the factual history of
HTML so easily make fools of themselves when they start preaching about
HTML.

The point is that by building your argumentation on some points on a
version that _you never actually looked at_, you immediately deprive
yourself of credibility in the eyes of people who know the relevant
facts.

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
Pages about Web authoring: http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/www.html

[Jukka K. Korpela]

Informing about the use of cookies, EU directive

Under Subject: Re: Handling browsers with Javascript turned off: W3C
way?
"Alan J. Flavell" <flavell@ph.gla .ac.uk> wrote:
[color=blue]
> Speaking of sites that demand things to be turned on, I stumbled on
> a site the other day that, on visiting the main page of the site,
> wanted to set a cookie (I've got prompting enabled, so I notice
> these things). I refused it, and the main page was displayed. So
> far, so good.
>
> I noticed that the main page had a link to a privacy policy page,
> so I tried to take a look at that, whereupon it again tried to set
> a cookie before it would let me read their privacy policy. This
> was too much, so I took the "refuse all cookies from this site"
> option.[/color]

If it was a UK site, or a European site, such a situation may well be a
violation of law.

There's a EU directive in force that requires that sites using cookies
announce what cookies are used for. I think the implementation of the
directive has not been adequate in all countries, i.e. it has not been
turned into national legislation within the time limit set. But anyway,
sites are being forced to publish a privacy policy that doesn't just
tell that site uses cookies but also declares why and how they are
used. It would be absurd to think that the requirement is satisfied in
the case described, no matter what the privacy policy says (and it
probably says just "we use cookies to store information", or something
like that). - The directive is available at
<http://europa.eu.int/cgi-bin/eur-lex...=Seek-Deliver;
COLLECTION=lif; SERVICE=all;LAN GUAGE=en;DOCID= 302L0058>

Although I'm pro-privacy, I'm not all that happy with the situation.
The threats created by cookies are much less serious than many other
threats on the Net, and it's a pity if potential usability enhancements
will be dropped just because managers don't know how to inform about
cookies in a suitable way.

I haven't seen discussion about the way in which sites should declare
cookie usage. I would expect that a normal link to a document
explaining the usage would be enough.

This isn't mostly about HTML (though we can try to use <meta> to set
cookies), so I'm proposing a move to c.i.w.a.misc.

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
Pages about Web authoring: http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/www.html

[Owen Jacobson]

User-Agent (was Re: Handling browsers with Javascript turned off: W3C way?)

On Sat, 14 Feb 2004 14:30:57 -0500, Daniel R. Tobias wrote:
[color=blue]
> Although even the latest Mozilla and Firefox builds, regardless of their
> version numbers (the Mozilla suite is in 1.x versions, while Firefox
> [formerly Firebird, formerly Phoenix] is in 0.x), have user agent
> strings that start with Mozilla/5.0. It would obviously not have been a
> good idea to reset it to Mozilla/1.0, despite the actual Mozilla suite
> version, because that would be mis-detected as Netscape 1.0 by all the
> browser sniffers out there... but now that they've been frozen at "5.0"
> for a few years, the developer consensus seems to be that they're
> deathly afraid ever to change it again, for fear of triggering clueless
> browser exclusion scripts, so we might be stuck at 5.0 forever no matter
> how much Mozilla and its descendants change from now on.[/color]

Just out of historical curiousity, what was the *intended* use of the
User-Agent header, originally?

--
Some say the Wired doesn't have political borders like the real world,
but there are far too many nonsense-spouting anarchists or idiots who
think that pranks are a revolution.

[Michael Winter]

Re: Handling browsers with Javascript turned off: W3C way?

On 14 Feb 2004 02:25:48 -0800, Retlak <retlak@go.co m> wrote:
[color=blue]
> Darin McGrew <mcgrew@stanfor dalumni.org> wrote in message
> news:<c0j6ji$tc 7$2@blue.rahul. net>...
>[color=green]
>> And what if the META refresh hack is disabled/unsupported?[/color]
>
> Do you know of environments in which it is unsupported? How can it be
> disabled?[/color]

It can be disabled in Internet Explorer 6 and Opera 7. It might be
possible to disable it in Netscape 7 and Mozilla 1.6 by manually editing
the configuration script value, network.http.re direction-limit. It is, of
course, almost certain that this assessment includes earlier versions, but
as I don't have those versions, I won't cast that in stone.

In summary then, all major browsers for the PC.

Mike

--
Michael Winter
M.Winter@blueyo nder.co.invalid (replace ".invalid" with ".uk" to reply)

[Retlak]

Re: Handling browsers with Javascript turned off: W3C way?

Andy Dingley <dingbat@codesm iths.com> wrote in message news:<sl1t20d8f dvo27prj228mi61 9k1mnj1eut@4ax. com>...[color=blue]
> On Sat, 14 Feb 2004 18:01:01 +0100, Bertilo Wennergren
> <bertilow@gmx.n et> wrote:
>[color=green]
> >There is no such thing. Instead you generate the entire JavaScript
> >dependant part with JavaScript ("document.writ e", DOM stuff ...).[/color]
>
> I do this regularly, but you don't need to document.write( ) the whole
> thing - just set it as static HTML with CSS display: none; then change
> the display mode with JavaScript.[/color]

Hmmm ... this sounds like a solution. And it requires only CSS1, so
presumably is supported in practically all browsers. Doubtless some
people will choose to disable CSS (along with javascript) but they
must be very few indeed.

Thanks, Andy.