dream.scape wrote:

Since around 1998 though there have been numerous proposals by pretty much every browser maker for ways to bind script actions to document elements through either external "action sheets" or simply by extending CSS, yet not a single one has made it very far past proposal in terms of becoming standard and universally adopted.

However, at least Mozilla and MSIE have implemented it. I'm not entirely sure how it works in MSIE, but in Mozilla, it's called XBL and it works by extending CSS to cover behaviour as well as appearance.

Mark

    MarkR wrote:

    However, at least Mozilla and MSIE have implemented it. I'm not entirely sure how it works in MSIE, but in Mozilla, it's called XBL and it works by extending CSS to cover behaviour as well as appearance.

    Not really... each have their own idea of how it should work, proposal to the W3C, and implementation in their own browsers, but that really doesn't do much good unless you are targeting one browser. MSIE has had their own implementations since at least IE 5.5, and Netscape had theirs as well. But again, each browser doing their own thing with this doesn't really do any good.

    I mean look, it's been 8 years since the proposals for this kind of thing started and there's still no standard that's been adopted, and I don't think any of the proposals have made it much past the "draft" stage, yet everyone refuses to acknowledge that their idea won't be the standard and let go of it to further the pursuit of finding a standard.

      JavaScript that wonderful language which created the pop-up. JavaScript the backbone of AJAX. JavaScript which can be killed with the uncheck of a button.

      No Google Adsense. No AJAX. No pop-ups.

      JavaScript. Web Developers love her pretty little functions. Users on the other hand...

      JavaScript, Browsers use you differently.

      When JavaScript cleans up it's act I'll use it more often. How can you say know to it's pretty little innocent onclick function. JavaScript is one of the most evil things people use, why? because they don't know how to use it. It's one thing to copy and paste people's scripts but that by no means makes you a JavaScript programmer. Most people don't even bother to offer an alternative.

        13 days later
        a month later

        Found JQuery last night. I really love the interface and it's only 10Kb! I haven't looked at the source much but at a quick glance it looks very clean.

        Jason, I usually just ignore you but I'm intrigued. Do you mean to say that Javascript itself is a bad thing because many people don't know how best to use it? I think it is a little naive to base one's judgements of language on the abilities of it's average user base, after all, if you did that PHP would rank pretty low. There are a huge number of brilliant web projects requiring Javascript (have a look on TechCrunch) some of them degrade gracefully but most just inform the user that Javascript is a requirement. I don't think this is a bad thing at all, all programs have requirements, try running amaroK without X running.

          24 days later
          bubblenut wrote:

          Found JQuery last night. I really love the interface and it's only 10Kb! I haven't looked at the source much but at a quick glance it looks very clean.

          Oh wow...I'm enjoying jquery quite alot. That's it...this is the final straw...Monday I'm going to find a decent book on the basics of javascript (as I've never read one) and learn myself this stuff good and proper. Then I can get into this more formally...

          Jquery is worth checking out...and prototype as well...

          Actually, if anybody has a good book on Javascript they are done with and they want to send it to me I'll respond in kind with something of request from Brussels back at you. There's really only one good shop in town that has programming books in English and I'll probably have to back order a good book...the stuff they've had on the shelf in the past wasn't so great.

            Jason, I usually just ignore you but I'm intrigued. Do you mean to say that Javascript itself is a bad thing because many people don't know how best to use it? I think it is a little naive to base one's judgements of language on the abilities of it's average user base, after all, if you did that PHP would rank pretty low.

            The PHP community has done a lot to bring security issues to the front of "need to know" information. I don't think I have seen JavaScript and security in the same document before.

              Tue, security isn't in the limelight as much in the Javascript world as it has been recently in the PHP world (although I think this is changing). You can find some good resources on it by looking at the security tag at ajaxian.com (Ajaxian/Security). That said, it's not really the language which is inherently insecure, it's the developers (well, some of them).

                I wouldn't say this is representative of a constructive commenting session, but it is what it is...something to read if you feel like it (there's a link to the actual artice that spawned this little mess). From Digg.com a couple days ago:

                JavaScript Associative Arrays Considered Harmful

                  I've just read this article.

                  It is right in every way except the title, which should read:

                  "Using the Javascript Array object as an associative array is not a good idea"

                  It's not associative arrays themselves which are harmful, only using "Array" as one which is.

                  Mark

                    As one of the commentators in the Digg thread pointed out, essay titles of the form "Foo Considered Harmful" is a long-established tradition (the archetype is archived here).

                      7 days later

                      This prototype sounds very interesting, I might have to check it out.

                      One thing though is I have always limited my javascript use only because everytime I try something a little more complicated I find it working on one browser, but then do something different (or not at all) in another. Has this changed or was I just coding wrong?

                        There are still differences in how different browsers handle some things. The nice thing about using a framework is that they cope with many of these differences so that you don't have to.

                          I usually shy away from any framework (instead building my own set of reusable methods) as I think of them as mostly unecessary overhead that come and go faster then fashion. However, after reading up a little more on prototype, this does look like something I might actually try as it deals with a lot of the things in javascript that irked me.

                            a month later

                            I have been playing with prototype over the weekend and I <3 it. This is going into almost everything I do now.

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