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Of course. JSON wasn’t popularized back then. But mostly it was about reloading parts of the page through DOM manipulation.
by throwaway84742 9y ago
Of course. JSON wasn’t popularized back then. But mostly it was about reloading parts of the page through DOM manipulation.
- chrisweekly 9y agoYeah, I was there too. (Web dev for a living since 1998.) I remember sending HTML fragments over the wire too...
- ams6110 9y agoIf data were in XML format, XSLT could be used from javascript (or vbscript) in the browsr for the DOM generation. Was pretty slick up to a point, but since it was a blocking operation anything beyond a certain size started to noticeably lock up the browser.
- throwaway84742 9y agoI’ve done some of that as well, in different contexts. Those were the days. Virgin territory, uncomplicated, no cross-browser concerns. I haven’t touched frontend since 2005, and looking at it now it’s horrifying. Even the hairiest C++ backend is easier for me now, just because once you write it it doesn’t need to be “updated” for the next decade. Frontend seems to change every 6 months for no apparent benefit.
- bryanrasmussen 9y agoyes but we also change every 9 months based on the analysis of what happened with the 6 month no benefit change. So there's that!
- chrisweekly 9y ago> "no cross-browser concerns" wat. the original browser wars? ns vs ie? 2 incompatible implementations w/ no tooling to help?
- barrkel 9y agoUncomplicated in those days meant IE5, everywhere.
- throwaway84742 9y agoIt was a Microsoft tool for Windows only. There wasn’t even a question that other browsers should not be supported.