We continue to get questions in the eBay Skype discussion board and other channels about what to do if your web host doesn’t allow JavaScript. Many hosts don’t, and that’s good for security. However, the Skype button wizard offers you code with JavaScript by default, which may not work or may produce some weird results as it gets sanitized or filtered by the web host.

There’s a simple way out. In the Skype button generator wizard, you can choose between “web HTML” and “email HTML”. The main difference between the two is that the first one is with JavaScript and the second one is without it. We figured that calling them “with JavaScript” and “without JavaScript” was a bit too geeky and so we went with web/email HTML, since most web-based and standalone e-mail clients don’t allow JavaScript anyway, so it made sense.

To switch from web HTML to email HTML, just select the appropriate option before copying the code.

Why have JavaScript there in the first place? The Skype buttons themselves work fine without it — if everyone coming to your site has Skype installed. If you don’t have Skype and click on a skype: link, one of two things happen.

• if your code doesn’t have the JavaScript thing, they may see some ugly and strange browser or e-mail client error.
• if your code has the JavaScript thing, a friendly error pops up, telling a bit about Skype and suggesting the visitor to download and install it. See an example.