Re^4: Major update to perldoc.perl.org (functional)

[jj808]

in reply to Re^3: Major update to perldoc.perl.org (functional)
in thread Major update to perldoc.perl.org

Hi Tye, thanks for your comments - I just wanted to point out one thing about search, it has always required JavaScript. Due to the way the site is hosted by perl.org, there is no server-side processing, the entire site is just flat HTML and JS files.

For this reason a cookie-based system to suppress the noscript warning would not work, as the only way I could implement it would be to use JavaScript to read the cookie, somewhat defeating the point! :-)

Incidentally I added the noscript warning due to complaints I'd received about the previous site which did not warn if JS was disabled, just goes to show it's impossible to please everyone...

[tye]

Thank you for the update. I guess I proved that I don't use the on-site search functionality. May I suggest you make a graceful fall-back for non-javascript as a form that submits a search to google? (like you already include in your "view all results")

I see you already have class="noscript" so people can learn to add custom CSS to their browswer set-up and remove the notice with minimal work themselves.

As for the floating bar, you could use javascript-based cookies for that preference.

[StommePoes]

Hi JJ,

I'm prolly one of those who complained about not being told everything needs JS-- as a non-JSer I always appreciate being let known that hey, this site uses JS for stuff (and often it's also nice to know what for, because one of the reasons I specifically keep it off is to avoid MooToolsy drag-n-drop fading blitzkrieg Nintendo-generation short-attention-span superfeatures and that sort of thing). Knowing scripting is used for "this" "that" etc I think is always thoughtful for a web dev to do, as there's nothing more frustrating that not figuring out why something doesn't work, when it's because your browser isn't supporting applets/cookies/java/scripts/css/other things you can never guarantee a user agent can or does support. Of course, the goal is to have the user never notice, have pages built with progressive enhancement, but when that's not possible, a small message is nice.

That said, it shouldn't have to take up a huge amount of space on the page or anything. Most sites get away with a small message at the top of the screen. Without cookies I don't see how people could have a "don't show me this again" option so, maybe the box could be moved somewhere else, but otherwise, I find it more valuable on-page even if some find it annoying.