From the dev list, some of my thoughts around this:



I've discussed this with Marko a bit already, but for everyone: I

disagree with this angle of implementation. I don't think that users

should have to choose a preference for "display mode"; I think that we

should detect the user's current browser (using js and storing the

result in the session if necessary) and degrade everything as

gracefully as possible (using <noscript>, php-side ifs, etc.).



Oh, duh: noscript. Marko, that's an even easier way to do the check -

set an extra form var in a <noscript> tag. Though, same problem for

guest users that we already talked about.



Anyway, what do folks think about the preference vs. automatic

question? I think that users shouldn't have to set a permanent

preference and then change it if they changes browsers, I think we

should adapt to whatever browser is in use and  give them the richest

possible UI. Thoughts?

Create a toggle script to switch between JS enhanced and plain HTML 
modes for all applications. Possibilities:

- Maybe create it as part of preferences?

- Create a link to the toggle from the log-in page?

- Store the setting in the session and check the setting when calling 
$browser->hasFeature() so that 'javascript' or 'dom' is overridden?



This would allow users which have JS switched off on their browsers 
(but which are nonetheless JS capable) to fall back on plain HTML 
rendering, eg. sidebar, which currently does not happen because the 
browser would always return hasFeature('dom') as true.