Richard Green wrote:
I guess that you don't subscribe to the belief of gracious degradation then. To me javascript, while being capable of performing wonderful usability enhancing functions, should never be a requirement. Web pages and applications should be able to function perfectly well with JS disabled; JS can certainly be used to make things easier and flashier, but not at the cost of accessibility. I thoroughly recommend reading A
Well, I draw a distinction between an application and a page. A page's
primary function is to distribute information. It should absolutely be
accessible to the widest possible audience and should never require
javascript in order to view the information it's attempting to present.
Heck until a couple years ago I still tested my web pages in lynx.
Applications on the other hand have always come with dependancies and
minimum requirements. Desktop applications are built for a specific
platform. They often require certain libraries (.net, java, gtk, etc).
It is in this vein that I see absolutely no problem with setting
javascript as a minimum requirement for roundcube.
The thing is that there are already a ton of webmail applications out there that don't rely on or even use javascript that would be ideal for a javascriptless environment. Roundcube doesn't just use javascript to make things pretty, javascript is it's entire raison d'etre. It's what sets it apart from the myriad of other webmail applications. You might argue that gmail is able to degrade somewhat gracefully without javascript, but keep in mind that gmail's primary purpose isn't to deliver e-mail. It's primary purpose is to deliver advertisement and generate revenue, therfore it must be accessible to the most people and it makes sense that they would require it to degrade well. Roundcube isn't in the business of delievering advertisement (thank goodness), and is therefore not constrained by the same need to degrade.
By the way, these are all just my opinions. I'm not in the driver's seat, and I haven't even developed that much code. I'm just opinionated.
-Charles