Part of that may result from the fact that, when it's done properly, the fact that it contravenes no expectations makes it easy to overlook. Like the first rule of systems administration - when you do your job right, nobody notices; it's only when you screw something up that anyone remembers you exist.

Using Noscript or an equivalent can be very enlightening. IME many major sites do work without JS. My guess is for accessibility.

That sounds like the vast majority of users expect more functionality from browsers than can be achieved without javascript. Do you think they would be willing to part with that functionality to achieve engineering perfection?

> Do you think they would be willing to part with that functionality to achieve engineering perfection?

I think that the question would be entirely lost on most users. Perhaps there needs to be a push to educate on the benefits.