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I love how all this semantic HTML police are putting the hate on JavaScript. Comparing it to Flash is a gross misrepresentation. If flash was a superior technol

by mythz 16y ago

I love how all this semantic HTML police are putting the hate on JavaScript. Comparing it to Flash is a gross misrepresentation. If flash was a superior technology that easily allowed you to create a superior user experience that behaved like browser applications ought to it wouldn't be dying away. It doesn't but JavaScript and Skilled js devs can! Why should we be forced NOT to use a technology that provides superior response and productivity than what was traditionally possible? Forcing us to live in a world with server round trips for everything just so we can say we perfectly fit within this artificial restriction as defined 20 years ago before any consideration was given to the Internet being used for more than viewing anything but linked documents? There still exists the 'content web' suitable for browsing and navigating content! For the Wikepedia and the plethora of blogs carrying content that remains as business as usual and has no need to change. There are other apps like that provide enhanced functionality like gmail, google maps / docs / calendar, Zoho Writer, groove shark, etc delivering a far superior experience to anyone with an internet connection and a modern browser better than any set of hyper-linked documents ever can.

mythz 16y ago
I intended to leave this comment on the linked website but unfortunately their mandatory open id is completely broken with the 3 open id accounts I owned. I always love taking philosophical guidance and development advice from people who can't even get their own shit together.
- gambler 16y ago
  You don't have to supply OpenId to leave a comment there. It's completely optional.
amadiver 16y ago
> It doesn't but JavaScript and Skilled js devs can! You might be overestimating the differences between Flash and JS here -- especially when you add HTML5 into the mix. What's to stop a skilled JS dev from playing <audio> when the user hits a page, burning processors with a few autoplaying <videos>, after forcing the user to sit through an interminable, animated <js/css3/svg> 'loading' screen? At that point, it's up to our own good tastes to decide how to wield that kind of power.
- mythz 16y ago
  I don't understand what your saying. What if JavaScript devs use HTML5 tools to purposely create poor experience as witnessed in Flash apps? Then their site doesn't get return visitors and starts dying, just like Flash is.
  - amadiver 16y ago
    I'm saying kind of the opposite -- JS/HTML/CSS and Flash are now more similar than they are different. It's not the platform that's the problem. It's what you can do with (and how you can abuse) the platform.
- spiralganglion 16y ago
  If you're running Flash content on a page, Flash is going to be running an event loop at the SWFs frame rate, even if it's not actually doing anything. JS, on the other hand, can be totally idle when it's not running any code. Most JS use is sparing and lightweight and more about interaction than action/animation. Most Flash use is heavy-handed, ham-fisted, and overbearing, done more for cosmetic effect than additional function. Is this a part of the technology? No, but it certainly is nurtured by the differences between the development environments — Flash is still sold as an animation studio! What's more, JS gets to manipulate the DOM directly, giving it a much nicer relationship with the typical web experience than Flash, which is effectively a replacement for the DOM.
  - lukeschlather 16y ago
    >Most JS use is sparing and lightweight Have you used Twitter or Facebook on resource constrained machines? Even on latest nightly builds of Chromium it's painful on my Dell Mini netbook. The point is that you can use Javascript do just about everything you can do in Flash. And Adobe CS6 will almost certainly contain some tools to help you use your existing Flash assets in a pure JS+HTML+CSS environment. So the animation studio for Javascript doesn't exist yet, but we're talking about the near future where it will and it will be just as obnoxious as Flash (but much harder to block from consuming CPU.)
hollerith 16y ago
>20 years ago before any consideration was given to the Internet being used for more than viewing anything but linked documents [emphasis mine]. You mean the web. Do not confuse the web with the internet.
- mythz 16y ago
  Don't be pedantic.
  - prodigal_erik 16y ago
    But this is the key distinction! People are making proprietary protocols (serialized as JSON or SOAP, but the meaning of a request or response is completely ad hoc) and using them to build siloed apps. These appear to be part of the World-Wide Web, because they tunnel over HTTP and TCP. But they actually aren't, because their exposed resources don't have stable URLs or formats and are basically unusable by anything other than one blob of js you have to trust. This should be recognized as tending to displace the web, rather than contributing to it.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - alinajaf 16y ago
    You've got to be kidding. This isn't pedantic, it's just stating the facts. The internet and the web are conceptually and physically different things.
  - hollerith 16y ago
    I was not being pedantic. I was being subtle about my point that if people wanted to use the internet as an applications-delivery platform they could have defined their own damned internet service instead of making life difficult for those of us who want to use the web for its original purpose of reading and writing. It makes life difficult for us by making the browser into a huge ball of complexity and churn. (I still remember the days when the people who wanted to use the web as an applications-delivery platform implored people to upgrade to Internet Explorer 5 to make their lives easier, and of course they were not satisfied with IE 5 for long.) The vast majority of the crashes, unresponsiveness and mystifying software behavior on my Linux and OS X systems come from the graphical browser.
mcantor 16y ago
Why should we be forced NOT to use a technology that provides superior response and productivity than what was traditionally possible? Forcing us to live in a world with server round trips for everything just so we can say we perfectly fit within this artificial restriction as defined 20 years ago before any consideration was given to the Internet being used for more than viewing anything but linked documents? Who said anything about forcing? The article just seems to be asking what people think... has anyone actually talked about forcing developers to step backwards from using JS?
gambler 16y ago
Why should we be forced NOT to use a technology that provides superior response and productivity than what was traditionally possible? On many websites heavy (ab)use of JavaScript/AJAX has the opposite effect. It makes them less responsive and lowers productivity compared to what it could be if those sites were mostly static. Instead of waiting for one HTTP request to complete, we're waiting for fifty or a hundred and fifty. Instead of waiting for optimized browser code to render HTML, we're waiting for a tangled mess of inefficient and hastily written scripts to do its magic.

by mythz 16y ago

mythz 16y ago

I intended to leave this comment on the linked website but unfortunately their mandatory open id is completely broken with the 3 open id accounts I owned. I always love taking philosophical guidance and development advice from people who can't even get their own shit together.

gambler 16y ago
You don't have to supply OpenId to leave a comment there. It's completely optional.

amadiver 16y ago

> It doesn't but JavaScript and Skilled js devs can! You might be overestimating the differences between Flash and JS here -- especially when you add HTML5 into the mix. What's to stop a skilled JS dev from playing <audio> when the user hits a page, burning processors with a few autoplaying <videos>, after forcing the user to sit through an interminable, animated <js/css3/svg> 'loading' screen? At that point, it's up to our own good tastes to decide how to wield that kind of power.

mythz 16y ago
I don't understand what your saying. What if JavaScript devs use HTML5 tools to purposely create poor experience as witnessed in Flash apps? Then their site doesn't get return visitors and starts dying, just like Flash is.
- amadiver 16y ago
  I'm saying kind of the opposite -- JS/HTML/CSS and Flash are now more similar than they are different. It's not the platform that's the problem. It's what you can do with (and how you can abuse) the platform.
spiralganglion 16y ago
If you're running Flash content on a page, Flash is going to be running an event loop at the SWFs frame rate, even if it's not actually doing anything. JS, on the other hand, can be totally idle when it's not running any code. Most JS use is sparing and lightweight and more about interaction than action/animation. Most Flash use is heavy-handed, ham-fisted, and overbearing, done more for cosmetic effect than additional function. Is this a part of the technology? No, but it certainly is nurtured by the differences between the development environments — Flash is still sold as an animation studio! What's more, JS gets to manipulate the DOM directly, giving it a much nicer relationship with the typical web experience than Flash, which is effectively a replacement for the DOM.
- lukeschlather 16y ago
  >Most JS use is sparing and lightweight Have you used Twitter or Facebook on resource constrained machines? Even on latest nightly builds of Chromium it's painful on my Dell Mini netbook. The point is that you can use Javascript do just about everything you can do in Flash. And Adobe CS6 will almost certainly contain some tools to help you use your existing Flash assets in a pure JS+HTML+CSS environment. So the animation studio for Javascript doesn't exist yet, but we're talking about the near future where it will and it will be just as obnoxious as Flash (but much harder to block from consuming CPU.)

hollerith 16y ago

>20 years ago before any consideration was given to the Internet being used for more than viewing anything but linked documents [emphasis mine]. You mean the web. Do not confuse the web with the internet.

mythz 16y ago
Don't be pedantic.
- prodigal_erik 16y ago
  But this is the key distinction! People are making proprietary protocols (serialized as JSON or SOAP, but the meaning of a request or response is completely ad hoc) and using them to build siloed apps. These appear to be part of the World-Wide Web, because they tunnel over HTTP and TCP. But they actually aren't, because their exposed resources don't have stable URLs or formats and are basically unusable by anything other than one blob of js you have to trust. This should be recognized as tending to displace the web, rather than contributing to it.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- alinajaf 16y ago
  You've got to be kidding. This isn't pedantic, it's just stating the facts. The internet and the web are conceptually and physically different things.
- hollerith 16y ago
  I was not being pedantic. I was being subtle about my point that if people wanted to use the internet as an applications-delivery platform they could have defined their own damned internet service instead of making life difficult for those of us who want to use the web for its original purpose of reading and writing. It makes life difficult for us by making the browser into a huge ball of complexity and churn. (I still remember the days when the people who wanted to use the web as an applications-delivery platform implored people to upgrade to Internet Explorer 5 to make their lives easier, and of course they were not satisfied with IE 5 for long.) The vast majority of the crashes, unresponsiveness and mystifying software behavior on my Linux and OS X systems come from the graphical browser.

mcantor 16y ago

Why should we be forced NOT to use a technology that provides superior response and productivity than what was traditionally possible? Forcing us to live in a world with server round trips for everything just so we can say we perfectly fit within this artificial restriction as defined 20 years ago before any consideration was given to the Internet being used for more than viewing anything but linked documents? Who said anything about forcing? The article just seems to be asking what people think... has anyone actually talked about forcing developers to step backwards from using JS?

gambler 16y ago

Why should we be forced NOT to use a technology that provides superior response and productivity than what was traditionally possible? On many websites heavy (ab)use of JavaScript/AJAX has the opposite effect. It makes them less responsive and lowers productivity compared to what it could be if those sites were mostly static. Instead of waiting for one HTTP request to complete, we're waiting for fifty or a hundred and fifty. Instead of waiting for optimized browser code to render HTML, we're waiting for a tangled mess of inefficient and hastily written scripts to do its magic.