OT: Scripting on websites [Was: Re: QtD 0.1 is out!]

[Nick Sabalausky]

"Daniel Keep" <daniel.keep.lists at gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:gmg4av$dqp$1 at digitalmars.com...
>
>
> Ary Borenszweig wrote:
>> lol :)
>>
>> Yeah, well, for a directory listing they could have shown the full tree,
>> but if it's too big then it's ugly, and browsing folder by folder (like
>> dsource) is slow for me.
>
> The point is that instead of giving you a sub-optimal but functional
> alternative, they give you none.
>
> It's like not putting in wheelchair access ramps on the argument that
> they're inconvenient due to being a longer path than the stairs.
>
>> You are right in that replacing href="" with onclick="" just for a link
>> is stupid.
>
> Not just stupid; there's a whole circle of hell devoted to people who do
> that.  They sit in endless thirst with water coolers everywhere.  The
> catch is the taps have been replaced with "low-resistance" jobbies that
> require a special spanner to turn.
>
> Such spanners were never built.
>
>> But... why Javascript hurts you that much? What did it do to you?
>
> Leaving aside Javascript the language and talking about JS as used in
> browsers, it's not the language itself.  It's how it's used.  It's the
> constant needless use of it that breaks the user experience.  I think I
> enumerated all the big ones previously.
>
> Let's say you're moving house, and ask someone to help.  They come over,
> and are really helpful.  But every five minutes, they bitch-slap you and
> kick you between the legs.  Then go back to being helpful.
>
> Eventually, you're going to throw them out no matter HOW helpful they
> is.  Bad web developers have abused JS so much, so often and for so
> long, that I've decided it's less stressful to run with JS disabled.
>
> Don't even get me started on sites based entirely on Flash...
>

Oh great, now you've gotten ME started on Flash... ;)

There are a LOT of people (myself included), that will immediately leave a 
site, never to return, the moment they see that FlashBlocker box taking up 
99% of the page. I can sum up all my feelings about Flash (and many, but not 
all, uses of JS) pretty simply: They are the 2000's version of animating 
GIFs and blink tags, except it's worse simply because most people don't seem 
to have actually learned anything from the history of animating GIFs and 
blink tags.

Interesting side note: I've noticed that such flash-only pages and sites 
seem to be by far the most common among musicians and restaurant chains.

Don't get me started on actual Flash development... (I have the 
oh-so-wonderful luck of being near the beginning of a large project that, 
due to client requirements, is built primarily on Flash and PHP.  Whooo boy, 
am I having fun...(/sarcasm))