Javascript for degradation [ Re: [whatwg] Suggested changes to Web Forms 2.0, 2004-07-01 working ]

[Jim Ley]

On Mon, 19 Jul 2004 13:36:06 -0400, Matthew Raymond
<mattraymond at earthlink.net> wrote:
> Jim Ley wrote:
> > The arguments against are inline script and the hackish support of 1 event.
> 
>    For the education of the readers of the mailing list, can you be
> more specific.

They've both been brought up on the list in this very thread.

An oninvalid event cannot be created such that the oninvalid inline
handler works without either some very hackish javascript or HTC's.  -
this is the 1 event (this is in IE of course, I do not believe it's
possible at all in Safari, Opera, Mozilla or Konqueror)

The inline script is because of without HTC's you need to have the
script inline after the elements so they can be fixed up before
"onload" (well actually early than that is possible, but again it's
hackish)  Otherwise you don't get the events fixed up until the page
has already rendered quite a lot - resulting in those awful flashes.


> > The arguments for are lower security demands,
> 
>    I presume you mean in XP SP2, which has not yet been released. This
> also assumes that HTC support is turned off by default in SP2 for most
> users.

It doesn't assume any such thing, more permissions are needed to run
HTC's than just script, a simple fact of XP SP2.

I see you've just chopped my other advantages, the fact that it
supports 10's of other UA's to me seems to be a great advantage.  It
could even work on Opera 7 Symbian.

> In the message, Dean specifies the following as problems:
> 4) Memory leaks, which seems to be a problem with IE JScript in general.
> 5) Crashes, which he says are far more likely in the testing phase.

Yep, these sound pretty f'ing alarming for release quality web-applications ! 

>    This would suggest that for some of WF2, behaviors are the ONLY way
> to go,

Yes... but this is my point!  We're predicating the degradability and
choosing solutions that rely on HTC's some slight tweak of those
features could remove the dependance on HTC's - in any case, there's
nothing other than oninvalid that I've seen so far that couldn't be
implemented in pure script.

>    You've been given every opportunity to suggest markup that
> gracefully degrades as opposed to "last ditch degradation", 

I've done that, so far it's being rejected primarily because it is not
supportable by HTC's !  It is supportable by plain script, with all
the enhancements, and would even be supportable by HTC's if you chose
that approach (you would have to include an extra DIV/SPAN or
something element in that situation, but it's perfectly doable.)

>    Then do you have a suggestion about how new web forms and web app
> standards can be implemented on such smartphones without software upgrade?

Sure, degrade to more complicated HTML than just textboxes.  I've even
provided some examples of how it might look.

Jim.