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Domain: hesketh.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to hesketh.com.
Comments · 8
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Re:IBM articles; Security with Javascript
The web 2.0 should be about getting more information, to more people, more quickly. In this regard, AJAX needs the backup suggested by the progressive enhancement ideas. Supporting text only browsers means more people can get information, more often, and often more quickly, if a text only mode is implemented with good design and development tools. I suggest that Ruby on Rails allows for quick and easy text only design, easily implemented and tested, which can then be enhanced in subsequent iterations of development.
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Re:IBM articles; Security with Javascript
I usually consider that 10% of the users have javascript partially or fully disabled either because they use javascript-less browsers (rare) or because of security issues (corporate environments). The trick there is to develop your web application with the Progressive Enhancements philosophy in mind: build a layered, Javascript/AJAX is merely a client-side behavioural layer added on top of the content layer (pure HTML) and the style layer (CSS), it relies on both but shouldn't be necessary for the application itself to work. It's merely applying the good ol' layers separation on your client-side web pages.
Following the Progressive Enhancements "way" raises the chances that your websites will degrade fairly gracefully when the upper layers are not available (old browser, quirks,
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Re:Web 2.0: Where solutions don't need problems?
First, where did you get your development cycle and why would you not implement XMLHTTP to begin with (the first development phase)?
Because it'd be stupid, the main point is to built incremetally on a stable base. XMLHTTP is NOT a stable base, it's not a base at all and it has 0 stability. I find that most people participating in the Web 2.0 wankfest really should read this essay on progressive enhancements, because that's the way to build web apps that actually work well and reliably: incremetally. When you build a house, you start with the foundations, then the walls then the top, then you add the windows and doors, then you start painting and stuff. Just do the same for your websites, instead of picking the doorbell chime first and trying to fit the foundation under the bird's cage
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Re:Back To The Status Quo
I've met "progressive enhancement" once before. You've never seen such ugly, malformed, duplicitous code. Non standards compliant web site code that tries to be cross-browser is most of the reason I decided not to get into web development.
Wrong "progressive enhancement", the ones he's talking about is layering your website and building each layer on top of the previous fully fonctional one. This means that each layer yields a fully usable website by itself and merely improves on the previous ones, aka if a website doesn't support what's in layer "n" it'll still get the fully functional website generated by layers up to "n-1".
I'd advise you to read Hesekth's article on "Progressive Enhancement and the future of Web Design" for more informations about the principle of progressive enhancement.
As a side note, it should be noted that PE is an improvement over the philosophy of graceful degradation, a more complete way of doing things The Right Way (TM) -
Re:Choosing language
You should stop smoking mate.
HTML/XHTML are still the base languages of the web, Javascript should only be used to improve the user experience, and when it's well used the website is not supposed to break when javascript is not activated (*) (then again 90% of the websites out there use shitty javascript in a shitty way).
Oh, and Javascript has always been the only scripting language that had a bit of cross-browsers compatibility (VBScript doesn't even come close), and the used server-side languages won't change.
(*) This is the base law behind the Graceful Degradation principle, which is even extended in the theory of progressive enhancement design: nothing should be necessary but the base data [HTML/XHTML] of your website, you should be able to desactivate anything that is added on top (style, scripting, whatever) without any *major* drawback (aka loss of some ease/speed is okay, but inability to use the website is not) -
Re:Purpose of Acid2
We have the same problem with javascript, only that is 10 times more disturbing because if javascript was actually the same all other the place web surfing could be enhanced so much. The only reason people don't like javascript is because the popups, and that's not everything in javascript.
I beg to disagree, popups is not the only reason why people hate JS (one could even say that they fear it).
General misuses and abuses of JS is, and in this general abuses are:- Popups, of course
- Stupid effects (shitty animated gifs following cursors anyone?)
- Messing with browsers (resizing, changing parts of the global UI, alert boxes)
- Code design so bad that browsers grind to a halt (oh, i so love seing my CPU usage skyrocket to 100% and stay there because i opened a bugged page)
- Slowing the browsing
- Disabling the browsing altogether because of non standard or stupid scripts (mmm, yummy Javascript links, I mean anchor tags are certainly not hip enough for a damn link are they?)
- Probably many other i can't think of right now
As Douglas Crockford put it, Javascript is the most misunderstood programming language, and I'd add that it's the one with the most extensive yet qualitatively (sp, more than likely) worst documentation ever.
And yet, finding good javascript tutorials and stunning Javascript reference websites is possible. People just don't bother looking for them... -
Re:Names beginning with lowercase letters...
you're probably thinking of steve champeon. he has an interesting little project tracking the internet namespace.
lights mean high tech... -
two- and three-letter domains still pretty openA while back, I did a couple of charts showing how far we are from running out of two- and three-letter domain names. Looks like there's quite a few left: