A result of this is that your app does not work if javascript is disabled. And as a NoScript user, I'll have to carefully consider if I want to whitelist you. (Hint: Quite often, I don't bother. Especially if the site doesn't at least degrade politely ["We're sorry, but our service requires JS..."], which Kicksend does not.)
Don't get me wrong -- I think this is a very clean solution. There are just trade-offs to consider. And, to be fair, enabling both client-side and server-side consumption of an external API -- all within the same app -- is probably more of a headache than it is worth.
In my experience the only reasonable argument to support non-javascript users was web crawlers but even that is becoming less of a problem.
However, if your web application seems to have a significant percentage of non-javascript users then obviously you probably would have never used backbone or considered this API approach to begin with.
That said, there's a case to be made for least checking to see how the site looks in, say, IE6, or with JS disabled. There are a few easy solutions to mitigate the fact that it might be totally broken. (For instance, a noscript tag, or a polite message reminding you to update your browser if you are able.)
I'm sorry, but this is pretty silly (and getting sillier every year this group of NoScript users continues to fuss about not being able to access working applications without javascript being enabled.)
If you want to cripple yourself, fine; but don't expect developers to bend over backward for .002% of their visitors.
I guess in this day and age pointing that out just makes me sound like I'm boo-hooing.
That said, it would be nice if they at least told me they require JS instead of giving me an empty and broken page, but I guess I'm in such a minority that I should be used to this kind of thing by now.
