Do we still need backup code for people who have javascript disabled?

I have a different opinion to many here. I don't think you necessarily should care in some scenarios, especially if your website is targeting a particular group of people or that it is going to mean a lot of work.

if you refer to:

http://visualrevenue.com/blog/2007/08/eu-and-us-javascript-disabled-index.html

_{(source: visualrevenue.com)}

You can see that year on year more browsers than ever have Javascript enabled, contrary to the other answers' claims. It was at 96.9% in 2007.

So you lose 3% of potential viewers, so what, your advertising campaign will do a lot more damage than that!

Support for JavaScript-disabled web sites a nice thought, but not of much help, and of questionable value, IMHO

It is almost impossible to design a robust website without java script, and those that disable JS, for whatever reason, probably don't expect much of a user experience. So if you are coding for that 1% of the population, you have no choice. But for the majority of us, it is a given that JS is there. Accessibility is a different issue, with its own challenges. When I was doing web sites for Hewlett-Packard, they had to meet strict accessibility standards, and it was tough to create anything more than very basic web pages. I wouldn't wish that on anybody.

As a developer I no longer worry about 1% of users who turn off Javascript. It is too time consuming and development time is too expensive to waste on such nonsense. AJAX saves an incredible amount of bandwidth which turns directly into $$$ savings, which makes profits higher. If I lose one or two potential users of the site for every 100 users, those one or two lost users will cost a lot more in development than the potential income of they could ever bring in.

Try turning off Javascript and logging into Facebook, it becomes a very broken website after that. If it's good enough for Facebook, its good enough for me.

Yes, we still need backup code for people who have JavaScript disabled.

• JavaScript is often used to do things that break in screen readers (so many screen reader users disable it) or to cause changes to appear out of sight of a screen magnifier.
• JavaScript is still one of the biggest attack vectors to exploit security holes in browsers.
• Add-ons such as No-Script are increasing in popularity.
• Search engines tend not to execute it (so you don't want to hide your content behind it)

I prefer to think of it as a foundation rather than backup.

I understand about visually impaired users, but do people care (harsh, yes) if their experience is buggy?

Nasty people don't.

The law (in many jurisdictions) does.

Not to sound disrespectful, but not sticking to strict standards will alienate people using Internet Explorer 4 and 5 too, but we don't seem to care about them...?

IE 4/5 have:

• a smaller market share than users without JS
• many security holes
• no support from their own publisher