> There are hundreds of mobile browsers, consoles and a myriad of other devices with zero to broken javascript support.
These days, both of the major mobile browsers use WebKit and have great JavaScript support, though they may not support bleeding-edge browser functionality quite yet (for which all non-demo sites definitely need fallbacks). The unofficial mobile browsers have great JavaScript too. Consoles have decent browsers with decent JavaScript, and in any case not all sites need to expect console browsers as a remotely common case.
You have to draw the line somewhere, and not all sites need to support Lynx, Links, or Mosaic. I certainly agree that having decent fallbacks for a site like this doesn't require that much effort, but not all functionality supports graceful degradation.
These days, browsing without JavaScript seems less likely to indicate an older browser, and more likely to indicate a user with JavaScript intentionally disabled using something like NoScript. That user may get righteously offended that a document would dare to run code on their system, but that doesn't necessarily make them right.
All web features tend to follow a three-step lifecycle: too new to use at all except for demos, stable enough to use with fallbacks for older browsers, universal enough to use without fallbacks. Depending on your site and your target audience, basic JavaScript may fall in the second or the third category.
You don't have to draw a line anywhere in cases like this. The technology is there that makes it perfectly possible to have at least basic text display on any client. The "major" mobile browsers with webkit represent only 20-30% of the global market.
Anyway, it's just a couple of extra lines of code, get over it :)
Again, that works just fine in cases like this. Though note that the solutions for this site require either server-side scripting or just completely disabling the search functionality.
However, many sites use more advanced JavaScript features which do not necessarily allow for graceful degradation.
(Also, most other mobile browsers of the type you allude to consist of barely more than WAP; only the simplest of non-interactive websites has any hope of working with them. And many sites simply won't have any of those users in their target audience.)
These days, both of the major mobile browsers use WebKit and have great JavaScript support, though they may not support bleeding-edge browser functionality quite yet (for which all non-demo sites definitely need fallbacks). The unofficial mobile browsers have great JavaScript too. Consoles have decent browsers with decent JavaScript, and in any case not all sites need to expect console browsers as a remotely common case.
You have to draw the line somewhere, and not all sites need to support Lynx, Links, or Mosaic. I certainly agree that having decent fallbacks for a site like this doesn't require that much effort, but not all functionality supports graceful degradation.
These days, browsing without JavaScript seems less likely to indicate an older browser, and more likely to indicate a user with JavaScript intentionally disabled using something like NoScript. That user may get righteously offended that a document would dare to run code on their system, but that doesn't necessarily make them right.
All web features tend to follow a three-step lifecycle: too new to use at all except for demos, stable enough to use with fallbacks for older browsers, universal enough to use without fallbacks. Depending on your site and your target audience, basic JavaScript may fall in the second or the third category.