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Open Source and Javascript 38

Posted by Cliff from the taking-javascript-to-the-next-level dept.
mr_burns asks: "I was wondering what people's opinions were about GPLing or otherwise OSS licensing javascript code. I have some pretty cool code I want to share with everybody, but I don't want to be screwed. I look forward to establishing a method of collaboration such that we can all take ECMA-262/javascript to the next level. Why should Slashdot and other DB driven sites rely on a servers processing power when the client machine is mostly idle? I think colaboration between client side and server side scripters in an OSS context could make things much more efficient. What pointers do the OSS community have that could guide the way, and what are your opinions on the matter? Thanks in advance for any feedback y'all can give." What do you all think? Is Javascript robust enough for this sort of thing?
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Ask Slashdot: Open Source and Javascript More

Ask Slashdot: Open Source and Javascript

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  • in a serious international forum like Slashdot it's unprofessional

    Who knew?
  • Perhaps it's only me, but I find javascript fairly annoying. First of all, way too many sites uses it for gratuitous effects, like popping up fixed-size windows everywhere, irritating animated effects and the like. Second, I find that netscape crashes much more often if I have javascript activated. So for the forseeable future, I will not allow javascript and just stay away from websites that require it.
  • Agreed! Javascript, as generally used, sucks - it serves no useful purpose and bloats pages, extending download times. Requiring Javascript to navigate a site is inexcusable.

    The browser is supposed to be a thin client. You want a site that has to do some data crunching, don't offload it on my Pentium 90 or my friend's 486 (yes, beleive it or not we don't all run 500 MHz PIII's with full T1 feeds), do it on your massively studly server box.

  • If you want to GPL your JavaScript, just include the GPL in your JavaScript. Well, there may be a few K of implementation difficulty...
  • Oh, and the Odean site uses Flash, not javascript!
  • Javascript is a strong scripting language. It has support for dynamic objects, associative arrays, regular expressions, OOP, and other nice programming features. It also has dynamic function definitions. As a scripting language, Javascript can hold its own pretty well. I have recently written some stand-alone stuff in Javascript, and javascript is a very good scripting language to do it in. This means that is also functions well as a server-side scripting language.

    As far as Javascript in Browsers go, agree with the other posts that say javascript should be avoided in internet web pages. Using javascript in internet web pages limits the potential audience. Javascript can be used well in company intranets, though. (Where everything is fairly standardized so everyone is using the same browser with the same security settings). Javascript can make intranet sites become very useful to a company.

    Be careful to seperate javascript as a language from any implementation of it. Just because IE's implementation of it produces staticly-sized text boxes does not mean that it is a bad language. That is just one way of using the language. The language itself has evolved to be a very powerful scripting language (not far behind perl in my opinion). The most common use of it just happens to be client-side web scripting. Try using javascript as a normal scripting language and the good design of the language will come through. Do not limit javascript to a client-side scripting language when it is so much better in other places.
    Rick Wash
  • Doesn't anyone read this stuff?? ;)

    Anyway,

    I was bored so I found Rhino for ya....


    www.mozilla.org/rhino

  • It's perfectly legit to have Javascript form validation. As long as you also have the same form validation on the server side that your forms still work for people who turn off Javascript.

    Even leaving aside the horrendous security implications of Javascript, I turn it off because if I don't, Netscape crashes about 18 times a day.

  • I did read the source, Coward!

    To run Flash you need aftershock which uses some JavaScript. Nevertheless, the mouseovers and funny visual effects are all Flash. Hence the following line:

    <!-- EndAftershock filmticker8.swf -->

  • I would disagree with all three points you made about JavaScript:
    • Scoping in JavaScript is relatively simple: if you declare outside a function then the variable is global. Within a function the variable is local. If you need more clarification, buy a book.
    • I use JavaScript to write ASP pages all the time and its great for the job: quick, dirty code that usually works first time due to JavaScript's loose structure. Its much better than VBScript, anyway.
    • I'll agree that JavaScript implementations vary between browsers and you often have to carefully test each page. But this is nothing that we don't have to do with HTML. In fact I have trouble writing browser compatible HTML than I do worrying about my client-side scripting.
  • Here is the link to the C engine as well..

    Released under NPL... differs from MPL I suppose.


    http://www.mozilla.org/js/
  • It's perfectly legit to have Javascript form validation. As long as you also have the same form validation on the server side that your forms still work for people who turn off Javascript.
    Exactly. And then the Javascript validation becomes redundant, right? I suppose you could have the Javascript send an extra flag that says, "Hey, I already checked this", with the intent that the server would then skip validation; but if your server's doing anything interesting, it can't afford to trust the client and has to recheck the data anyway.

    I did see a very nice use of Javascript today, though. The page had links to a whole bunch of large images, and moving the mouse cursor over a link brought up a thumbnail of the image. This made the page download faster, since you didn't have to grab thumbnails for all images - just the ones whose description interested you. And most importantly, the site would work just fine without the scripting.

    Unfortunately, I think that makes a grand total of about three sites I've seen that use Javascript well. B-

  • Javascript is for CLIENT side transactions, you can't let the server-side do everything.

    There are uses for Javascript, such as form validation.

    If you do form validation on the server-side you are doing multiple _bad_ things:

    a) Waste of bandwidth
    b) Higher CPU usage on the server side due to dishing out pages, error pages and simple error checking


    Finally, Javascript IS lightweight, it just some people over use Javascript and do all sorts of cr*p with it.

    And like all things, you want a scripting language on your CLIENT as well as on your server.

    If you want to do low-level stuff, there are always plugins and API plugins that you can use on both the client and server side.

    Javascript is a good thing and the idea (of having a client scripting language) at least will be around for a long time.

  • So one should worry that companies are using their Intranet web servers to steal "assets" from their own computers? OK.
    --

  • Not dangerous at all. I'll be the first to agree with you that Active X is a volatile technology. But I've been programming with JavaScript for a while and, as far as I can tell, the worst you are looking at is being involuntarily sent to someone else's smutty site. Which in itself isn't particularly dangerous (unless your company logs browser connections).



    Maybe you could perform a denial of service attack by with an infinite loop but that is pretty tame in comparison to the types of things you can get up to with Active X






    ...not that I would know!

  • I seem to recall that variable in functions are local iff your declare them with 'var'.
  • Hey, Coward!

    While the Odean web-site is only viewable when JavaScript is enabled, it is, nevertheless, a Flash page. You can tell in a very simple way, so pay attention. First select View Page Source and you'll see this text window pop-up (don't be frightened, now). This contains the HTML tags that define the document.

    Inside you'll notice an EMBED tag. Now, if I am not mistaken, this mean that the document contains executable content, i.e. a plug-in [dictionary.com]. With me so far? You'll also notice that the EMBED tag calls a file with the .SWF suffix. Now, here is the crux of my argument: SWF files are flash files! Hence, a flash page. You see, there is an application called AfterShock that inserts a SWF file in HTML for you and its work is noticable by the HTML comments it produces. (You could take a coffee break here if this is all too strenous).

    Oh, BTW thank-you for your offer from teaching me some JavaScript. If you need some basic lessons in web-page content, however, you'll know exactly where to find me.

    Love and kisses...
  • No, if you make a var variable declaration outside a function then its scope is global.
  • If the question was, "can I/should I GPL Javascript code", the answer is "yes". GPL or free everything you feel good about freeing, the more code the merrier.

    If you were asking, "is Javascript a good language?", my answer is a qualified "maybe". JS is OK, but it doesn't thrill me. I like the prototype-based language, but overall it's caught in the middle between too OOP and too loose.

    Problems I have with JS:

    - Variable scoping is strange, and has never been clear to me.

    - It's great as a browser scripting tool; it's not very good as a server-side tool *at all*.

    - It's nominally standardized via ECMA, but Netscape keeps trying to leapfrog the standard and innovate at the speed of light (they're up to Version 1.4! I've never even used 1.3 stuff, and hardly ever used 1.2)

    I'm not a big Javascript fan. I use it only because it's the only built-in scripter for the browsers out there. If there were a Perl/Python/Tcl DOM/scripting layer, I'd use that.
  • No, the javascript validation isn't redundant. It's done while the input is happening, so it's useful. Lets say you have a field that only allows integer input. With javascript, you could cause the input routine to throw anyway any non-numeric input, so they don't enter 'abc'. You still have to validate it on the server side, to make sure they didn't enter 'abc' because they had javascript turned off, but also to make sure they didn't enter a value greater than MAX_INT even with javascript turned on. The difference is that the javascript validation is immediate after every keystroke, and the server side validation is done after the entire field has been entered.

  • agreed (Score:1)

    by eries ( 71365 )
    I do a lot of client-server programming (usually in PHP with a DB backend) and I can't tell you how much time I have wasted writing code to do the same thing in JS and in PHP just so that they can keep some data object in sync without server round-trips. I think that for web apps to go to the next level, we absolutely need some kind of interaction standard. I would fully support an OSS project on this, I think that is the only way it will ever get done.

    And, before you flame, yes I do know about Java, CORBA, RMI, etc etc etc. These are way too heavyweight for what I'm talking about.
  • Actually, Internet Explorer has the ability to enable JavaScript (and ActiveX, etc) only for Intranet sites, and disable the risky stuff for all others. This can be all under central administrative control. (Mozilla 5 will apparently do the same thing.) Just because Netscape 4.x is feature defecient in this regard, it doesn't mean that Javascript can't be enabled safely in other situations.

    The original poster is correct that the real sexy DHTML stuff is only really practical on an Intranet where you have complete control over the client browsers.

    --
  • So you are saying that JavaScript causes a security-risk just because there are some buggy browsers around? Then I say C should be avoided because of my bad experiences with this and that commercial C-IDE. BULLSHIT!
  • I do apologise: you seem to have mistaken my last message as some sort of offer of friendship. I really must stop misleading the strange and alone. I mean, you even had the spare time to correct my grammar and spelling [slashdot.org]. How utterly charming!

    And you still seem to be denying that the Odean (oops, I really must learn to care about my spelling) web page uses Flash. I am utterly impressed: I wish I could lie to myself so convincingly just for the sake of an argument. You even stooped to the level of playing mere semantic games. Wow, this is life! I really feel I am slumming it with the plebs.

    Love and kisses (please don't misinterpret: this isn't any kind of offer) ...

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