[OT] D hidden features topic for StackOverflow

[Nick Sabalausky]

"JMNorris" <nospam at nospam.com> wrote in message 
news:gbh7mk$ob2$1 at digitalmars.com...
> Thanks for the responses.  I guess I was more interested in what's wrong
> with Ajax from an end user's point of view than a programmer's.
>
> From the programmer's end:  I know enough about Javascript and DOM to know
> that the first is decidedly a mediocre language and both are frustratingly
> inconsistent across browsers.  I guess that's what we get paid
> (insufficiently well) for. :-)
>
> From the user's end:  If I understand you correctly, your problem with 
> Ajax
> and it's base technologies is not that they inherently require bad design
> but rather that they enable or at least encourage bad design.  (And that
> Ajax and friends would be mostly unnecessary with a few simple fixes in
> HTML/XHTML.)

Yes, that's an accurate summary. Also, I'm rather sore about all of the 
sites that require JS - that prevents me from using my old trick of avoiding 
many of the irritations by switching JS off.

>
> The real reason for asking this is that I'm applying for a job where the
> employer will want me to use Ajax.  From the desciption of the project in
> the job posting, I can't imagine why they think it would be useful.

Ajax is the latest trendy buzz-word in web development circles these days. 
Probably more often than not, managers (and especially HR) consider "doing a 
good job" to essentially be "follow the buzz: what's popular *must* be 
right".

Another possiblity though is that they want to decrease the load on their 
servers. Ajax is basically just using JS/DHTML to do partial page loads 
instead of full page loads, which I'd imagine *can* decrease the load on a 
server (at the cost of increased processing on the client's end - especially 
with the more common, less cuttong-edge JS implementations).

> They'll also want me to use ColdFusion which suggests that the grown-ups
> are not in charge.  But I promise I'll try not to break the "Back" button.
> And if they insist on a Flash intro page, I promise I'll try very hard to
> vomit on the employer. :-)
>

Ha ha, yes :)

> I've seen enough horribly designed web sites to be quite sympathetic to
> complaints about various tools encouraging bad design.  But I guess I tend
> to blame the designer more than the tool.  Bad designers will always be
> with us no matter what tools we have.  I guess I think that the only thing
> wrong with Comic Sans is that people use it. :-)
>
> -- 
> JMNorris