ChapterZero

… makes up for several missed stitches (and hopefully, missed blogs). Or alternatively, makes for an imaginative title to an imaginative book– If you don’t have even a clue to what I’m talking about, shame on you!

Anyhow, I’m learning Javascript now, despite having pretty much decided long ago never to even attempt it again. At the time when I first thought of learning Javascript, it was still a relatively new technology, and all the books on the market focused on the flashy crap (that’s right, crap) that it makes possible (but never advisable— yes, I’ll stop now). Since I hate flashy crap in Websites which aren’t all about flashy, avant garde crap– i.e. everywhere but the myriad of ‘design’ shops– I was turned off immediately. Tack onto that the crappy interbrowser operability with respect to DHTML (actually, lack of operability, with or without the inter-), and I decided the time and sweat put into learning Javascript would not be paid off anytime soon. You see, I try never to use flashy crap on any of my websites.

Despite this resolution, I have always admired those sites that use Javascript commendably and sensibly– for cookies, form validation, and other quiet, constructive, and unobtrusive purposes. The best webmasters, however, are those who use Javascript in a manner totally transparent to the user.

As an efficient task separation on the Web— i.e. I hate old-fashioned CGI push animation technology, and love client-side image maps and CSS– I have also seen times that using Javascript for some minor data munging would be the most sensible choice, instead of wasting the time, bandwidth, and complexity required to implement a CGI script for the same purpose. So, I suppose it’s only been a matter of time until I sat down and learned some JavaScript.

Possibly relevant posts:

• R6RS ratified (9/16/2007)
• My laziness (6/15/2003)
• Mathematica 7 is here! (11/18/2008)