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I once believed that Javascript was a toy language that was not worth the time. And once upon a time that was true. But times have changed. Today, Javascript is a suprisingly useful language.

My area of expertise is telework, or remotely hosted applications. I've been writing PHP/SQL databases for years, and the end result always feels like a web page, not a program. In order to make an web based application "feel" like an application, Javascript is the thing.

Take, for instance, Game Lib, a javascript library for writing games. These games are far more "cross-platform" than anything else out there. Or Javascript Windows, which simulates multiple browser windows in a single web page - even allowing form submission with reloading the document. And how about that DHTML debugger written in Javascript ? You can't do those things in PHP.

I find that the Javascript/PHP/SQL can be used to create cross-platform, remotely hosted applications. And until we, as the development community, start taking advantage of Javascript, it will continue to be buggy in all the browsers. Once we make it a standard part of the process, then the web browsers will make more of an effort to support it.

"I'd spent some time using JavaScript without really getting my hands too dirty but I'd pushed it way to far and realized I needed a bigger hammer"JavaScript is a great deal more capable than most people think...

<shameless_plug>Just take a look at my Manic Miner conversion, a 20 level game entirely in JavaScript - it works in most browsers.</shameless_plug> Then take a look over at JavaScript Games.

Give Scott and his friends a visit over at Javascript Games, for more DHTML goodness

Note:
Opera isnt supported as it doesnt (at least it didnt used to) support the ability to re write the page after loading (elm.innerHTML) due to Opera's incomplete DOM model so any mildly adventurous DHTML will fail, hence Mozilla/NS6/ IE required.

All the DHTML sites I visit are using standards compliant code so it just seems to work. In alt.javascript I've noticed people mostly give responces which follow the DOM standards.

I have found a few corperate web sites which don't work with my web browser. ati.com (Now it works, but it didn't in the past), electronic arts (Site redesign fixed the problems) and the government of canada's (un)employment insurance web site (It has a warning for nav6 users but I never bothered to look into it). But those are the exception to the rule.

In general, I don't really see this as that big of a problem. Just asking the web designer to fix the web site usually works. And if you need help figuring it out, the w3c always has their Evangelism mailing-list and Bugzilla has tech evangelism bugs where they will notify the author of a particular web site sending them information on how they can make their web site work in w3c compliant web browsers.

This is completely bogus.

Try here, with the Widget example or sprite demo 4, or this Donkey Kong game rendered in DHTML. Maybe the most obvious example is Video pool which is very smooth with IE and totally unplayable with NS6 despite using virtually no code forking. (BTW, I'm not plugging my site gratuitously, it's just that I've written all these scripts and tried to address Mozilla's speed problems. There are plenty of other people commenting on this topic on other sites, eg Scott Andrew who amongst other things writes articles for Apple's website.)

Don't just take it from me though, Mozilla's OWN developers acknowledge the serious performance problems with DHTML. See here: http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=129115 . I have Mac, Windows and Linux platforms here, and with the exception of Linux (for obvious reasons!) IE outperforms NS by an extremely wide margin with dynamic content.

Of course, if anyone would provide a link to a DHTML script that runs faster in NS6/7/Moz than IE then I'd love to see it. No? Didn't think so...

This is completely bogus.

Try here, with the Widget example or sprite demo 4, or this Donkey Kong game rendered in DHTML. Maybe the most obvious example is Video pool which is very smooth with IE and totally unplayable with NS6 despite using virtually no code forking. (BTW, I'm not plugging my site gratuitously, it's just that I've written all these scripts and tried to address Mozilla's speed problems. There are plenty of other people commenting on this topic on other sites, eg Scott Andrew who amongst other things writes articles for Apple's website.)

Don't just take it from me though, Mozilla's OWN developers acknowledge the serious performance problems with DHTML. See here: http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=129115 . I have Mac, Windows and Linux platforms here, and with the exception of Linux (for obvious reasons!) IE outperforms NS by an extremely wide margin with dynamic content.

Of course, if anyone would provide a link to a DHTML script that runs faster in NS6/7/Moz than IE then I'd love to see it. No? Didn't think so...

This is completely bogus.

Try here, with the Widget example or sprite demo 4, or this Donkey Kong game rendered in DHTML. Maybe the most obvious example is Video pool which is very smooth with IE and totally unplayable with NS6 despite using virtually no code forking. (BTW, I'm not plugging my site gratuitously, it's just that I've written all these scripts and tried to address Mozilla's speed problems. There are plenty of other people commenting on this topic on other sites, eg Scott Andrew who amongst other things writes articles for Apple's website.)

Don't just take it from me though, Mozilla's OWN developers acknowledge the serious performance problems with DHTML. See here: http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=129115 . I have Mac, Windows and Linux platforms here, and with the exception of Linux (for obvious reasons!) IE outperforms NS by an extremely wide margin with dynamic content.

Of course, if anyone would provide a link to a DHTML script that runs faster in NS6/7/Moz than IE then I'd love to see it. No? Didn't think so...

You are joking I hope? Unless you have a SERIOUSLY broken version of... well.. ANY other browser, there's just no way Moz/NS6/7 are "as snappy" as any of the other players.

Maybe your 950 duron is super-quick, but on a dual 1ghz P3 it's still horrifyingly bad. Actions as simple as resizing the browser window result in screen corruption as it fails to reflow fast enough to keep up with the mouse. The Javascript/DHTML performance is beyond bad - STILL - in my own tests (I use DHTML heavily) it runs simple loops at less than 5% of the speed of Explorer. When moving layers on the screen IE outpaces it by such a wide margin it's not even funny. Need an example? try this with IE then NS/Moz. Bear in mind that is just raw Javascript speed, the DHTML performance is much much worse.

I'm no MS lover - I want to see Moz succeed, but lying about its performance is not going to help anyone, and may just turn new users off: "Hey, I was told Netscape 6 was an upgrade from IE5, but it sucks!" is something I've heard from 2 people. From what I've seen of NS7, it's still no better, and neither is Moz. It's fine as an HTML/CSS only browser, but if you try to push it, there's nothing there.