I'm not saying Javascript is evil, and yes I do know what the J in AJAX is, I'm not as stupid as I look! I use it for plenty of things, but as an aid rather than the core functionality.
As for the firewalls stripping Javascript, I don't have a specific reference myself, but I've read about it a few times online before, and for your benefit here is an example http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/200612/you_cannot_rely_on_javascript_being_available_period/ I don't have any stats to back this up, but I was led to believe that a lot of specialist browsers (like Braille browsers) were unable to handle Javascript, or that a lot of Javascript fails because the event handlers that are used do not translate well outside of a mouse environment. I said that Javascript was a bad idea in this case because it's for a form submission, and if I remember correctly, for some sort of shopping cart-esque site. Having several submit buttons should be able to cope with this sort of situation provided it is thought out logically. I do think it is important to try to cater for as wide an audience as possible, and if that means making sure things work with essential functionality when Javascript isn't available then so be it. Javascript should be there to enhance functionality, not be it. This obviously can't hold true for some situations (imagine Google Docs without Javascript!) but a lot are often overlooked. I recall seeing some awful code at my last job, where somebody had thought it was a good idea to use Javascript for everything, including ALL form submissions. They'd even made all links look like this: <a style="cursor: hand;" onclick="location.href='somepage.cfm';">click me</a> I'd consider this the worst of the worst, and probably something I'll never see again, but it has made me wary of any solutions that are Javascript only. Thanks, Ash http://www.ashleysheridan.co.uk
