Slashdot Mirror
HTML5 App For Panasonic TVs Rejected - JQuery Is a "Hack"
An anonymous reader writes "I have been working on an HTML5 app for Panasonic VIERA TVs, specifically a client for the Plex Media Server. After paying $129 for the developer program, version 1.0 was submitted for inclusion in their VIERA Connect marketplace several weeks ago. After a few requested tweaks, they inquired about how the client communicated with the Plex Server. As many/most web developers do, I used jQuery and its $.ajax call (which is just a wrapper for XMLHttpRequest()). They insisted this was not standard Javascript, and after several communications with them, they replied back with "A workaround like this is considered a hack.". I'm stunned that anyone familiar with HTML would consider jQuery a hack. I've been patient in attempting to explain how jQuery works, but I am getting nowhere. Any thoughts on how I can better explain jQuery to an app reviewer? Yes, I know I can write my app without any Javascript library, but I am really hoping avoid that."
jQuery is a hack too?
I learned two things today.
My Eyeses Precious!! they burnses!!
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
Look, I'm no jquery fan. I code my js the same way I use a blowtorch: bare metal my friends. But jquery has been in industry wide use for years and is no "a hack".
Hey, Panasonic, what would you say about the /. Beta? Hmm??
They're retarded and have no fucking clue about technology.
So does one crappy hack deserve another?
Where I work, there is an entire group of people, whose sole task is communicating with Apple's app-reviewers. Any time a new app is submitted, they even include a list of reasons, that led to another app of ours getting rejected earlier — with the explanations on why each of those reasons was invalid.
It is never an easy process...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
http://youmightnotneedjquery.c... ;)
So Slashdot is now the blog of random web weenies? Why exactly is this something we are supposed to care about?
Most tech out there is a hack on top of a hack, that's what people do, they hack shit together.
You can't handle the truth.
I wonder if /. Is trying to put out a story that will attract actual answers, given that 90% of all the comments in the community today have been about the bloat of beta.slashdot.org instead of the topic presented in the summary.
As for the actual topic:
What are the reasons, other than time and it's associated costs, for not wanting to do without a javascript binary, just so you can use JQuery? It's been a trend I have been seeing lately with embedded devices (like TVs) being treated like they were desktop computers with gobs and gobs of resources to blow, and where deploying a large multipurpose binary for a single (or small number of) function(s) is commonplace.
Throwing a big multipurpose library in there can pose a significant security risk (from the company's PoV anyway) because the library can do much more than just handle the small number of things you want it to, and some of those things can be undesirable.
Other than the costs to time, what are your reasons for wanting to use a multipurpose javascript engine for such a narrow scope?
Just point them at indeed, where, last time I checked, jQuery was ranked number eight.
"The wisdom of the Patriarchs was that they *knew* they were fools." --Master Foo
On February 5, 2014, Slashdot announced through a javascript popup that they are starting to "move in to" the new Slashdot Beta design.
Slashdot Beta is a trend-following attempt to give Slashdot a fresh look, an approach that has led to less space for text and an abandonment of the traditional Slashdot look. Much worse than that, Slashdot Beta fundamentally breaks the classic Slashdot discussion and moderation system.
If you haven't seen Slashdot Beta already, open this in a new tab. After seeing that, click here to return to classic Slashdot.
I propose that we boycott stories and only discuss the abomination that is Slashdot Beta until Dice abandons the project.
Moderators - only spend mod points on comments that discuss Beta
Commentors - only discuss Beta
Keep this up for a few days and we may finally get the PHBs attention.
The English word fart is one of the oldest words in the English vocabulary.
Reddit isn't going to work. I like Hackaday.. But really, where is the best alternative? Can't use Slashdot much longer with this Beta.
Submit it to the Panasonic app store.
Other than time? That in itself seems like all the reason anyone would need.
Everything will be taken away from you.
An artful negotiating technique, subtle in its cunning.
Good. Cheap. Fast. Pick Two.
Neither one apparently wants to hear what actual users think, but they probably ignore their own users and support departments while spending money on focus groups.
The thread in TFA has been full of people asking for an application just like the submitter's app, which adds value to their Panasonic TVs, and yet management keeps on pushing the beta site. Oh, what were we talking about again? MyCleanPC?
What is being hacked? What exploit is required to make jQuery.js operate? How does it modify the javascript language to work?
jQuery.js is just a library of script routines designed to make a javascript programmer's life easier, like every other library out there, whether it's for C++, ActionScript, C# or assembler. It's not a binary... it is a collection of javascript functions.
Calling it a hack seems a bit ignorant of what hacks are. I've written hacks... patched XBox XDK libraries so I could get my Media X Menu to access extra hard drives in the system... interrupt routines loaded from DATA statements on my old C=64 that allowed me to display more sprites on screen than the hardware was supposed to display, or to do cool things with the borders. I've written multi-tasking kernels with assembler interspersed with the C code so I could directly access or manipulate hardware in embedded systems. Those are hacks.
At worst, you might call jQuery.js a kluge... but even then, jQuery.js works pretty well and doesn't require you to jump through hoops when making small changes (which kluges tend to do). ...so it's a library. A handy collection of useful routines developers can leverage so they do not have to write all that code again. Nothing more.
JQuery is a hack. A useful one, but still a hack. You should be accountable for all your production code, and there's really nothing jQuery does that you can't do yourself with only a little more effort. http://youmightnotneedjquery.c... #incaseyoumissedit
Spent All My Mod Points
Don't explain to them that you used jQuery, just tell them you used XMLHttpRequest(), and if they didn't intend it to be used, they should have included it in their JavaScript processor.
Hell no, we knew that for several months. What we learned today is that they're planning to promote the beta despite several months of people telling them it sucks. This is what annoys me even more than the bad design - they actually solicited our feedback, and we took the time to give it, then they completely ignored it.
The Beta of Slashdot is horrible.
Sadly, I'm going to be moving on from Slashdot, but I don't know of anywhere on the Net has such good discussions with such relatively intelligent people. The stories on Slashdot often suck, but the moderation moderation, I think, is what has kept it such a great place to have discussions. Is there any other site that has similar moderation?
I don't respond to AC's.
Put this in EVERY subject you post. (But wait until someone checks my declensions first, its been awhile) More info: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki...
It will be better to purchase from an owner who is a good farmer and a good builder.
You had the unfortunate luck of having your story picked up during the middle of the slashdot beta shitfest, so most of the comments here will be about that. My condolences. (Also: the new beta sucks.)
Explain that jquery is not a hack or a workaround. It is a framework that is itself written in -- ta da! -- 100% valid javascript. Tell them it is nothing more than a collection of well-written, consistent, standards-based, heavily-reviewed and -tested code, and all it does is contain some pre-written libraries to make it easier to do common tasks.
It is sponsored by many large companies, including Wordpress, BlackBerry, Intel, Mozilla, and Adobe, to pick just the most recognizable names from that page.
According to this, it is used by Google, Facebook, AOL, ESPN, and whitehouse.gov. This 20-month old page also has a big list: WordPress.com, Pinterest, Reddit, MSN.com, WordPress.org, Amazon, Yandex, Microsoft.com, GO.com, Ask.com, ESPN, Craigslist, About.com, Go Daddy, Stack Overflow, Huffington Post, Instagram, Slideshare, Fox News, The Guardian, Etsy, LiveJournal, and Weather.com
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
We didn't learn that today. We've known that since October 1, 2013.
1191 posts, (no, Beta, I won't click "more posts" a million times to read the entire thread, I'll just leave), nearly universal negative feedback, a bounce rate that must be in the 90%+ range (the other 10% being people who don't know how to turn it off), and despite having helped document the UX failures of Unity and Windows 8, Dice continues to double down on its own UX fail.
If I am forced out of Classic, I will leave and never look back.
Fuck beta.
I don't suppose it would help to tell the reviewer that if they don't even know what JQuery is they shouldn't be reviewing anything that has to do with any web technology. It's just a convenience and compatibility wrapper library. It sounds like the reviewer has never touched any programming outside of excel, and is completely unqualified to perform any type of technical review.
That's what Slashdot is for now.
Comments about how beta sucks, repeating "FUCK BETA" and... Fuck Beta.
I see no point discussing about anything else until they kill that abomination or just let us to continue using the classic interface.
Also, fuck beta.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Ok, since you seem to think you know what jQuery is, but clearly don't, it's an API over the native browser APIs, which hacks around various glitches, quirks, and bugs in said native APIs. It also, as a consequence, makes it easier to write certain things than the native APIs often do, but that's NOT it's primary motivation. The vast majority of the code in jQuery is to work around browser issues, hence "jQuery is a hack". If you want to call it a kludge instead, fine. It's still not primarily a convenience library. That doesn't diminish it's usefulness, but don't go pretending it's not a "hack/kludge" when it is.
The "time to develop being as close to zero as possible" thing is only looking at one part of the productivity/profitability angle.
If, for instance, your HTML5 app is able to be co-opted into doing very scary things by feeding it strange inputs for the plex server address, or by using some hack to send it instructions that make it improperly call additional functions in the script library (yes, I know javascript is sandboxed) then the developed application can suddenly be used in more sophisticated hacks, doing exactly what the code in the library was meant to, just not in ways the application was meant to.
This can result in loss of profitability for the company adopting the software and loss of percieved public image and reputation, which can cost the company a good amount of money.
At what point does saving 20 minutes to an hour of programming time trump the costs of the potential externalities?
That doesn't even count the issues with wasting space inside an embedded device's memory to hold code that will, by design anyway, never be executed.
Sometimes the correct course of action is to write the function yourself, and not include yet another library, especially when dealing with embedded or closed platform devices.
Putting a swiss-army knife in a closed platform goes against the purpose behind using a closed platform. The costs of such inclusion can dwarf the savings in development time.
Developer time is not the end-all of the discussion.
And the suckage got much louder today.
The contemporary usage of JavaScript is in and of itself a hack. The language was never scoped to solve the problems it is presently being applied to. JavaScript has been leveraged to accomplish some pretty amazing feats, but that doesn't change the nature of how the language is being abused and contorted to accomplish them.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
Kludge and hack are synonymous, just not maybe the first definition. jQuery should probably this XKCD
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
If you move me to the beta slashdot abortion i'll add this place to the block list and never visit again.
Too many other news sites regurgitate the exact same storys i see here. And all of them don't look as shitty as the beta slashdot.
Stop being stupid
Reading the actual email they sent, it sounds to me like they provide a (javascript) API for doing what "VieraApp" is instead doing with a direct ajax call (and jQuery vs XMLHttpRequest is not the issue; it's not using their wrapper that is the issue).
I would have modded you flamebait since you are using a reference that contradicts your statement in the first line on the site.- "jQuery and its cousins are great, and by all means use them if it makes it easier to develop your application."http://youmightnotneedjquery.c... #incaseyoumissedit
Use the source Luke.
JQUERY is so common it should be built into all browsers and incorperated into the javascript standards and even replace the standards in some cases. JQUERY is nothing more than wrappers that make it so much easier to port between browsers and do things you would need to do outside of it. If anything the standard javascript that JQUERY wraps that does something different in all browsers to do what is called one thing under JQUERY is the browser hack and JQUERY covers it up nicely. To redo JQUERY by making your own wrapper functions is ludicrious and dumb. I would describe JQUERY as a javascript library that wraps up similar browser specific calls into a standard one call for all browsers. I feel so strongly on this I may need to contact the people that make the javascript standards and get them to update javascript standards. The lack of standards to do specific tasks and browser developers wanting to implement non existant standards is what prompted JQUERY in the first place.
No sense defending the indefensible jquery syntax IS offensive and unnecessary.
http://www.columbia.edu/~fdc/u...
English: The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. :-D)
Jamaican: Chruu, a kwik di kwik brong fox a jomp huova di liezi daag de, yu no siit?
Irish: "An fuil do roí ag buala ó aitíos an rá a eall lena óg éada ó lí do leasa ú?" "D'uascail Íosa Úrac na hÓie Beannaie pór Éava agus Áai."
Dutch: Pa's wze lynx bezag vroom het fikse aquaduct.
German: Falsches Üben von Xylophonmusik quält jeden größeren Zwerg. (1)
German: Im finteren Jagdchloß am offenen Felsquellwaer patzte der affig-flatterhafte kauzig-höfliche Bäcker über einem verifften kniffligen C-Xylophon. (2)
Norwegian: Blåbærsyltetøy ("blueberry jam", includes every extra letter used in Norwegian).
Danish: Høj bly gom vandt fræk sexquiz på wc.
Swedish: Flygande bäckasiner söka strax hwila på mjuka tuvor.
Icelandic: Sævör grét áðan ví úlpan var ónýt.
Finnish: (5) Törkylempijävongahdus (This is a perfect pangram, every letter appears only once. Translating it is an art on its own, but I'll say "rude lover's yelp".
Finnish: (5) Albert osti fagotin ja töräytti puhkuvan melodian. (Albert bought a bassoon and hooted an impressive melody.)
Finnish: (5) On sangen hauskaa, että polkupyörä on maanteiden jokapäiväinen ilmiö. (It's pleasantly amusing, that the bicycle is an everyday sight on the roads.)
Polish: Pchn w t ód jea lub osiem skrzy fig.
Czech: Píli luouký k úpl ábelské kódy.
Slovak: Starý kô na hbe kníh uje tíko povädnuté rue, na stpe sa ate uí kváka novú ódu o ivote.
Greek (monotonic):
Greek (polytonic):
Russian: .
Russian: - ? , ! .
Bulgarian: , , , .
Sami (Northern): Vuol Ruoa geggiid leat mága luosa ja uova.
Hungarian: Árvíztr tükörfúrógép.
Spanish: El pingüino Wenceslao hizo kilómetros bajo exhaustiva lluvia y frío, añoraba a su querido cachorro.
Portuguese: O próximo vôo à noite sobre o Atlântico, põe freqüentemente o único médico. (3)
French: Les naïfs ægithales hâtifs pondant à Noël où il gèle sont sûrs d'être déçus en voyant leurs drôles d'ufs abîmés.
Esperanto: Eoano iuade.
Hebrew: .
Japanese (Hiragana):
(4)
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Write the app in Assembly. It'll take a while. But the look on their faces would be precious....
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Back then we THOUGHT we knew.
Now we KNOW we know.
It's a Zen thing. Like FUCK BETA.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
The way they are using the word hack; JQUERY is not a hack. They are using the word hack as code that breaks or uses flaws in order to accomplish a task that could not be accomplished anyways. JQUERY is nothing more then a wrapper. None of what jquery does executes code outside the environment of javascript itself. All the browser specific code in JQUERY are well defined by the browser maufactures and are legal to do so by the lax javascript standard. (I'm ok with some of the lax standards as it allows future proofing code.) However when every browser manufacture decides to do there own thing for an unimplemented feature such as getting GPS coords. And if all browsers do it differently something like jquery to detect and use these all in one wrapped call is nessicary for codding sanity.
So you're going to blame jQuery for trying to standardize the non-consistent implementations of a standardized API? Sounds like you're the kludge. Get over yourself.
Certainly this extra layer of isn't needed when the API is going to be consistent across all of the Viera Connect devices right? Perhaps there is already an existing Panasonic written API that should be used?
I'm curious how it breaks the moderation system? I'm not doubting you - I'm just not very familiar with it.
The glaring problem I see with the new design is that the right hand column spans the length of the page greatly reduces the space for the comments. I like the way the current design does it better, but it seems like they wanted to add in extra junk like polls, ads, and other headlines.
For quite a while now the mobile site was updated to a new design. It's OK, but like just about any site that tries to look like a mobile app (I'm guessing its jQuery Mobile?) the animations are jerky and slow on my iPhone 5.
I find myself getting used to user interfaces and resisting change. Having to get used to something different sucks especially when it doesn't add new features. In time the Slashdot team will fix the issues and everyone will get used to the new look.
If you're talking about web technology, and you're claiming that JQuery is a hack, you might as well admit that using Ajax is also a hack, so is javascript. The only thing really is *not* a hack would be native object code running on the chip. You'd be left with the web browser and no interpretation of any of of the web pages.
I can collapse "Beta is terrible" topic!
Nope; still not a hack that you are describing.
It uses Javascript; to determine browser support of various features.
When a particular feature is not present, it re-implements that feature.
When a method for doing something changes between browsers; it provides a common interface (using javascript written specifically for each browsers interpreter).
There are no hacks. The only thing that could be considered a hack; is when it simulates features not natively found in the javascript library. But that still isn't a hack; because it isn't doing anything not-supported by any of the javascript implementations included in any of the browsers!
For example; if a browser [lets call our hypothetical browser PlatinumInternetFox] didn't support XMLHttpRequests, and instead PlatinumInternetFox had a bug; where you could get data from another web page by using the URL in a dynamically generated image tag; and loading that image tag in a specially crafted CSS-AlphaChannelBlending filter to obtain plain-text javascript, to simulate the functions of XMLHttpRequests, then that would be a hack.
Choosing (depending on support) to use a function called XMLHttpRequest or window.XMLHttpRequest, or document.xmlHTTPrequest because that is what the function was called in any of 3 browsers is not a hack.
it's an API over the native browser APIs, which hacks around various glitches, quirks, and bugs in said native APIs.
Oh, if that's the case, then it's an abysmal failure. I'd need something like jQueryQuery to hack around the various glitches, quirks, and bugs in jQuery!
It can't even manage consistency across the decreasingly few browsers it claims to support. What moron actually still believes this nonsense?
Required reading for internet skeptics
Because, in the vast majority of actual use cases, it doesn't even save you that much. Saving 1 or 2 lines of code sounds optimistic to me.
Required reading for internet skeptics
Put the effort down to an initial prototype. Dream of better, and while you do, seek out a manufacturer who isn't disrespectful. As for the code itself, consider sharing it.
John_Chalisque
That these new web designers must be ass burger thalidomide kids with ADD who design ui's with their flippers.
Leave shit alone, I left torrentfreak it did the same bullshit of giant fonts and social tie ins showing like counts/thumbs count/etc bullshit
Web 2.0 bullshit connecting every fucking website to Facebook likes, google plus's, shares and shit is fucking annoying
At this point I'd pay anonymous to hack and steal the domain , ddos, or rm -rf / the whole damn site if this keeps up
Abstracting functionality across different hardware platforms is still not a hack. If different algorithms need to be used to get the same results on different browsers, it is still not a hack in the definition of the term. I guess if you want to be lazy in your use of the term, it can be described as just about anything... but no, it's not actually a hack. It's a bit sad that the precision of technical language has deteriorated so much in the internet age.
I described hacks. Hacks are unconventional workarounds that effectively break the standards/restrictions of whatever medium you are working in to achieve a goal. Exploits are a hack, using functions completely contrary to their purpose, in an effort to accomplish something the system is not supposed to accomplish (for example, causing a buffer overrun that in turn triggers code to operate at a higher privilege level). One might hack a hardware system by crossing specific wires. We might patch compiled binary code to overcome the limitations imposed by the original author's design. A hack might employ a combination of features on a hardware chip to exceed its capabilities.
jQuery.js is a collection of routines... some of them have quite a bit of code behind them to perform standard tasks that have to be done in completely different ways between two platforms. This is not a hack. It's just more javascript code. That javascript code is not doing anything that the javascript compiler or the DOM for that browser platform isn't allowing them to do. It might fall back to a safe failure mode.... but it isn't magically executing low-level assembly to re-write how the browser works or renders. In some cases, it is just unifying the misguided approaches two different browser development teams interpreted some ambiguous HTML or Javascript specification.
Now... I suppose the OP could just have written code specific to the Panasonic's implementation, but why bother? If he writes jQuery, he can easily port that code... or use other people's code. A good developer tries to not write more code than they have to... design is the important part. We don't build new car models every year with completely new wheels engineered for them, do we? Likewise, there is a WEALTH of javascript code out there and a lot of it works with jQuery. Why should he spend an extra few weeks creating custom code for the Panasonic's platform if he doesn't have to? Worse... why should he forgo leveraging other code that might use jQuery as a base? That's not using a hack, it's using a LIBRARY.
...on a google chromestick, sell i to Samsung, Visio, Westinghouse, Sharp and Sony, then when Panasonic comes knocking, say "See Charles Shultz."
You never know...
It's kind of clean and pretty...
"SO we bide our time, waiting for a purer kick to bloom and the future is still bleak, uncertain and beautiful" -GSYBE
just checked using developer tools in Chrome.
http://oi62.tinypic.com/w6vxhg...
Use the source Luke.
Holy FUCK BETA, Batman! You're right! Straight from the head tag of the Panasonic US website:
Good shot my friend!
JQuery compared to Slashdot Beta:
The difference between knowing your shit and knowing you're shit.
--- Bigger bits, softer blocks, tighter ASCII.
Please, Slashdot, drop the beta. It will only make everyone go away. Is that what you really want?
It would have the potentiality of connecting items not on the pay me first list.
Thought VIERA was just part of the big lie. All TV manufacture do it; this just being Panasonic's area.
The only thing VIERA has allowed me to do outside the norm is to play BattleField 3 in 3D on my Plasma HDTV.
A Plasma TV they claimed was 600hz, being evenly divisible by 24 (cinema) was just
as good as it could get. {The sub field refreshes 10 times a second that x 60 seconds
equals 600} they just tossed a Hz to the end of it, could of put MPH at the end and it meant as much.
No matter how they word it, it's a 60Hz refresh rate.
This you find when your 3D is running at 30FPS and your just a target.
I have a Denon AVR-1312 (home Theater) with HTML5.1 damn Panasonic doesn't notice it.
Supposed to be able to control one with the other.
I knew from the start only Panasonic web cams and WiFi dongles would work with the Panasonic HDTV.
I missed the part that said anything extra added. Looking at Panasonic's site, appears they do indeed block what they don't wish connected.
My saving grace was the HDTV cost me $300 at Costco, 1/3 it's cost new.
Good luck with that VIERA, I'm not going to work with it anymore. I'd of never heard of it if not for the give away price of the HDTV.
The beta doesn't add any useful new features. All it does is remove them and severely fucks up the best part of this site: the commenting and moderation system. If the commenting system goes out the window, why would I come here? The stories are always several days or a week old, the editors are terrible at their job, and all of the actual articles are on other sites I could browse instead.
What the hell, Dice?
The best thing about UDP jokes is I don't care if you get them or not
The reviewer did not say that jQuery was a hack. The review said that using jQuery to avoid using their predefined interface was a hack.
Whether that interface is so bad that you are driven to use a workaround to get anything done I cannot say. However, you will get nowhere if you argue against an imagined response.
In that case, the time he's wasting trying to justify jQuery to the app reviewer should be taken into consideration. If he's going to lose 10 hours in multiple email exchanges trying to get them to accept it, he'd have been better off coding manually and testing the hell out of it.
We are the 198 proof..
If you are, consider using a plain, unwrapped XMLHttpRequest, and whatever other changes they want the price of doing business. All app stores have obnoxious rules and incompetent individual reviewers.
If not, why would you want to reward a company unless they make your life pleasant. Move on to more open platforms. On Android users can side load apps without anyone's approval and with recent SDK release you should be able to display your Plex content on an $35 chrome cast dongle.
welcome to the world of "professional" software development.
No kidding. This is from the second paragraph of the guy's pathetic message-to-Panasonic-turned-fourm-post-turned-Slashdot-article:
Essentially, jQuery implements a Javascript class “$”,
Yeah, we're not dealing with even a minimally competent "developer" here. Judging from the rest of the thread, he's not the exception.
Required reading for internet skeptics
I agree 100%.
Wait, Panasonic has an app store?
jQuery is a hack too?
Vanilla.js. Have a look over their jQuery/Vanilla-JS comparison examples and consider if you really want jQuery.
At a glance:
Vanilla JS is a fast, lightweight, cross-platform framework for building incredible, powerful JavaScript applications.
...
Vanilla JS makes everything an object, which is very convenient for OO JS applications.
Native support for HTML5 and other cutting-edge technologies makes me keep coming back to Vanilla JS, time after time.
Vanilla JS is the lowest-overhead, most comprehensive framework I've ever used.
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
There's a lot more useful in jQuery than just covering up browser differences, but sure, writing for a single platform definitely eases some of the pain of writing and testing jQuery-less Javascript.
Like a lot of the new UI changes lately, (First rev of KDE4, Win8, Gnome3, Unity) it makes the things I do often more difficult or imposable, and makes nothing I do often easier. "It is a beautiful new hammer, and we removed the head to streamline it."
This is what annoys me even more than the bad design - they actually solicited our feedback, and we took the time to give it, then they completely ignored it.
Hopefully they will listen to the crickets after classic is no longer an option...
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
But like heroin addicts we keep coming back for more.
But as it gets worse, that "we" will become a smaller and smaller number.
While I wouldn't call jQuery a hack, it would be reasonable to say for an embedded platform like the panasonic tv, it might not be able to handle the overhead of loading jQuery and still performing well.
http://interserver.net/
welcome to the world of "professional" software development.
No kidding. This is from the second paragraph of the guy's pathetic message-to-Panasonic-turned-fourm-post-turned-Slashdot-article:
Essentially, jQuery implements a Javascript class “$”,
Yeah, we're not dealing with even a minimally competent "developer" here. Judging from the rest of the thread, he's not the exception.
Perhaps you should drop your plex client project and work on something more professional.
How about moving to something corporate friendly and doing some ASP.NET development!
Oh, wait. ASP.NET relies heavily on jQuery as well. Nevermind.
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
If all you're doing is short cutting the ajax call (which has actually been reduced to one line now anyway) the don't add a large third party dependency.
Hell, if you are building an application which will only ever run on a single platform, don't use JQuery, most of the ugly calls have been reduced dramatically in length anyway.
How it's done is here. Basically, you test to see which of the various XMLHttpRequest objects work (basically it's several for Microsoft and one for the rest of the world), and use the one that works. I personally don't do it exactly that way, I use a try/catch block but that seems like a good answer too.
Details on the return values here.
It's quite straightforward. While there are good reasons to use jQuery, there's no need to use it solely to handle AJAX calls for multiple browsers.
I stayed with The Daily WTF through their Worse Than Failure transition and they listened to their users and switched back. I still visit them w/o ad blocking. I've only been back to Woot once since their redesign, just to make sure they haven't reverted to their previous fame, they haven't. I'll never buy something from there again nor support anything with their brand mark. I'm a college student and we'd have 'Woot parties' during their Woot Offs. No one here has spoken about them since their transition. They're completely dead to us. Slashdot will be dead to us too.
On the plus side, I'll have more time to read actual research papers so I'll have a greater depth in my field. However I did like the breadth Slashdot game me with tech in general. Dice won't listen (and you'd have to actually contact them not just protest on the forums. They probably don't read these posts and if they do then they've already shown us they don't care).
Someone please fork the site and I'll actually get an account this time.
I use jQuery, a lot. But I use it because it allows me to worry less about what browser I am running on. If I am coding an embedded application for a known, fixed platform, I would be inclined to avoid the overhead of something like jQuery. If you're not worrying about what brain-damaged version of IE your code is running on, just use XMLHttpRequest. Manipulating the DOM isn't that bad, especially if you are leveraging CSS for your appearance attributes.
jQuery *is* a hack. A necessary one that has grown into some kind of terrifying chimera, but still fundamentally a hack.
So it's like emacs then?
Oh, wait. ASP.NET relies heavily on jQuery as well.
Wow, total fail.
It's starting to look like jQuery and incompetence go hand-in-hand...
Required reading for internet skeptics
If you are having problems getting past this one (idiotic) App reviewer, then unless you have already gone through a successful app review process with another reviewer whom you can use for a second opinion or have an escalation point to request an appeal, then you have only two choices that I can see - give up on the idea, or rewrite the app without using jQuery (either by self-coding all of those elements, or taking the bits of jQuery that you need and packaging those separately.
"when its all over, I am going to go balls deep into Beta over there. But only cause Dice asked me, sweet like." -Richard B Riddick, murderer, escaped convict.
"It is a beautiful new hammer, and we removed the head to streamline it."
You forgot to mention that they exchanged the handle for balsa wood too, I thought I had a nice little stick there for a while...
--- Reality doesn't care about your opinions, it happens anyway and if you are in the way you'll get squished.
http://beta.slashdot.org/submi...
I wonder how "bare metal" JS could be.
In what way does it rely heavily on JQuery? Not noticed that in my day to day work.
> they actually solicited our feedback
And for the record, Slashdot BETA sucks.
--P
I feel that it would be completely unreasonable for a platform running applications based on Web APIs to be so constrained as to have an issue with jQuery.
seriously, won't anyone RTFM. Its just really bad editorial as usual - they simply expected the coder to use their API rather than bypass it using jQuery. That's all.
I expect most TVs these days are embedding webkit and have sufficient memory to cope with random webcontent. There might be a few using Netfront but even that is a relatively competent browser capable of handling modern content (to a lesser degree).
They're still soliciting it. Stop whining here and send an email to feedback@slashdot.org.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
They're right. . . using something like this to abstract and provide a standard API over all of the subtle differences in various Javascript implementation is definitely a hack. You need to learn and become aware of these subtle differences yourself - handling each case separately. After a while you'll notice that you're doing this over and over again: Consider instead writing your own utilities to do DOM manipulation and other common features. And you'll no-doubt be relying on these utilities a lot, so it would be wise to allow accessing them using terse, short-hand method - the '$' symbol could work wonders here!!
If it acquires resources on instantiation like a duck, then its a shared_ptr<Duck>
Yes, I know I can write my app without any Javascript library, but I am really hoping avoid that.
There's your answer. Mojang has to rewrite Minecraft (for Pocket Edition) in C++ in order to get it submitted to the iOS App Store.
If you gave me a choice between a printer and a giraffe with explosive diarrhoea, i'll get my ladder and my raincoat
It doesn't rely on them at all. They're just included for convenience.
no really, if this BS if forced on us i'm out. Screw you guys, i'm goin' home.
use the non-minified version.
when you submit stuff that gets vetted by some moderation into online javascript appstores-within-apps-or-devices then it is STANDARD PRACTICE to submit non-minified code for readability.
the theory is that they can see that you're not going to do anything to hack the tv, spotify or whatever. this is standard on all that I've submitted apps into.
and no, they don't actually read the code and see what it does.
so use the non-minified version.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Excluding jQuery would exclude all the incompetent JS developers so on that point alone it's a wise move. But likewise it maybe that they don't want things like jQuery used because jQuery almost certainly doesn't test for Samsung TV sets. Yes they may use android with WebKit but if they opt to do something different and that causes problems then who is going to fix your app or will you get snotty when it's pulled? It is a bit heavy handed but I'd say it's a bit more reasonable given it's not a desktop browser where people almost expect things to break. They expect their tv to just work.
He clearly has no clue about what's going on, so just tell him you remove jquery from your code and replaced the ajax calls with standard Javascript.
since jQuery is standard javascript, it's not even that much of a lie...
Of course jQuery is a hack - a hack around the out-dated, crufty and rigid thing called CSS. Oh yeah, jQuery has lots of other stuff included, but if one would look at the largest chunk of work it does, it is patching the layout, dynamically adding dynamic behavior what, as pragmatical person can easily notice, CSS can easily be made to do too. But everybody's stuck with the notion that CSS is only and solely a static abstract style definition. So the everybody is stuck with jQuery to patch it up during run-time.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
JavaScript itself is a hack.
That should come as no surprise to you as it should be pretty obvious by now that Resig doesn't even have a superficial understanding of javascript.
Ah, Javascript - so "expressive" that everybody can invent their own programming paradigm and then flame anybody who does it differently... and if that isn't enough just invent a new language that compiles to Javascript.
Finally, we have a single, unified platform for the language wars!
Sorry - must dash - lots of code to convert to use "object.create" because, apparently, every time you use a constructor function, someone shoots a puppy.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
nt
I'll say it again the same people that blasted everyone that hated Windows UnGreat, for changes to the OS, called those people morons for being afraid of change, including the people that modded up those comments.
Now they're the ones crying and moaning over /. change.
Ahemm ... nope. They're crying and moaning over poorly designed change. And with good reason.
They'll find another way to make revenue off of ads, considering the majority of users use a blockad, losing users isn't going to hurt them anyway
Some of us pay for Slashdot. And don't disable the ads, since they're a pretty good way of keeping tabs on market trends. So speak for your self.
P.S. Beta sucks!
- Jesper
My security clearance is so high I have to kill myself if I remember I have it...
Having submitted apps to almost every major TV manufacturer on behalf of some prominent global brands, I can tell you there is one common thread through all of this. Outsourced QA.
These electronics manufacturers are devoid of any meaningful software organization internally and almost all of them outsource their app evaluation processes to external organizations. These organizations are paid to find defects and in no way are incentivized to help you get your app into the marketplace. Not only is this incentive structure counterproductive, it also promotes an entirely random and inscrutable process where the same app can be submitted 3 or 4 times with absolutely no changes and receive wildly differing failure reports for completely unrelated reasons because it gets reviewed by 3 or 4 different analysts with different skill sets and random acceptance criteria.
In order to get some apps accepted by Samsung's "QA" process, we literally had to resort to threats in email that if they didn't pass the app, we were going to turn over their completely random QA reports to Samsung and get them fired. Good luck!
Shut up and eat your vegetables!!!
Performance hit is a problem, agreed.
Also problematic: ease of creating memory leaks.
-kgj
What's wrong with slashdot beta?
"I'd've" is a pretty interesting English hack.
Any thoughts on how I can better explain jQuery to an app reviewer?
That is the wrong question. If jQuery is a hack, then ask them what Panasonic's preferred method is.
If the targeted, gate-kept platform refuses to allow one's code because one used an external library they don't like, then all the time one has spent developing one's app is wasted.
And, "because it is faster for the developer" is not a good excuse to include massive libraries in a resource limited environment. "Sure, it will suck up all the resources on the device and run slow as hell, but that is OK because I wrote it in 10 minutes!"
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
f you move me to the beta slashdot abortion i'll add this place to the block list and never visit again.
Hmmm, one less AC. That sounds like a positive development.
No. It is "I would have" and parses as valid English
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Tell him it's an industry standard, and give him the names of a couple of websites that use it: pannasonic.com for a start,
I don't need no stinking unicode to post goatse links.
Trolling is a art,
That's all that needs to be said about it.
As a super-programmer who's better and more smug than any other programmer in the universe, I would just like to say that you're ALL wrong and only *I* have it right. There are only two ways to do any programming task: MY way and the WRONG way. And none of you know MY way, so that kind of narrows it down.
Programming: You're doing it completely wrong.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
Yup, everyone should email them now. Just emailed them the following:
Hi!
Long-time lurker (10+years) of Slashdot. Slashdot is the only site I visit every day, multiple times. After giving beta.slashdot.org a whirl I think I can confidently say that if you push forward insisting on a redesign of Slashdot.org and kill the classic Slashdot you will have a mutiny on your hands!
It is quite clear from using beta that the designers (or project lead) has never used Slashdot; the key killer features of Slashdot are removed! Let me make this plain to you so you understand: NO ONE VISITS SLASHDOT FOR THE STORIES; IT’S THE COMMENTS, STUPID!
The comment system and meta-moderation IS Slashdot. Kill that and you don’t have Slashdot anymore, you just have yet another tech news aggregator.
Look, I know DICE have much love for theverge.com but please, Slashdot.org is NOT a mainstream tech news site, and it never was!
Hopefully you’ll start to listen to your audience, because the community will move on if you proceed with the beta launch.
Cheers,
Ben
After reading the comments I want to be sure I have this right. The consensus is the beta needs more jQuery?
You might point out that the Video Player Tutorial on the VIERA Connect Developer portal uses jQuery.
"Also, we made the handle twice as big so it's more difficult to hold, but it looks twice as sexy!"
The new beta wastes like 60% of available screen pixels AT LEAST.
#FuckBeta
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
Any recommended alternatives? I should line up a backup plan :-/
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
In order to obtain cross-browser compatibility, jQuery, like much code designed to work across platforms, has hacks to make up for browser deficiencies. This leads to the library being far more bloated than is needed when addressing a single platform. In light of this, using jQuery in this one-platform application can reasonably be termed a "hack".
Confessions Of an Ex-SLASHDOT BETA user (Score:5, Funny)
Day 1: It wouldn't stop, the redirecting. At first I thought it was malware. Had my first drink in a long time.
Day 2: Barely had the strength to carry on as the BETA REDIRECTIONS continue.. trying not to talk to hallucinations at the bar and in the bathroom which laugh at me about these redirections.
Day 3: Discovered the BETA redirections were random, and while at first they looked somewhat usable, when I looked at me and my monitor screen in the mirror, a horrible woman with flesh hanging off of her body looked back, trying to lead me into a dance as the word BETA appeared across her rancid breasts.
Day 4: These BETA corridors go on FOREVER! On the plus side, I've taken up disassembling vehicles to corner this BETA beast and sacrifice myself rather than lead others to discovering it. I ate some red snow.
Day 5: Finding it harder to concentrate. I've ate some more of the red snow. The taste is starting to grow on me.
Day 6: This typewriter is the only entertainment I have, apart from throwing things at the walls, trying to get some response from the BETA which is now taking over my mind.
Day 7: Hahahahahha! Would you believe it? I'M STILL BEING REDIRECTED TO SLASHDOT BETA PAGES! AHAHhahahaah! Type, type, ding, ding! Wooo!
Day 8: The hallucinations are actually real! Would you believe it? They have offered to help me if I agree to work for them. I'm thinking about patenting this delicious red snow, the taste is unreal!
Day 9: Having black out sessions where I cannot remember large passings of time. Found some makeup, thought I'd paint a joker smile on my face to amuse the people only I can see!
Day 10: Productive today, part of what I wrote for my new screenplay:
I cannot opt out of Slashdot BETA!
I cannot opt out of Slashdot BETA!
I cannot opt out of Slashdot BETA!
I cannot opt out of Slashdot BETA!
I cannot opt out of Slashdot BETA!
I cannot opt out of Slashdot BETA!
I cannot opt out of Slashdot BETA!
I cannot opt out of Slashdot BETA!
I cannot opt out of Slas
(drops of blood on paper)
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
Create a list of popular and well known applications on multiple platforms that use the exact same technique.
Present this as a table of sources as if it were an academic document.
Good luck.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
And they want you to code without libraries to keep things low-memory and speedy.
That or they're looking for a weak reason to reject your app because they have an internal app which does the same as yours shortly to be released.
Oh, the irony of it all ...
An article about JQuery labelled as a hack, while my main beef with Beta is that it requires Javascript and JQuery, to hide comment thresholds client side ...
Let me explain ...
I have been a regular visitor to Slashdot for around 15 years. For that, I get the checkbox to disable ads, though I browse with Javascript disabled so my browser does not slow down.
I come here for the discussions, and often read comments at +5, changing that only if I find a discussion interesting and warrants reading at a lower level.
The new beta uses JQuery for the comment threshold selector, and changes that on the fly. This means all the comments are loaded, but not visible, and processing any page with considerable number of comments will slow down MY computer! If I have a few tabs open to read later, my computer will be unusable.
What is worse it that they require you to click on the slider on every article to change the threshold! This is just insane!
If they insist that I enable Javascript to browse the site at the threshold I want, then they will lose me as a long time. I imagine that others long timers will hate the site too.
Dice have to remember that this site has two unmatched features, interlocked: a moderation system that is good at cutting down the trolling, spamming, and noise, and a comment section that is frequented by many people who are passionate about technology and other nerdy stuff.
If they wanted to intentionally ruin the site and drive people away, they would not have done any worse than what they are doing now.
If they manage to aggravate a lot of their users, the comment section will no longer be attractive to the audience. Perhaps we should revive kuro5hin?
I wrote the above in a feedback form that I filled a while ago, and I am emailing this comment to their feedback@slashdot.org. Please send them feedback too.
And mod this up so Dice can see what they are getting themselves into.
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
It does not fix anything, it only breaks things that didn't need fixing.
It robs us of our hard earned (we all paid good money for our monitors) screen real estate, dumping a worse comment system on us which by its very architecture will drown out discussions instead of promoting them.
It is a forced replacement of the classic interface which has proven that though not perfect - it works quite well and has been working for years now.
And that's just the comments.
Unnecessary graphics bring nothing to the experience except that they clog up the bandwidth AND further slow down already slow "news" delivery.
It brings no useful function, it takes away the simplicity and elegance. It sucks.
So... Fuck beta.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
"Any thoughts on how I can better explain jQuery to an app reviewer?"
Try this...
Panasonic good, hacks bad. Panasonic good, JQuery good too. Panasonic good and shiny, JQuery not a hack and shiny too. Boing boing, whee! Panasonic good.
That should do it.
jQuery is a library to deal with different browser implementations of "standards", or browsers not implementing some standard. When you have a well defined JS api like the browser component of the TVs (i guess they do not change the engine with updates) you do not need jQuery at all.
If a hundred people get herpes, you'd probably treat them all with basically the same medicine.
If a hundred browsers visit a website, you'd probably treat them all with some sort of library that unified all the esoteric inconsistencies.
I guess you're right!
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
Yeah, we're not dealing with even a minimally competent "developer" here. Judging from the rest of the thread, he's not the exception.
This is true. If the guy is only using jQuery for ajax functionality, well, why would you do that? Is he targeting IE6? Every browser released in the last 10 years supports XMLHttpRequest, why not just use that? Is the status callback function too hard to figure out? Why bring in all of jQuery's bloat just for ajax? Why not write a quick little ajax function? If he just really wants to use a framework, I would suggest the Vanilla-JS framework, it's really not that difficult to learn and use. And it's really fast.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
No, they're douchebag extravert hipsters who think their shit doesn't stink. They're making all of the mistakes of the past (made by people just like themselves -- but if they know about these failures, they think everything is different now), adding some new ones of their own, and swearing that the genius of their aesthetic design makes up for all the practical failures. Except that the site is ugly too. I've run into the type before. You can't reason with them. You can't use data to show them they're wrong, and you can't quote authorities in their own field. Even forcing them to use their own sites doesn't work.
No, the only thing that works is continual beatings, and even then they don't change their mind, but it does make you feel better. Business types love them because they can kiss ass like pros, so they get their way even when it's gloriously and spectacularly wrong.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Could we also send emails to fuckbeta@slashdot.org? They might have some kind of catch-all box for addresses they don't explicitly monitor or something, maybe?
I've been waiting for a plex app for my Panasonic TV for ages. Please don't let Panasonic's stupidity get in the way of you bringing it to market. Also, I'm terribly disappointed in the Slashdot hive today. Talking about the shit that is the beta and ignoring the matter of the post is incredibly rude. Good luck and good speed.
I don't care what they do with beta, but if they get rid of classic, I will simply delete my account and stop reading slashtdot at all. Although, I suspect it will take a massive number of other people voting with their feet and leaving to get Dice to repent from pulling an ebay and "fixing" it until they break it.
Our eyeballs are their income. Once page views start going down I look for more sensational headlines and less actual news for nerds. The LOL and me2 crowd already have places to hang so I think when the actual daily users of /. stay away ad impressions will not attract enough cash and the site will either be sold off or go down the drain it is already circling...
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
jQuery isn't a hack around various glitches. It's an alternative way to access the DOM that happens to be more programmer friendly.
The DOM is usually exposed in the form of a giant object of objects that spits out arrays, more objects, and more arrays as you drill down into it. It's ugly.
jQuery, as the name implies (did you notice it was called "jQuery"?) provides a simpler access method where you use queries based upon a CSS-like selection language, with the results being provided to anonymous functions, or chained to other jQueries, or just updated in batch, effectively allowing you to easily and elegantly loop through the DOM using some of the nicer aspects of Javascript.
That's it. The fact that it provides a degree of platform independence is a nice-to-have, but jQuery would still exist if the DOM were genuinely standardized and implemented consistently across all browsers.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
I agree, this new design fad of giant fonts "read more" cuts but you click read more and get ads with a skip this ad link ( I use adblock/noscript) but the design is still horrible.
Then everyone wants to have facebook/google plus/ share thumbs likes counters next to post so the counter is supposed to mean "see read this other people did so you should to!!!!"
Makes me wonder did these designers ever get told growing up " if your friends jumped off a bridge would you also?" As a lesson in thinking for yourself dont just do something blindly because other people do it.
But thats the problem, they can't think for them self they all keep copying each other and filling up the web page with giant font titles, tease you with first paragraph of article but slam you with ads if you click read more, and fill up all screen space with shares/thumbs up/like counters and adsense boxes, so giant title but with all rest of the bullshit you need magnifying glass to read the actual article because all screen space is full web 2.0/social shit and ads
Not every damn website has to be linked together. I do not want to use facebook or google to login to every site, that is a hack and invasion of privacy just begging to happen.
I hate to say it but damn I miss web 1.0 days, GeoCities/Angel fire/etc
The blinky and animated gifs were pain in ass but you got plain easy to read text, I'd take tags and gifs any day over share/thumbs up/likes counters and buttons read more cuts/and ad boxes filling sites.
Everyone thinks they deserve to make money off ads now days and sites suck... Back in GeoCities/Angel fire days we made websites out of the joy of it, the fun of experimenting and having a presence, we didn't do it for the money at least money wasn't the main reason, content was our main reason
Now days content is meaningless, its just copy/pasted from elsewhere, money is now the main reason, thus spam and giant titles and connecting all this shit to facebook and google because they want to trick as many people as they can to make them think they have clicked on content when they clicked ad instead tricking people into becoming shills to increase their ad click ratios
I could bitch forever about this, but it just ugly, annoying, and "rage quit" inducing
Slashdot doesn't allow you to delete your account as far as I'm aware. you can abandon it though. I'll be doing that if they make beta permanent fuck beta!
I bet if you were to just address jQuery as something other than $, they wouldn't blink.
var myAppUI = jQuery:
myAppUI.("li").bind('click', function() {});
Yeah, that's exactly what worries me.
The sad part about this is that it looks like all the others and is not that interesting to me. I would prefer that there be no change at all. I am curious. I want to know the real reason why the change? My guess is again ad revenue. Well if they want less hits the beta is the route to go. Look what happened to Digg when they changed. I stopped going and so did numerous others. Yes, its there. Its a shadow of its former self. Let this be a lesson to the people who run /. No change is needed to promote vision or sections no one uses. I don't use /. TV or BI (business intelligence is as much an oxymoron as Military intelligence). I don't want embedded videos on the side ( I block all videos that are ads because its a waste of bandwidth both Yours and mine. I don't ever watch them even though I love commercials. I go to site that hosts commercials.) /. that we will be forced into its no videos embedded unless we summon them. Also certain things weren't designed to make a profit. IE news.
Click for profit (clicks for anything) is a fools gambit.
So if you need a concrete positive no no don't do this on the new
Finally, jquery isn't a hack thats what the people who were reviewing the app were.
Well if Microsoft is the example then in one year, we will be stuck with it. most of the usebase will be gone and the entire upper echelon of Dice will be fired because of the tremendous boondoggle it has become. Then by this time 2015 we will be back to quasi classic version.
If you don't like this "beta" thing (which I haven't seen yet ; but it's only about the 4th re-make of the site, so "meh!"), then fuck off to redigit or whatever you do prefer and don't let the door hit you on the ass as you leave. But don't shit on your neighbour's doorstep in the process.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
I don't need no stinking unicode to post goatse links.
But what will you do if you want to post göätsë links? ;-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
I don't want my television to give me recommendations based on my browser history!
Privacy is terrorism.
Not sure why they're singling out JQuery but at least some of Javascript could stand to be reworked since here we are in 2014. There are weirdnesses like the Ajax onreadystate callback not blocking even if you put false in the XMLHttpRequest specifically saying block until you hear a callback. I could go on but you get the idea.