Today, I stumbled upon a very annoying page. It had an overlay that simply had no options to close it. I could follow the instructions on the pop-up and fill out the 5 minute survey to get to the underlying page, or simply turn off JavaScript. I did the later.
Although JavaScript functionality is pretty much assumed now and days, JavaScript can also allow pages to be VERY annoying. There are times where you need to leave it on, and there are times where it’s best for your surfing experience to leave it off.
There is a practice that I see a lot of web-based applications moving away from and that’s the practice of graceful-degradation. It’s the practice of having fall-backs in case certain technologies don’t exist. This is a practice I think all professional products should strive to have, this way, even if JavaScript is turned off, it wouldn’t prevent a user from being able to access the product. Also, these annoying pop-ups are probably one of the reasons why JavaScript might be turned off in the first place, and if advertisements starting moving towards this direction, I wouldn’t be too surprised if we see more and more javascript-disabled browsers.