Are those "more than half" sites actually interactive webapps, or just "document" sites that you come across while searching for something? Because even this article says there's a place for the former; it's the latter which really shouldn't need any JS, and in my experience the vast majority of the ones I come across don't.

The fact that you see things that look like links, but don't actually function without JS, strongly suggests "webapp" --- I bet those are "links" that you can't copy nor open in a new tab either.

I use uMatrix with JavaScript disabled by default, and it’s well under one in ten sites that break significantly without JavaScript, though blank-page-with-everything-loaded-through-JavaScript is distressingly common in some sectors; the sort of thing that becomes a “Show HN” landing page, now that is probably closer to 50-50.

Note that I am speaking of content sites; apps I am excluding from this reckoning. Among things that could rightly be called apps, yeah, it would be more than half that require JavaScript, but not for documents.

The sad truth is web developers don't worry about web standards unless they affect the way they think their site should look.

I should correct that. Many web developers likely do their best to build to whatever standards/ best practices they can. Management, design specs, clients, etc... rarely if ever care about those standards and don't pay/ allocate time for conforming to them.

There are a fair number of web developers who are lazy too, but I suspect web developers care about best practices more than most other stakeholders.

It’s not that we don’t care, it’s just that there’s not enough time in the day to cater to all sorts of esoteric configurations.

Sure, you can make a non-JS fallback version of your interactive elements, but that often takes twice as long, and since 99.99% of web users have JavaScript enabled, it’s simply not worth the time to build separate versions for those 0.01% of users who don’t.

> Sure, you can make a non-JS fallback version of your interactive elements, but that often takes twice as long

This is largely just not true and the results are often no-entirely-legal. The majority of interactive controls can be supported by extending and styling bone stock html and using progressive enhancement. The only way it takes less time to roll your own solution for most of these components is when you don't bother implementing accessibility for your controls.

That isn't just a few esoteric users at this point, you are now brushing up against the ADA and have just exposed your site to potential legal action, lawsuits, and a big honking fine. (Not to mention the fact that you being an ass to a bunch of people who need that functionality.)

Nonsense. Anything that interacts with the server with AJAX and the like, or does client-side rendering will need a completely separate implementation to work without JavaScript.

As for the ADA, there’s nothing in there that demands your site works without JavaScript, it just has to be accessible to screen readers and the like, which all support JavaScript.

Ah, gotcha. I didn't realize you were thinking about web requests.

SPAs and things like React brought on this phenomenon. To their credit, they're doing a great job digging us back out of this hole.

I read a lot of web dev subreddits where many/most members are newer developers. Virtually all of the sites they post render nothing at all with JS disabled. I point this out and suggest some ways to fix it. A few have appreciated the tips but most just don't care at all. I'm not sure how to effectively reverse this trend.

Internet is bigger than what you can consume, you're just in the wrong bubble.