What’s wrong with Javascript? Javascript is often irritating to users. Scripts can be slow to run. They are prone to crashing. They are associated with actions that users hate – opening pop-up windows; disabling the back button; taking over the user’s browser; setting aware cookies; adding novelty effects such as cursor trails that fail to amuse after the first use and seem unprofessional on commercial sites; making it impossible to input to forms because of over-restrictive validation scripts, etc.

As a result of this, many users disable Javascript by default.

Despite all of this JavaScript allows the web designer / coder to enhance the user experience and provide a raft of functionality which would otherwise be absent. Most “Web 2.0″ sites now make of of JavaScripts (as part of the AJAX phenomenon) and without these the web may be considered a boring place. As JavaScript is a “client side” language, the processing takes place on the visitors computer, freeing up server resources and often making the visitor feel the application is more responsive.
The generally accepted solution is for designers to ensure that their site is still functional, and attractive, for visitors who have either disabled JS or are browsing on a platform unable to use it (screen readers, phone browsers etc).

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