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!
They're retarded and have no fucking clue about technology.
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... ;)
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?
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.
An artful negotiating technique, subtle in its cunning.
Good. Cheap. Fast. Pick Two.
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.
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.
Also, anybody whose development environment his HTML5/Javascript is...shall we say... poorly positioned to complain about people using giant stacks of abstraction layers.
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
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
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).
Sod that. Just point them at their own web site, where jQuery is included in every page, and tell them they've been hacked.
Patent litigation: A doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction... in which everyone seems willing to push the button
Inline it (jQuery).
When they ask how it communicates, tell them how, not what functions/callbacks you use in your code.
Ex. The server communicates using the standard Plex web API (or whatever it's called), documented _here_. The RCP calls are made using the standard XMLHttpRequest, with wrappers to ensure compatibility with the evolving web browser landscape. yada yada yada.
I'm sure it's a PITA, but I get the feeling the submitter said too much - explaining how jQuery internals work is going to seem like an over complicated nightmare. If they specifically ask about that weird looking "$.ajax" stuff, just tell them it is a simple wrapper that compensates for the subtle differences in XMLHttpRequest implementations. If the code finally gets to someone that can read it, they'll probably be quite familiar with jQuery and quite happy you are using it than some custom cobbled together hack :-)
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
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
What is the native language of a browser?
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
But jquery has been in industry wide use for years and is no "a hack".
Check out the code, it's amazing that it works at all. 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. (As evidence, in addition to jQuery, I would also like to submit jStat and any of his books.)
Yeah, jQuery is a hack -- and an ugly, inconsistent, and unstable one at that! Only in the software industry could a library written for people who don't know the language by someone who knows even less about the language become so successful.
Good for Panasonic. They made the right call here.
Required reading for internet skeptics
What is the native language of a browser?
As far as I've been able to tell, Portuguese.
Check out the code, it's amazing that it works at all.
Are you sure you aren't trying to read the minified version?
From what I've seen of Beta, there are no comment moderation scores, and no way of viewing responses to your comments other than drilling down to them.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
That hasn't been true for over 15 years. Also we are talking about a TV running applications, a device that's "for watching video, not a platform for running applications!", so your presumptions are simply wrong
I can do that w/o being on the beta... or is that the joke?
Yeah, I'm sure.
Have a look for yourself. It's like a bad joke.
Required reading for internet skeptics
From what I've seen of Beta, there are no comment moderation scores, and no way of viewing responses to your comments other than drilling down to them.
Also, no way to quote parent comments, and you have to put your own comment subject in.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
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
JQuery compared to Slashdot Beta:
The difference between knowing your shit and knowing you're shit.
--- Bigger bits, softer blocks, tighter ASCII.
So the point is, Panasonic's "smart" TV is a hack.
That is really what this guy needs to respond to them. But he appears to have had a big dose of their cool-aide already.
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.
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.
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
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.
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
"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...
RTFM - they didn't say jQuery is a hack, they said "using jQuery (or plain xmlHttpRequest) to workaround their own API that they mandate you use to access their servers (as part of their TOS)" is a hack.
They're still soliciting it. Stop whining here and send an email to feedback@slashdot.org.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
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.
"I'd've" is a pretty interesting English hack.
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
It sucks.
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.