Every time I read a book on jQuery, there is the mandatory part about unobtrusive JavaScript, and it's usually followed by some suggestion that the page should work fine if JavaScript is turned off. Isn't this getting a little silly in the age of Ajax-driven pages? Javascript-delivered page data is no longer trivial icing on the cake. It is the cake. Try using Google maps with JavaScript turned off. 99.99% of browsers have JavaScript and if someone chooses to turn it off, it seems to me they can expect reduced functionality.

Pretending all pages should work in some fashion with js turned off is silly and I get tired of hearing authors repeat this. At least Google maps thinks so. I went there with js turned off and it didn't work very well. If I need to travel I have to keep js on. If I want to use web 2.0 I have to keep js on, IMHO. There may be arcane security reasons to turn js off, but they are rare. I guess such users will have to get out the GPS or buy an old-fashioned map book if they want to go anywhere. I can see the idea of separating js from structure and content, but the idea of trying to serve dynamic data to the paranoid, with js turned off, strikes me as a lot of work. I realize this is only common sense. I just get tired of reading "should still work with js turned off" in every book I pick up. It's an oft-repeated preachment that doesn't fit what is happening on the web.

This isn't knocking accessibility. If anything, js can be used to make things more accessible, by changing appearance or functionality on-the-fly. All the more reason it should be understood as a standard - as essential as HTML at this point in Web 2.0 - not as an embellishment. I realize that js was though of as an ugly stepchild for many years, but if people want to turn if off that's their problem. They're probably the same folks who are still inflicting IE 6 usage on us