[whatwg] RE: Degrading of web applications

[Jim Ley]

On Fri, 10 Sep 2004 13:13:32 +0930, Chris Were <chris.were at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think this mention of fancy behaviour is the key. What I am talking
> about by a web application is a *single* page where all server
> interaction occurs through XMLHttpRequest. In this instance all
> functionality of the particular application is provided through
> javascript - a collection of fancy behavious all combined to make the
> application. Browsers that do not support javascript can not use the
> application. 

but that's just being completely wrong headed, there's nothing special
about the xmlhttp request that prevents degradability, my over 2 year
old example showed a page which used xmlhttp to update without reload,
yet degraded perfectly, it was a trivial example of course, but I've
done more complicated stuff - I realise since Safari and GMail have
come out with this, loads of people have jumped on the technology so
maybe it's immature to some despite that actual longevity.

>As such it means nothing for that web application (in
> this case just one page) to degrade as there is no content to view and
> no functionality available.

but that's rubbish, there is functionality - it's what the javascript
provides etc.  It's wrong to say there's none, you may feel there's
nothing that can be usefully done as fallback, but that still means
the page itself should degrade to something - not just error etc.

Jim.