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[DrGeoff]

If you like looking at static web sites, keep JS switched off, but if you need dynamic updates and parts of the page content refreshed according to certain events then you are going to need JS (ajax).

Don't confuse Java with Javascript either, they are two different animals. Java should have been shot at birth, it's just malware.

jQuery is one of several modern JS frameworks that allow better content delivery.

[ivaylo]

Java should have been shot at birth, it's just malware.

Whole lot of malware - http://langpop.com/

[amyk]

I don't really understand how anyone could have a descent web experience with javascript turned off... We don't live in an era anymore where a poorly written javascript would shut your browser down, in-fact there are entire gaming engines (Unity, Unreal 3, and others) that run in browser as compiled JS.  For those that want to see that: http://www.unrealengine.com/html5/

When used well, JS can be good for things like dynamic content updates etc. but I've seen plenty more annoyances from badly coded sites using JS as well.

Modern processors are very good at consuming low amounts of power, but only when they're idle. If there's some stupid animation or transition or some other annoying effect that's it's doing on a page, power consumption shoots up rather dramatically compared to just browsing some static pages. This is even more important on a laptop, tablet, or mobile phone.

I keep JS off unless it's needed for a site I must use.

[MatCat]

I don't really understand how anyone could have a descent web experience with javascript turned off... We don't live in an era anymore where a poorly written javascript would shut your browser down, in-fact there are entire gaming engines (Unity, Unreal 3, and others) that run in browser as compiled JS.  For those that want to see that: http://www.unrealengine.com/html5/

When used well, JS can be good for things like dynamic content updates etc. but I've seen plenty more annoyances from badly coded sites using JS as well.

Modern processors are very good at consuming low amounts of power, but only when they're idle. If there's some stupid animation or transition or some other annoying effect that's it's doing on a page, power consumption shoots up rather dramatically compared to just browsing some static pages. This is even more important on a laptop, tablet, or mobile phone.

I keep JS off unless it's needed for a site I must use.

My laptop gets 9 hours battery with firefox open with 40 websites, Altium Designer, xTimeComposer, MatLab, usually 2 to 8 PDF's, 4 to 10 Windows Explorer Windows, and usually random other crap, so I don't really get your argument about power consumption.  Now if I open up a game that uses 3D graphics my battery drops to about 3 hours. 

[ampdoctor]

Short of the specialized tags for audio, video, and some misc embedded items, is there any difference between html 4 strict and html 5? In this I mean if a page fully validates in html 4, by changing the doctype would it still validate as html 5? The reason I'm asking is that I've got a site that's almost completely php/MySQL driven and the idea of having to go through it and fully rework the thing from top to bottom doesn't exactly thrill me. Is there something I'm missing in the syntax or am I looking for problems that just aren't there?

As an aside, here's one hell of a youtube reference if you're thinking about scratch building a website...
https://www.youtube.com/user/flashbuilding

[ivaylo]

if a page fully validates in html 4, by changing the doctype would it still validate as html 5

Theoretically, if you haven't used any of the tags and properties html5 deprecated it could validate. I haven't seen it happen though. Here is a list of what changed - http://www.tutorialspoint.com/html5/html5_deprecated_tags.htm . And this is what people do to fix that (one of many, google around, there are even scripts and things which claim to automate it) - http://tech.patientslikeme.com/2010/08/17/step-by-step-blog-conversion-to-html5/. Why do you want to switch to html5? Want to use some of the new tags or something? Depending on the page you could switch without the page strictly validating, the browser will in most cases render your content, no problem. It's best if it validates of course...