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I'm less concerned about jQuery's thunder and more concerned about the BBC's use of public money to fund developers' vanity projects. How is the time and cost

I'm less concerned about jQuery's thunder and more concerned about the BBC's use of public money to fund developers' vanity projects. How is the time and cost which of building and maintaining Glow outweighed by the level of page degradation that Safari 1.3 and other tiny niche users would have experienced (where it could not be mitigated by other page design considerations) using, for example, jQuery?

frazor 17y ago
Due to the BBC's public service remit it has to support a very wide range of use cases - many of which fall outside of the accepted norm. For example the BBC has to provide its contents to libraries and schools, many of which have more heavily 'locked down' machines than your typical corporate network, and who do not have the money or time to upgrade their machines. There are a lot of smaller user groups in situations that prevent them from upgrading too. You'd be surprised how many older machine users this equates to. Thus the BBC has to support the thin end of the wedge of web browsers, and the stats we have (unfortunately) back this up. The Glow team itself is actually a very small team, even in BBC terms (which usually has small teams compared to a lot of companies). Add to this the in-house support they give to all of the other web products in terms of a library and general JS support and you have in effect a net gain in web producing ability - not a loss, so its more effective to do this and thus a more efficient use of BBC funds.
jaffathecake 17y ago
It's common for people to see something they don't think directly benefits them and decide it's a waste of the licence fee. Perhaps you're not tied down to older browsers, so Glow has no benefit compared to other libraries, for you personally. I'm a fan of the Radio 4 programme "More or Less", a review of stats in news stories. It's audience would seem insignificant compared to reality TV shows and soap operas, should the BBC scrap "More or Less" and reassign its budget to reality TV? Would you say it's wrong that we support screen reader users, even though their numbers are small? Is time spent helping these users a waste of their licence fee? No, we're happy to cater for minority users even if it means being behind other libraries. I wouldn't want other libraries to do the same, as they can be the choice for people who don't need the support of old browsers, and they can perhaps be faster and leaner for it.
- seasoup 17y ago
  But you're missing the point that you could have spent the time you spent developing Glow on extending jQuery to do all of these things that you want Glow to do. Then you would have the benefit of everything that jQuery does plus everything that Glow does... but going down separate development paths is not helping anyone at this point. Unless Glow is doing something nifty that jQuery is not other then supporting screen readers and older browsers.
- pbhj 17y ago
  I don't want to broaden this too much, but you feel the BBC has to support Saf 1.3 with 0% market share because you don't want to force a software update on those 80 odd people whilst on the other hand transitioning to digital forcing a hardware change/purchase on the entire user base?? Seems a bit of a weak argument. If indeed (as reading between the lines you appear to suggest) if a javascript framework needs to be hobbled to support screenreaders (good!) and obsolete browsers (bad!) then it may not be right to weigh in with one of the top frameworks. But you asked them first though right? "More or Less" is great. But if commercial radio had a free-to-air program "Less or More" and the only difference was that you transmit at a frequency that's better for reception on crystal sets then I'd hope the BBC wouldn't bother but would add to the diversity of broadcasting some other way.
- manonthemoon 17y ago
  Of course the BBC should support screen reader users, and of course it should keep producing quality programming which could not otherwise be made. This is not a matter of providing something people would otherwise not have access to. Safari 1.3 users would have been able to use the site without Glow, but their experience of it would have been a bit degraded. No doubt less so if a fraction of the time put into developing Glow had been put into finding the best ways to mitigate the page degradation. Safari 1.3 may have had its problems but it is essentially a capable rendering engine for the kind of page functionality the BBC uses. After all the BBC is hardly pushing the envelope for HTML & Javascript technology, nor does it need to in order to deliver its content. I don't see that there is any serious business case for this amount of development to support this level of refinement for such a small group of users. The fact is that developers are in a luxurious position of following what appeals to their vanities rather than delivering value for public funds. Someone mentioned the team was small. How many of them are contractors vs permanent? I bet they are not all permies. Even so, one permanent salary for two years is a heck of a lot of money to throw after a project replacing something which is 'good enough' and available for free. Can you point to pages or features on the BBC site which, without the use of Glow, would render content inaccessible or completely unusable to Safari 1.3 users if jQuery had been used?

frazor 17y ago

Due to the BBC's public service remit it has to support a very wide range of use cases - many of which fall outside of the accepted norm. For example the BBC has to provide its contents to libraries and schools, many of which have more heavily 'locked down' machines than your typical corporate network, and who do not have the money or time to upgrade their machines. There are a lot of smaller user groups in situations that prevent them from upgrading too. You'd be surprised how many older machine users this equates to. Thus the BBC has to support the thin end of the wedge of web browsers, and the stats we have (unfortunately) back this up. The Glow team itself is actually a very small team, even in BBC terms (which usually has small teams compared to a lot of companies). Add to this the in-house support they give to all of the other web products in terms of a library and general JS support and you have in effect a net gain in web producing ability - not a loss, so its more effective to do this and thus a more efficient use of BBC funds.

jaffathecake 17y ago

It's common for people to see something they don't think directly benefits them and decide it's a waste of the licence fee. Perhaps you're not tied down to older browsers, so Glow has no benefit compared to other libraries, for you personally. I'm a fan of the Radio 4 programme "More or Less", a review of stats in news stories. It's audience would seem insignificant compared to reality TV shows and soap operas, should the BBC scrap "More or Less" and reassign its budget to reality TV? Would you say it's wrong that we support screen reader users, even though their numbers are small? Is time spent helping these users a waste of their licence fee? No, we're happy to cater for minority users even if it means being behind other libraries. I wouldn't want other libraries to do the same, as they can be the choice for people who don't need the support of old browsers, and they can perhaps be faster and leaner for it.

seasoup 17y ago
But you're missing the point that you could have spent the time you spent developing Glow on extending jQuery to do all of these things that you want Glow to do. Then you would have the benefit of everything that jQuery does plus everything that Glow does... but going down separate development paths is not helping anyone at this point. Unless Glow is doing something nifty that jQuery is not other then supporting screen readers and older browsers.
pbhj 17y ago
I don't want to broaden this too much, but you feel the BBC has to support Saf 1.3 with 0% market share because you don't want to force a software update on those 80 odd people whilst on the other hand transitioning to digital forcing a hardware change/purchase on the entire user base?? Seems a bit of a weak argument. If indeed (as reading between the lines you appear to suggest) if a javascript framework needs to be hobbled to support screenreaders (good!) and obsolete browsers (bad!) then it may not be right to weigh in with one of the top frameworks. But you asked them first though right? "More or Less" is great. But if commercial radio had a free-to-air program "Less or More" and the only difference was that you transmit at a frequency that's better for reception on crystal sets then I'd hope the BBC wouldn't bother but would add to the diversity of broadcasting some other way.
manonthemoon 17y ago
Of course the BBC should support screen reader users, and of course it should keep producing quality programming which could not otherwise be made. This is not a matter of providing something people would otherwise not have access to. Safari 1.3 users would have been able to use the site without Glow, but their experience of it would have been a bit degraded. No doubt less so if a fraction of the time put into developing Glow had been put into finding the best ways to mitigate the page degradation. Safari 1.3 may have had its problems but it is essentially a capable rendering engine for the kind of page functionality the BBC uses. After all the BBC is hardly pushing the envelope for HTML & Javascript technology, nor does it need to in order to deliver its content. I don't see that there is any serious business case for this amount of development to support this level of refinement for such a small group of users. The fact is that developers are in a luxurious position of following what appeals to their vanities rather than delivering value for public funds. Someone mentioned the team was small. How many of them are contractors vs permanent? I bet they are not all permies. Even so, one permanent salary for two years is a heck of a lot of money to throw after a project replacing something which is 'good enough' and available for free. Can you point to pages or features on the BBC site which, without the use of Glow, would render content inaccessible or completely unusable to Safari 1.3 users if jQuery had been used?