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Is enhancement JavaScript worth it?

Posted: Sun Feb 26, 2006 2:48 pm
by Ambush Commander
I like calling AJAX "newfangled" because there's a lot of buzz surrounding the hype (you know, lots of people think AJAX is overhyped, and it's those people who I am observing). Nonetheless, this sort of forces me to learn a little more about JavaScript (which I gave up on after writing only one script).

Now, to tell the truth, I hate JavaScript. Well, I don't hate JavaScript, but I hate the browser incompatibilities and syntax subtleties.

I could get over the syntax. Once you're in a programming state of mind, it's easy to transfer that mentality over, even if that needs to be augmented with an event-driven programming state of mind. But... is it worth it?

After all, you can't trust JavaScript. The browser might not support it, the user may have turned it off, nothing mission-critical can be in JavaScript. I think it's safe to say that JavaScript is an enhancement. An enhancement that comes with a whole lot of hair-tearing over cross-browser issues.

Of course, there are certain things that simply can't be accomplished any other way (such as the script I linked earlier). But most things can. Why do you find JavaScript worth the trouble?

Posted: Sun Feb 26, 2006 5:52 pm
by jftuga
Is it worth it?

I would say, "Yes". Just look at GMail. It really is an awesome web interface. They seem to have worked out the cross-browser compatibility issues, too. Microsoft Outlook 2003 Web Access is also very good. Yes, it works better in IE, but is still very usable with Firefox.

-John

Posted: Sun Feb 26, 2006 11:01 pm
by feyd
It's useful in some instances. Note, I'm discounting pages involving Ajax, because that's not apart of the apart of the question at this point I feel, more of a secondary.

Here's my position: It is useful and helpful to provide quick feedback to a user provided it is done in a non-annoying -- hard target, I know -- way. However, you must provide that same functionality through the page anyways. The nice part is that you save more bandwidth helping users fix their posts before having to process it on the server. I'm generally able to avoid a lot of browser specific code however.

Now, about Ajax. I'd avoid requiring it as much as possible. As Weirdan said in another thread, Javascript should be used to upgrade not degrade. So use it as an enhancement to performance, features, or whatever.

Posted: Mon Feb 27, 2006 8:37 pm
by Ambush Commander
Fair enough. There are quite a few cool things that I want to do in JavaScript. One of them is a Sprankle style interface for special character insertion into forms. Google's "Do you really want to close the page with unsaved form data" is helpful too.

But they're not essential...