[CLUE-Tech] Is this true?

[Jeffery Cann]

On Friday 26 April 2002 09:21 pm, Jed S. Baer wrote:

> Regrettably, it is the authors who abuse scripting who ruin it for sites
> which use it responsibly.

I agree.  It's always those few bad apples...

> I'll turn on JavaScript when I have a browser which allows me to disable
> (err, protect) the back button and the history button; disable "on-close"
> events; disable loading/processing of rollovers (extra bandwidth for those
> extra images); etc. I can't even remember all the javascript annoyances
> I've encountered over the past few years. And, I haven't encountered any
> use of javascript (when I've turned it on) that I couldn't think of a way
> to handle with regular HTML. 

I disagree.  Suppose you want to have a more complex application.  Such a 
beast is generally not used by the general public on public web sites, but 
for intranet applications.  Do you want to do round-trips on the network to 
figure out that after you clicked a radio button that some other field is no 
longer necessary (and can be disabled with a Javascript control?

Having written HTML forms that use Javascript for validation and ones that do 
not, I definitely prefer server-side validation.  It's simpler, easier, and 
less problematic.  Especially if you're worried about browser compatability.

OTH - HTML is not an application language.  It's a markup language that has a 
lot of other limitations.  For example, folks want the power of a GUI (i.e., 
focus controls, mouse-overs, etc.) with the ease of deployment that comes 
with using a web browser.  HTML cannot do it -- Netscape knew this way back 
in 1996 and hence they created javascript.

The biggest problem with javascript is that (ironically) Netscape did not 
immediately submit it to W3C for validation (8 years ago!).   Had they not 
acted like a monopolist (90% of browsers were NS then) and had javacript 
become a standard 6 years ago (instead of 2 years ago), we web developers 
would not have suffered through the pain of trying to use it.  

In case you forgot, Netscape 2.0 supported javascript.  Here's a link to the 
Netscape 2.0 press release - February 5, 1996: 

  http://www.netscape.com/newsref/pr/newsrelease82.html

Did you realize that from within a C or Java application, you can make it 
scriptable using Javascript?  (www.mozilla.org/js/)

Javascript is a handy language that solves many problems.  Now (8 years too 
late) it has a standard implementation.

I guess the alternative is to write rich Java GUIs that are 'network aware', 
but run outside of the browser.  But why loose all of the features that come 
with a browser just to get some decent client-side application controls?

Another alternative is Java applets, but those were introduced 2 years before 
folks were ready to use them.  In 1997, I actually used an Oracle Forms 
utility that generated 3 MB applets from a single Oracle Form.  Oracle 
thought this was an acceptable way to 'web-enable' the Oracle Forms 
environment.  Sheesh.

> So, there's my little rant for the evening. Hope you enjoyed it as much as
> I did! ;-)

I did.  Javascript is such a hot-button topic.  Almost as good as discussing 
the Convicted Monopolist (tm).

Later,
Jeff