RE: [WEB400] Re: Modify the IE Browser

["Joe Pluta" <joepluta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> From: Anton Gombkötö
> 
> But Hans isn't the one to blame, his advice is very decent, but IBM
> isn't hearing on decent advice, is it? ;-)

I don't want to start up a whole big religious war here, because a lot
of this is based on opinion, and as we all know, everybody's got one.
However, a blanket statement about not using JavaScript is roughly akin
to the old issue of supporting Netscape 4.  Once upon a time, experts
insisted that we had to support Netscape 4.  They argued from some
position of absolute knowledge, when in reality, it was just a business
decision.

Whether or not you choose to use JavaScript is also a business decision.
It is not something established by Oracular Decree.  There are perfectly
sound reasons to use and to not use JavaScript.

For example, there are different rules for public access Internet web
sites  and intra- or extra-net browser-based business applications.
HTML can, with a little bit of tweaking, be enough for quite a few
websites, and for the folks like Hans who don't accept untrusted
JavaScript, you should probably at least have a graceful fallback
position.

However, the capabilities of DHTML are so vast that your Internet
experience would be considerably lessened if you didn't use JavaScript.
Every website I visit, from CNN to Amazon to Ebay, uses JavaScript.

More importantly, though, properly applied JavaScript can greatly
enhance the UI, providing many of the 5250 features that really act as
productivity enhancements for end users.  These are things like
auto-conversion from lower to upper, auto-advance from one field to the
next, numeric editing, function keys, all of that.

Not to mention the ability for the UI to change in response to user
actions.  For example, selecting an option on the screen can cause a
sub-form to be displayed for related options.  This allows you to save
real estate for less commonly used parts of your UI.

JavaScript is simply one of a set of tools like any other.  You need to
decide whether your application and more importantly your users will
benefit from it.  Sweeping generalizations are usually not a good
guideline, regardless of the source.

Joe