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

[grauzone]

> But... why Javascript hurts you that much? What did it do to you?

Yesterday, I was on digitalmars.com, browsing the archive for the D 
newsgroup. Actually, I just had it open in a tab, and was actively 
browsing another website. I wondered why the browser had such a bad 
response. Finally, I figured out, that the cause was some JavaScript 
code included from Amazon. It showed some applet on the bottom of the 
archive page, and it didn't even work. All it did was displaying some 
loading gif animation and eating CPU. When I blocked Amazon, all was 
fast and responsive again.

Another example is Candydoc. That tree on the left is awful JavaScript 
hackery. It only works if JS is enabled, and even then it is slow, 
annoying to use, and all that. Candydoc advertises itself as "Produced 
result is AJAX web-application that is compatible with all mainstream 
web browsers." Without AJAX, the authot of Candydoc would have done a 
much better job. Now isn't that typical?

(By the way, AJAX for offline browsable documentation? What?)

And sorry, I can't stop my rant. Did you ever see those polls, which are 
mostly added on the left or right border of a webpage? Lately, I only 
see AJAX-style ones, and you can use them only with JavaScript enabled. 
When you vote, they show an animation, which alpha blends from one 
display state into another. Wheee, great. In the old days, you had to 
wait for the slow GUI to respond. Today, you wait for the GUI animation 
to finish. Both introduce a small but annoying delay.

And not to forgot, when some dirty piece of AJAX JavaScript code runs 
wild. Then it will send HTTP requests in a loop, even though the page 
finished loading. Good that we have Noscript to trash the AJAX 
programmer's worthless effort.

Sometimes I love new technology.