Guidelines for an "Enable JavaScript" messages on our sites

[josebolos]

It's common for sites to include messages that show up when the user has disabled JavaScript (or JavaScript fails to load) and request the user to enable JavaScript in order to fully experience the site, or even access it at all.

At SN we follow progressive enhancement principles so JS being disabled shouldn't be a problem, but there may be a few instances where this could be acceptable.

We need to document this, and suggest an appropriate wording for a message like this that respects the users' choice and doesn't link to external sites.

[dotcode]

doesn't link to external sites

What's the context re: this above?

[hollsk]

We've found a few of our sites link to some external webpage like https://enable-javascript.com/ to explain to users how to enable JS - we're not hugely keen on redirecting users to websites that are sponsored by online casinos etc. We've also seen another instance that's supported by shady cryptocurrency advertising, but I don't remember the URL right now. Either way, it's not the sort of thing that a respectable scientific publisher should be linking out to - we don't advertise websites like this on our platform, for obvious reasons, and linking out to sites like this undermines that decision.

If we really must explain to users how to use a computer (and as far as I recall from the meeting where we discussed this, none of us believe it to be necessary), we should be doing that explaining on our own websites so that we can control who we associate ourselves with.

[josebolos]

I'm thinking that the Browser support page would be a good place to have all of this "what to do with users without JavaScript" stuff.