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As isomorphic javascript apps become more popular, how are people handling fallbacks when javascript is not available? It seems like progressive enhancement doesnt make sense when the bulk of a site is built in JS. The options I see are a very simplified landing page, or perhaps a pre-rendering service. Does anyone have any suggestions or experience here?

polar
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    interesting question, but will probably get closed down in a snap – nicholaswmin May 29 '15 at 16:00
  • Tom Dale of Emberjs on progressive enchancement - http://tomdale.net/2013/09/progressive-enhancement-is-dead/ – Craicerjack May 29 '15 at 16:02
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    I think when you build js apps youre probably not too worried about those without JS as they arent going to be your target market – Craicerjack May 29 '15 at 16:05
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    Craicerjack - I wish I could use this excuse, but this site makes me think otherwise http://kryogenix.org/code/browser/everyonehasjs.html – polar May 29 '15 at 16:17
  • 'content sells'. So in my opinion, nothing really has changed. Your design and fall-back decisions rely on the content/service/purpose, optionally followed by it's dominant audience. For business/shop/sales, make a cake that everyone can consume and ice it to the liking of most. On the other extreme, not every state-of-the-art app is suitable for a fallback.. like a webGL game, real-time audio editing/processing + canvas visuals... etc.. If users want to use such webbased/webserved 'program', they just need javascript enabled (and they will do). – GitaarLAB May 29 '15 at 17:25
  • GitaarLAB - Agreed, the use case I have in mind would be a pretty typical ui, where I could 'regressively' remove features and still leave a layout and simple content in tact and note that certain features would not be available since javascript was not available. Obviously there will be no replacement for complex functionality – polar May 29 '15 at 17:37
  • You might like to read http://stackoverflow.com/q/121203/588079. Bottom-line (as you can conclude from that Q's answers) is that the only reliable way (if your goal is no redirect or cookie-dependency and functional initial page to the user) is to do the 'icing', which was called 'unobtrusive javascript' a fat decade ago. The key to this is to have your serverside 'page-source-renderer' operate in 2 modes: one bare html (for SEO, initial pageload and fallback) and second, an ajax mode. Only javascript enabled browsers will then apply icing and request the ajax-mode data for subsequent content. – GitaarLAB May 30 '15 at 02:43

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