Did some research on this over the last couple of days. Quite simple experiments to start with. Actually, I wanted to know the degree to which websites use JavaScript and cookies in their sites. For starters, I am not a professional website designer or a web developer but definitely an experienced user of the internet.
Well to begin with I started with the most popular sites in the internet today namely; www.google.com, www.yahoo.com and then some popular Indian sites. In this list, I included the big matrimonial sites www.keralamatrimony.com and www.shaadi.com.
Cookies:-
I disabled cookies in the browser preferences.(I use Firefox and so should you:-))
1. www.google.com
Opened the link images.google.com, tried to set my preferences. Immediately, I get the messages.
Your cookies seem to be disabled.
Setting preferences will not work until you enable cookies in your browser.
2. images.yahoo.com
Again, tried to set my preferences and I get the message
We were unable to save your preferences at this time. Please try again later.
Well, it was sad. A site like yahoo.com and I would have expected a better error message than that one. Seems like the site has no clue at all.
3. blogger.com
While, I writing this post and experimenting in another session, I almost lost my draft because the cookies were disabled and blogger.com also does not seem to have a backup mechanism.
Guess, I will stop here. We know how the rest of the sites will fare. Am a bit surprised though. Doesn't JSP HttpSession class use URL re-writing as a contingency measure. Or probably, this is the way the internet is in the modern era.
Javascript:-
Again, I turned off JavaScript in my browser preferences.
1. www.google.com
Since, I was signed in in my gmail account, I could see the "My Notebooks" link in the google.com home page. I click it and guess what happens. Nothing!!!
I check the link properties and yes, it needs JavaScript to open. Sorry mate, atleast I would have thought a billion dollar company would not have these bugs in their homepage.
2. www.yahoo.com
Atleast, the images.yahoo.com redirects me to a new page every time, I click a link that would have actually opened a tab in case javascript was enabled. Umm not so bad.
3. www.keralamatrimony.com
This was a sad case. The site became useless as soon as I disabled JavaScript and I was never given a hint as to what went wrong. The navigation bar went missing!!!
4. www.shaadi.com
This was good. There was no noticeable problem and soon enough when I tried to search for profiles, I got the error:-
It appears that your browser does not support JavaScript, or you have it disabled.
This site is best viewed with JavaScript enabled.
If JavaScript is disabled in your browser, please turn it on and refresh this page.
Well, the purpose is not to find fault with anyone. As an experienced internet user, I realize that JavaScript and cookies and meant to enhance my web experience but at the same time, when big guys do the simple mistakes, I would say it takes away some of the shine from their big shining medals!
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