2 posts tagged “technology”

From my way of looking at it, there are 3 major "languages" in play on the client-side of websites.  The server-side can have about 400trillion variants, but the client side is much more limited.  We gots HTML, CSS, and Javascript.  Those 3 technologies combined make up all the webpage content on every page on the web (minus proprietary plugins that are themselves just scaffolded in html, such as flash/virtools/flex etc...and maybe some old vbscript lying around (shudder)).

I'm gonna cruise right past 2 of them, because in my opinion they are adequate.  HTML and CSS.  HTML has been relegated to a fairly simple scaffolding role, and CSS is sweet (if browsers would fuckin implement properly).

That leaves one ugly duckling: Javascript.  I'm sure the committee that first made EcmaScript never dreamed it would transform into such a poorly-named, disparate and ugly mess.

Javascript needs a successor, or an overhaul, or to be taken out back and shot (works for me).  Javascript fills in what i'd call the "logic" part of the client-side controller/view layer. (the controller layer i think is split across the net now...some on server, some on client...i'll write about that later).

Of the logic your browser is performing, there's 3 (the little 3) aspects that I think are fundamental.  There's the language itself (Javascript), the method to communicate with the server, (AJAX), and the interface to control the CSS/HTML on the page on the fly (DOM).  The point of all 3 are really to make things happen in the browser without having to travel across the web and fetch a whole new page from the server.

We need a new 3.  Javascript/AJAX/DOM won't do.  We need options.  These 3 all suck.  They are not filling their role nearly as elegantly and CSS/HTML.

There's lots of ugly crap in browsers.  And all that ugly inconsistent crap certainly slows down developers and makes life hard, but it's not insurmountable.

The one truly insurmountable and heavily limiting fact of browsers revolves around security (or implicitly, trust).  When I want to get you (as the "client" computer), to interpret my code and display my "program", you are extremely persnickety in what you'll let me do.  You might trust me COMPLETELY, I might be your brother, but your browser is still going to distrust my code...the best you can do is maybe let it enable pop-ups. ;o)

Basically, code can't read from, or write to your operating system.  It can eat up 100% of your cpu, but touching the FS is a no-no (except for the very limited environment for cookies (or flash's "shared-objects", which i bet are treated as cookies under the hood).  Also, code can't run unless it's javascript, and code can't execute other apps already on your computer.

These are the fundamentals limitations that come from a lack of trust.  Why not enable the user to say, "look, i'm not an idiot, i KNOW this site isn't going to screw me over, so let's trust it completely"...we basically say that same thing all the time when we download shareware applications and try them out...we are completely trusting the developer not to trash our system...

This would really open up the door to Rich Internet Applications.  There'd be so many new options I hardly know where to begin...(beer time, maybe more later).