> How are we meant to handle AJAX requests that fetch data to display on the web page that allows users to achieve the goal of their visit?
Make the request from your server, parse it on your server, template it on your server, and deliver the HTML result to your user.
> Without JS enabled, that part of the page will be blank, and many modern, rich content-heavy sites now pull data from different places on the fly, it's just how it is.
Perhaps the developers of these modern, rich content-heavy sites can learn how to do their jobs properly?
> Is your idea of gracefully handling this situation putting a noscript tag there saying "please enable JS"?
No. It goes far deeper than that, naturally. Progressive enhancement ( https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/making-software/progressiv... ) is about defining what is considered the core experience, defining the true value your site offers to your users, identifying the use cases that are utterly essential. It's these features that should be _implemented_ in a way that doesn't depend on JavaScript. So you build this layer first, and get it working. Then, you identify the enhancements, user experience improvements, the bells & whistles, and use JavaScript to fill in those gaps. Confident in the knowledge that should the JavaScript fail (for a plethora of different and uncontrollable reasons) the core experience will continue working. Then you consider the nice-to-have features, and decide how much of that is appropriate to incorporate as a core-experience level, and what improvements can be made with JavaScript.
