[Sigia-l] "Who Really Turns Off JavaScript?"

[Listera]

Rosa Maria Capo:

> I am from Spain and in my country the discussion is almost the same. I am not
> an expert but I  want to know what do you suggest to ask databases.

You can do one of two things:

1.  Be blinded by paranoia, myths, personal biases, ignorance and other
sundry urban legends, such as:

>> "I readily admit to a personal bias against JavaScript..."

or

>> "All it takes is one good horror story to cause users to  flood to turn  off
>> scripting."

Fact: Even if you believe the most alarmist "stats," 9 out 10 often users
actually do NOT turn off JavaScript.

>> "The browser industry is becoming more and more segmented."

or

>> "what we are talking about is *new* and *not* standard"

Fact: JavaScript (the subject of this thread) is more than a decade old. In
1996 it was handed over to an international standards body called ECMA and
was officially renamed ECMAScript or ECMA-262:

<http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecma-262.htm>

ECMAScript for XML (E4X) adds native XML support to ECMAScript:

<http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecma-357.htm>

Even Macromedia's upcoming Flash 8.5 will use ActionScript 3.0 (based on
JavaScript) and E4X.

DOM is a W3C standard:

<http://www.w3.org/DOM/>

Now, what application enabling language (or standard) works across *all*
browsers 100% of the time? Absolutely nothing, except of course the language
of ignorance and personal prejudice. Whether in HTML, JS, SQL, Java, Flash
or any other technology, 100% compliance is a joke only the most gullible
would believe in. Fact of live, learn to live with it.

2. Use common sense and standards to create highly interactive and solid
applications that cannot otherwise be coded or deployed.

Ajax is the culmination of a lot of standards such as JavaScript, DOM, XML
and allows the browser to communicate without page refreshes with the
backend app servers/DBs.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AJAX>

You can, for instance, do complex validations or DB lookups with the same
speed and convenience of client-side JS, but directly on the server.

Unlike many other dynamic languages, JavaScript itself does not have a base
definition in the language for database connection and access. But that's
what frameworks like the open source and free Rails are for:

<http://rails.rubyonrails.com/>

Anyhow, the first thing to do is to ignore the shrill voices of fear
mongers. There are always Neanderthals who still think the Internets should
be about dead text documents viewed on Lynx. The reality is that some of the
world's most heavily deployed web apps by Google/Yahoo/MS/etc used by
hundreds of millions of people around the world with the widest demographics
happily utilize JavaScript...and we all benefit.

---- 
Ziya

Best Practices,
For when you've run out of your own ideas and context.