The noscript element is intended to display content when a browser is not set to run the scripts embedded in the current document. In practice, the element is observed only starting with Navigator 3 and Internet Explorer 4. When a user disables scripting in a browser, the noscript element's content is rendered wherever it falls in the source code. For older browsers, and those that don't support scripting, the noscript element is ignored, which means that its content is rendered within the next outermost container's context. Going forward, the HTML 4.0 specification recommends that browsers also render the noscript element's content when scripts earlier in the document are of a language type not supported or enabled in the browser. Also, if an HTML 4-compatible browser should be developed that lacks scripting altogether, it, too, should render the noscript element's contents.

All standard attributes of the noscript element were added to support Cascading Style Sheets, internationalization, and events for HTML 4.

The language being used for the element's attribute values and content. A browser can use this information to assist in proper rendering of content with respect to details such as treatment of ligatures (when supported by a particular font or required by a written language), quotation marks, and hyphenation. Other applications and search engines might use this information to aid the selection of spell-checking dictionaries and the creation of indices.