Slashdot Mirror
JavaScript Inventor Speaks Out
Anonymous Coward writes "Brendan, on his mozillazine blog talks about JavaScript 1, 2, and in between in light of DHTML and AJAX. In an informal blog entry he answers frequently asked questions such as fixing Unicode in regular expressions, multi-threading, weak numeric typing, and obfuscating code."
It's Brendan Eich, not "Brendad"
If the "write once, run everywhere" feature was implemented. ;)
On a related note, I had an interview at Adobe a while back and the interviewer mentioned that javascript was the scripting language for a lot of their products. I drew a blank on that one since I had no idea how use javascript for an application (and, subsequently, didn't get the job). When an application uses javascript for the scripting language, does that mean a javascript parser is also implemented into the application? Or can javascript be used in a standalone environment?
It's a pity JavaScript rarely gets the attention it deserves as a legitimate programming language. Most guides to C begin with teaching you how compilers work; most guides to JavaScript teach you how to swap some images.
This is unfortunate as it's quite powerful: it supports first-class functions and an excellent generic object-system, not to mention the usual suspects such as dynamic memory management.
Hopefully its apparent resurgence these days (as browser vendors get their compatibility acts together) will change this.
((lambda x ((x))) (lambda x ((x))))
The difference between the Javascript language and the browser objects themselves has become more and more clear to me as I've worked heavily with both more complex Javascript like AJAX (where you aren't spending much time directly interacting with browser objects, but rather staying "inside" Javascript), working with JScript.NET for commandline programs, JScript in WSH and HTA as well as Photoshop scripting.
.NET assemblies etc.)
Many of the things that bother me about "Javascript" turn out to be problems with IE or Mozilla's objects and not the language itself. Don't get me wrong, things like the Javascript date objects still bug me, but I'm growing to like the language itself much more than I used to.
If you've only ever used Javascript in a browser, you may not realize that much of what you're working with is really the browser's object model. All of the window., document., document.form, etc. interaction form.submit(), etc. are all browser object properties and methods.
I noticed before posting some questions about scripting outside the browser. In those environments, you just get a different set of objects instead of document.form, you get objects for the filesystem or an active image, just like in any other programming language that uses objects from outside (COM objects,
The Glass is Too Big: My Take on Things
to purposefully obfuscate code is the same as a painter purposefully maasking the meaning of a painting. it's absurd and reeks of evil.
You are pretty much on target with the rest of your thinking but that point is "off base". When painters hide the true meaning of a painting... well that is just damn cool!
Not to nitpick (I'm usually not a nitpicker)
Get your Unix fortune now!
I'd rather use a browser configured to show me the world wide web as a bunch of hypertext documents, not as a bloated adware-infested and spyware-infested application that moves crap around inside the browser window and pops up windows.
Yes, but this is a discussion about JavaScript, not Flash.
Honestly. Why should you be able to? Amazon SELLS books. It's not an on-line library. That's not the service they are offering.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Try this site to see what I mean.
http://www.masswerk.at/jsuix/
I was hoping he would talk about the decision to put JavaScript in the Netscape browser. I seem to remember at the time that the magazine columnists were saying Sun was upset that Netscape chose JavaScript over TCL and the fact that they chose to name it JavaScript since that confused the masses of people who generally weren't even sure what Java was yet. I guess they were in a hurry to innovate scripting into the browser before you know who did or we would have ended up with vbscript as the de facto web language. But I've always wondered why they didn't go with TCL. It probably could have been embedded and extended just as easily and there were already lots of programmers familiar with it who could have jumped right in with both feet.
JScript.NET comes in the box, you know.
As someone who'd only used Javascript in creating DHTML, I'd worked up a good hate against it. But what I'd hated was really the ridiculously incompatible implementations of the DOM in IE/Netscape. I also hated the embedded space itself--shitty delivery method (encoded or called from HTML, no #include, no namespaces).
Then I started writing extensions for firefox. I'm trying to show my company that (firefox + xul + js) > (ie + activex). I'm mostly successful, since we already have lots of XML over HTTP data services primed for XmlHttpRequest.
But it turns out that the language doesn't suck so bad. Sure the namespace problem is JS's fault, but the rest is the embedding. Using JS for firefox exntensions allows you to code to one platform; make more OO libraries, etc. I even generate classes from the DTDs I make the XML services from.
Who would've thunk it's really a decent language in the dynamic, lambda-toting, functional-ish area?
Code obfuscation isn't really a "feature" per se. I think the main problem is what you've mentioned -- that a lot of folks don't believe in the "Open Source" philosophy and yet use such scripting languages that by their very nature, are "open source." (PERL rants aside)
It's writing code and hoping nobody else can understand, modify, improve, or possibly circumvent it. To be perfectly honest, I don't think code should be more obfuscated than it already is. The simpler and easier to understand, the better.
I did run into a vbscript worm once that did something like rotX itself when transporting (with a random shift, I believe, to try to avoid AV fingerprinting), then decode and execute upon launch. I must say that was pretty neat in a sick sort of way.
Maybe because we actually know what we are talking about.
Brendan Eich worked at Netscape back when the web was pioneered.. he created Javascript while there, and wrote the entire javascript engine for the Netscape browser (version 2 or 3, can't remember).. facts are facts.. I'm sure theres more info at wikipedia.
It's ECMAscript. Name hasn't caught on yet. ECMA = European Computer Manufacturer's Association, I do believe. Mozilla used to have some bugs where you couldn't use that as the attribute value for a "script" element. Or maybe that was with SVG.
It's also responsible for Google Maps. That's the only big one that jumps out at me, but there are a few other uses I've seen, that I've liked. Try out greasemonkey, and make javascript work for you.
Or does obsfucating code and open source sound like they don't belong in the same sentence? (Yes, I did RTFA. Just curious as to the response.)
Windows has detected an undetectable error.
As long as scripts can still control my system I'm happy. REEE!
I mostly agree, but we do need Javascript. If you look at the Strict XHTML spec, there is no target="" attribute allowed on anchor tags. So if you want to open a link in a new browser, the official way to do it requires client-script (something about targetting is a browser behavior not a document structure semantic, so it should be script, not html):
<a href="http://www.slashdot.org" onclick="window.open(this.href,'_blank');return false;">Slashdot</a>
So you can argue that XHTML blows, or that you shouldn't open links in a new window, but if you decide you want to be standards compliant, you are going to need some client script. This is not the only example.
-David
No web page should ever open up a new browser window when the user clicks on a link. That's rude! The world wide web is a set of documents, not an application. Web pages should not be making decisions of that sort for the user.
what about targeting in frames?
And his screed basically ends up as a bullet-point on some MPAA/RIAA's powerpoint slide.
If there's a "war", then we should make note of who the "warriers" are.
Anyway give people an inch (We want preview before buying!), and they'll take a mile. (We want to 'hack' the website to get the entire book so we don't have to buy it).*
*I'm reminded of that old joke: How do you know there's intelligent life out their? A) Because it hasn't come here.
As well as GMail, the new Google Custom Frontpage (You know you can drag those boxes around?), and hmm.. well, just disable JS in your browser and see how many websites still function. It's ubiquity is why popups exist, as the GP pointed out, but the reason popup blocking software exists is because simply turning off JS would "break the internet," in the eyes of most users.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Painters mask the meaning of paintings all the time. If they were completely obvious art would be dull.
But seriously, it's not like a painter masking the meaning of a painting; it's like a painter masking the method of the painting -- how he achieved the results. And, really, no painter (or coder) should be _forced_ to tell you how he does his work, especially if he's trying to make a profit off the process.
Frames are evil. 'nuff said.
Blah blah blah. There are situations where that's actually the most user-friendly thing to do, like when you're editing or entering information and need to display detailed instructions without losing the form, along with some other situations.
Easy to get around... just read your five pages, then search inside the book for the last word on the 5th page, and start all over again. Sure, a bit of a pain, but certainly automatable...
"May the days be aimless. Let the seasons drift. Do not advance the action according to a plan."
Undoubtedly most browser based attacks do use Javascript. Perhaps when this guy invented it he should have thought of a security architecture that works? When you are celebrated as the inventor of something so powerful, it would just be a graceful thing to take a little responsibility for the way your invention has been abused.
what about targeting in frames?
The "target" attribute is specifically for frames. However, if you want to use frames, then you should be using the Frameset DTD (where it is defined) and not the Strict one.
The "target" attribute's actually defined in XHTML 1.0 Transitional, too, but the OP was talking about XHTML Strict.
Registering accounts later than some other chrisb since 1997
If you look at the Strict XHTML spec, there is no target="" attribute
That's why you use the onclick= attribute.
It's if you decide that you want to open windows on somebody elses computer that you need client script.
;)
The user doesn't need any such scripting to open a new window, only control freak developers
You must be some dumb highschool kid or you've never worked in any enterprise or on any government projects. Java is *the* language of choice.
Regards,
Steve
You can do this with CSS, and without having to call back to the server for the "help" content as another web page
Define your help notes as divs which are hidden (display:none). Then you have your "help" hyperlinks point to those divs, which can then become visible (because they have the focus a different CSS rule applies and they can get display:block or whatever).
Opening new windows is almost always a bad idea. "User-friendly" depends not just on the technique but also on the user. For some people it may work, in some circumstances, but for other people (people with visual impairments, for instance) it is never friendly.
That violates the separation of structure from behavior. You should set the onclick value using a method other than by including it in the HTML page. It's not that difficult if the element is labeled well.
rediculous
<spelling-nazi>
ridiculous
Why is it that no one on slashdot can spell this word?
</spelling-nazi>
Pre-canned Evolution Links for all those Slashdot holy wars.
They're two entirely different languages made by two entirely different companies for entirely different purposes that have evolved in entirely different ways.
I'm not sure they are thinking. Like the people who remove whitespace to 'save bytes'.
:wq
You can be standards compliant and still use target with XHTML strict. One of the bigs things about XHTML is that it is modularized and target was just moved to a module which you can import in your documents:m l-target-1.mod
http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml-modularization/DTD/xht
Using JavaScript for this, which people can disable or just selectively cripple, is a terrible idea and you start getting all these non-standard handlers spread around.
makes sense, thank you for saving me 30 seconds on google :)
You mean we KNOW who invented javascript and we haven't sacked him yet? Hurry! Grab the pitchforks, and lets get pop-up-ad-window on his ass!
Except you run the risk of the user clicking before the method is attached.
I hope they eventually standardize something along the lines of IE's behaviors.
somewhat like that amazon fiasco that prevents the same user from viewing all the pages of a book.
If Amazon didn't at least attempt to prevent you from accessing every page of each book, they'd be unable to offer the service at all as there's no way the publishers would agree to it. They'd essentially be providing a mechanism to get the text of the book for free.
If enough people piss about with it, Amazon *will* be forced to either withdraw the service, or just put up (say) five pages of each book and leave it at that, which would greatly reduce its usefulness.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
It was Netscape 3. Netscape 2 didn't have Javascript support. I remember, because I have an old 68K PowerBook with a copy of Netscape 2.
It's quite simple, really. If I were a web design consultant and thought some nifty new feature would be in order I might just go ahead and spend some time writing that.
Now, assuming the feature is implemented mainly on the client side, with some stuff running on the server, and it's a hit, competitors will be asked if they have some of the same stuff.
Suddenly, the competitors can just download the same scripts as I've spent a month writing. They get to instantly reap the benefits (of course they change it slightly, like any good cheat would do).
End result: I've spent a month bringing something new to the world, my company has spent a month's salary... the competitor can underbid us (no development cost to recoup) and might just get the sale.
Obfuscation, although not a means of stopping someone from doing the above will slow them down, which may be quite sufficient for us to recoup our costs and compete on a level playing field.
that can be embedded in server-side solutions
You should read:
that can be embedded in any solutions
Write boring code, not shiny code!
To frist potser: .Net ( a framework) with ASP (a dynamic page generation system based on simplified VisualBasic)
Java is not same as JavaScript, but who cares, because anyway you also confuse
Second poster was actually ironic, maybe a bit trolling, but fairly funny in my view.
On the internet, nobody knows you are a dog.
=====
I lie all the time, including now
Heh, I've often wondered the same. For a while I thought it was just the US spelling, with me being a Brit.
Like the people who remove whitespace to 'save bytes'
And using short variable names too, I guess?
With interpreted languages like JavaScript it does does cut down the parsing and processing time a fraction, so why not? Check out the compact code on Google's homepage, which is downloaded a gazillion times, and benefits from the size reduction.
It's nothing to do with the processing time, its the size of the code. Smaller=faster downloads. If you have a million people download bloated code its gonna cost you in bandwidth, strip the white space and your variable sizes etc and the savings soon add up.
Parent is obvioulsy talking out of his uninformed asshole.
It never ceases to amaze me how people can do sometimes extensive work with JavaScript and still not spot what an elegant and powerful language it is. Sure, most of that work is about doing meaningless browser-related stuff and wrestling with bad APIs, but come on. I really do expect from an averagely talented real IT person to be able to separate that from the langauge, and be able to recognise the things it can do that their normal language can't. Its almost single-abstraction design that turns out to be able to do just about everything and still look nice and procedural and newbie-friendly totally rocks.
sudo ergo sum
"Lisp in C's clothing" http://www.crockford.com/javascript/javascript.htm l
In this world nothing is certain but death, taxes and flawed car analogies.
oh well, you fell into the same trap :
ASP isn't based on visual basic, ASP just means Active Server Pages.
It would be like saying that CGI is based on Perl.
Instead of environment variables, asp provides some COM objects : request, response, session & application.
The scripting language is up to you, you can use VBScript, Perl, Python, PHP, C and probably even Brainfuck !
wooof!
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Well, sure, meant to actually spell out A.S.P. and not go into unneeded peculiarities and details, but got carried away. was just an off the cuff reply to an obvious flamebait anyway. Thanks for completing.
(ASP is still majorly used by VisualBasic script kiddies, although the environment is quite flexible.)
=====
I lie all the time, including now
IIRC, XHTML strict doesn't allow inline event-handlers (like your onclick-attrib), so the correct way to do it would be to add the event-handler after the page has loaded. Or maybe it's the next version of XHTML I'm thinking of.
And while we're about it, can I also complain about people using 'seemlessly' instead of 'seamlessly'?
Seemlessly isn't a word, and if it were, it would probably mean almost the opposite of seamlessly. (See 'unseemingly' in dictionary).
Finally somebody who isn't a total dickhead speaks up on the Ajax craze.
..."
"With DHTML and AJAX hot (or hot again; we've been here before, and I don't like either acronym)
Bingo!
The man's right on.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
One of the reasons Flash is so popular is because it's next to impossible to write spy- or malware with it.
Flash is extremly picky about client side security, since it's the most widespread web/internet client plattform in existance and they don't want to lose that edge.
Good reasoning if you ask me.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
And as long as scripts can still control your system, I'm happy too.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
I agree! javascript is wonderful. of course many will complain about the speed of the whole thing but if a zx81 could run BASIC at a reasonable speed i'm sure my Pentium-M should hold javascript together (and it does). it's text oriented, interpretive structure is a strength and should be discussed as such (interpreter ALWAYS had massive advatanges over compilers but speed is what everyone wanted)
;-)
I'm _very_ much looking forward to Firefox 1.1, javascript + SVG will open up whole new avenues. e.g. animated mathematics projects that are easily and freely distrubutable (in fact all you need is a website). biological simulations, simple chemical and physical simultations. whilst these can be done now with sprites SVG + JS will make these things shine.... and of course... more games.
Not only that but the source code is available AND the turn around time from code to testing is just an F5 away.
The only browser issure that REALLY must be sorted out is that of SOUND. I want to be able to trigger sounds like i can images... on onload, onsubmit, anywhere in my code (ususally on a timer).
At the risk of sounding preverse the only other thing i'd like would be to stop the system rendering and queue all my requests then render when i say so. preferrably on vsync
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
Your English is infinitely better than my German, but so as to make it even better: extremely platform existence
This doesn't do what you'd expect it to do:
function hrs_up() {
h = document.theform.hr.value;
if (h < 23) {
h += 1;
};
document.theform.hr.value = h;
};
function hrs_dn() {
h = document.theform.hr.value;
if (h > 0) {
h -= 1;
};
document.theform.hr.value = h;
};
function mins_up() {
m = document.theform.mn.value;
if (m < 59) {
m += 1;
};
document.theform.mn.value = m;
};
function hrs_dn() {
m = document.theform.mn.value;
if (m > 0) {
m -= 1;
};
document.theform.mn.value = m;
};
This is because someone had the {IMHO crap} idea to use the addition operator for concatenating strings. That worked OK in BASIC {in those days, almost nobody had a full set of punctuation marks on their keyboard}; but unfortunately, JavaScript doesn't know the difference between strings and numbers like BASIC used to. So you end up having to subtract negative numbers when you meant to add.
Perl and PHP don't suffer from this of course, because they use two *different* operators for two *different* operations.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
No. It's the Retardish spelling.
As for people with visual impariments, I'm not concerned with helping them view my sites. I guess that makes me a horrible person.
"In this world nothing is certain but death, taxes and failed car analogies."
A failed car analogy is like a Corvair: Exciting, but dangerous.
A failed car analogy is like a Moller flying car: Everybody wants one, but they won't be available for 10 years.
A failed car analogy is like the Flintstones's car: It takes a lot to get started, but then its momentum carries it along for some distance.
A failed car analogy is like a Pacer: Its creator thinks that it's great, but everyone else thinks that it's stupid.
A failed car analogy is like the Jetsons's flying car: It folds up into a briefcase.
A failed car analogy is like a Pinto: If you hit it the wrong way, it will explode.
A failed car analogy is like a Ford Model T: Very out-of-date, and you need a special license to use it.
A failed car analogy is like a Hummer: It sounds sexy until you realize that it doesn't mean what you thought it meant.
moving jobs im stuck working on an asp project atm.
.asp in iis4 on nt4
I've been in unix land since pre win2k, last working on
the biggest drawback is the lack of native associative arrays
create a few more than 100 scripting dictionaries and you get "out of memory" [though I plucked 100 from mid air, I just ran out one time when using one of my php idioms creating an array of dictionaries inside a loop, didn't bother to work out the *actual* limits]
VBscript is one of the least expressive languages.
It is a dynamically typed language that throws up type errors if you don't cast some objects with clng(object.property).
Seems they weren't very good at writing parsers
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
JS is a can of worms. I want my browser to be just a browser and not run any code any XXX site sends me. It opens many security holes and makes writting a www browser a very complicated task.
So why not disable it?
Because many sites won't run.
The only solution is if many people disable js and then sites will not use it because they'll lose visitors.
And BTW, the dude is not an "inventor".
Javascript is an attack vector; it is to exploits what a pond is to mosquitoes. I tell everyone to disable it in their browser, email reader, pdf reader, etc... I wish it would go away! Web designers/programmers that require Javascript to access their site should be hung upside down by their private parts.
Why is it that no one on slashdot can spell this word?
Because we're a bunch of morans.
That's ridiculous! Yes, most of web *pages* should never do that, especially the stupid concept of "oh, you're following a link into other site, you CAN'T possibly want to leave THIS site; here let me open another window for you".
There are plenty of web *applications*, however, where opening new windows is perfectly reasonable.
Javascript is a rushed to market idea in order to make some cool things happen in browsers. You can't call it a programming language and I even hesitate to call it a scripting language.
I think the inventor ought to be bound and stoned to death.
Karma means nothing to me, so suck it...
flash is popular because people like you can do "cool" things easily and it's been wedged in IE for a few years.
I'm sorry, but this comment simply doesn't hold:
JS is not going away, so it ought to evolve. As with sharks (and relationships, see Annie Hall), a programming language is either moving forward, or it's dead.
No, when a programming language doesn't chance, it's called a standard. Look at what we've been able to do keeping html, css, and javascript a stable target for so many years! It's like Space Invaders on the Atari 2600 -- nobody who created that console, its hardware designed specifically for playing Combat and Video Olympics, expected someone to be able to slap six sprites in a row, much less have the player shoot then down one at a time. The 'standard' that was the 2600, however, gave a stable platform for programmers to learn tricks that would give the console life well beyond its creators' expectations.
We've got something like that with javascript, and we can see what happens when we compare to something like Visual Basic 6. Developers are still upset about Microsoft's decision to drop official support for VB6 in an attempt to force people to upgrade to VB.NET. Know what? Those upset programmers have found that VB6 hasn't rusted and simply continue using it to create their apps. There are more companies than you'd know (here's one) whose major apps are/were written in VB6, the 'prototyping language'. They're not quite ready to cast the baby out with the bath.
Fix bigs in javascript? Absolutely. The issue is that we've reached a point where nearly every browser anyone uses supports a 'single' flavor of javascript and we're all familiar with how to make our code work with the few quirks that remain crossplatform. There is a standard on nearly every box on the net that coders can assume will be there for them. I wouldn't want to see anyone mess this stable delivery platform up, splitting the user base into something like what we had in the Netscape 4.x/Mozilla/IE 4 & 5 days. Now *that* was an ugly time to code.
The bottom line is that evolution is an overused metaphor. You've got two choices if you'd like to propagate your genes into the future: immortality or reproduction. Immortality was a little too difficult to accomplish for living, unique individuals. Perhaps there were little organisms that could live forever, but something squashed 'em. They're gone. That's not a problem in the digital world, folk. We can make as many exact copies of an individual as we'd like. Javascript modules are not unique. They don't need to evolve. (I mean, come on, he even mentions sharks, a design that hasn't changed in millions on millions of years!)
Javascript should shoot to become an immortal standard, not another field of play and debate.
It's all 0s and 1s. Or it's not.
Fark.com is a classic example of why it's a *good idea* to open new windows. I'm really surprised /. doesn't do this.
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
I thought it was Al Gore that claimed that?
Can anyone recommend a good Intro-to-JS book (not an intro to programming book) that doesn't get bogged down in web-related/browser details?
Nope. JavaScript was introduced with Navigator 2.0, maybe not on every platform. See the Navigator 2.0 (Windows) release notes. Wikipedia is obviously wrong on this.
michael at slashdot.org: The real answer is that a couple of the slashdot authors are sick.
Your English is infinitely better than my German, but so as to make it even better: extremely platform existence
Dude, now your just going to confuse the poor guy.
He's sitting there scratching his head going WTF does "extremely platform existence" mean.
Oh, and totally offtopic, but my wife just sent me a link to the coolest dog that ever lived. So we're too amazed here to be getting any work done for a few minutes.
text/javascript seems like it will always be faster than java. it doesn't have to load the virtual machine. in theory this _could_ be very fast (vanderpool/pacifica???). but... just isn't. javascript is ready to go as soon as the browser has loaded the page. tokenisation/compilation is damn near minial and strcmp isn't slow these days.
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
> there is no target="" attribute allowed on anchor tags
Because it is frankly none of the website's business what window or tab I do or do not choose to open a link in. If cretinous idiot loser webmasters wouldn't keep pulling exactly that kind of braindead schenanighans, Javascript maybe wouldn't have such a bad name with users.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
> > ridiculous
/usr/share/dict/words | less and look for words where the i is pronounced with a Latin long i sound like "ridiculous". Discounting ones where the i is followed by a nasal ng or nk sound (which pulls the i into the very common ing phonemic combination), it's quite rare. Most such words are either pronounced with short i (as in "bitter") or the Anglo-Saxon long i (as in "bite").
> Why is it that no one on slashdot can spell this word?
Because it "feels" intuitively like too common and/or lowbrow a word to have Latin phonetics. You expect a word like "actuarial" to be spelled with an i, but "ridiculous", despite having four syllables, is a word most of us learned before we were in school, so we expect it to have Anglo-Saxon phonetics.
Additionally, words with i in the first syllable almost all have Anglo-Saxon phonetics. Some time when you're bored, grep -e "^[b-df-hj-np-tv-z]*i"
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
pretty sure it was first in v3 ... v2 didn't even have table background colors.. though I may be mistaken.. features weren't usefull for much of anything beyond form validation until v4, but the fact that ie4's model was so different (though arguably better) than netscape 4+'s was dark times for cross browser scripting indeed...
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
There's plenty of other examples where jscript is far superior to vbscript in classic asp. iirc, much of the internal MS development in ASP was in jscript, I looked at a lot of the MS released asp projects (outlook web, ms project web, interdev's asp controls, etc) and a lot of it was all in jscript...
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
Although this is probably premature, the target attribute still remains and isn't deprecated in a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/WD-xhtml2-20050527 /mod-hyperAttributes.html" the latest XHTML 2.0 working draft. And it's in the hypertext module, which also defines the href attribute, so it can hardly be called "transitional".
Oops...
working link
thanks, that's interesting.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Ruby would be beyond cool as a default scripting language for web browsers. It's small and light, and seems to do everything else pretty well.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
After all, you have the source to numerous web browsers written in C. Just add a rolloversrc attribute to the img tag.
Not supported in MSIE, of course, unless you happen to be on their developer team. (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Wow, well I don't know much about phonetics but I do know that in Australia we're taught, and pronounce it, as 'ridiculous'. Ie. with the 'rid' bit pronounced like you'd say 'rid' in "get rid of it", not "get red of it". Maybe its an American thing, I dunno.
Pre-canned Evolution Links for all those Slashdot holy wars.
> Wow, well I don't know much about phonetics but I do know that in Australia
> we're taught, and pronounce it, as 'ridiculous'. Ie. with the 'rid' bit
> pronounced like you'd say 'rid' in "get rid of it", not "get red of it".
More like "get reed of it", as if it were spelled "rediculous", with the e long (since only one consonant separates it from the next vowel). It usually comes out a little less distinct than "reed", though, due to the emphasis' generally being placed on the second syllable, so that it has more in common, pronunciation-wise, with "redecorate", "reduplicate", or "redundant".
If the i were pronounced like the e in red, that would be really bizarre (although there are stranger things in the English language). I've heard a number of different accents, most of them American (but a couple of others), and as far as I am aware the first i in ridiculous, as far as I'm aware, is always pronounced with the Latin long i sound, like the e in regard or the i in pita (which follows the Latin phonetics because it's a quite recent import from a foreign language). I suspect this may be because pronouncing it like the i in "ride" (which is really a dipthong) would be too difficult, but, with only one consonant following, it wants a long sound. If it were pronounced with the short i sound as in rid, you'd expect it to be spelled riddiculous. (Not that all spelling and pronunciation in English are fully regular, or anything...)
I have had significant exposure to several Commonwealth accents, notably the mumbly one used by BBC commentators, but it is possible that I have missed hearing the word "ridiculous" pronounced in them.
On a side note, a word that caught be utterly by surprise recently, in terms of the spelling, is paraphernalia. I checked three dictionaries before I had myself convinced that was right. I am quite certain I have never *EVER* heard anyone pronounce it with two r sounds.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
People in Australia don't pronounce 'get reed of it'.
u s
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=ridiculo
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=rid
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=reed
Both ridiculous and rid have the same pronunciation for their rid part. According to the Pronunciation Key this is how you'd use the 'i' in 'pit'. Reed has a different pronunciation entirely which is given as being like 'bee' in the Key.
It looks to me like its an accent thing.
Pre-canned Evolution Links for all those Slashdot holy wars.