Patrick's Rants

As a security conscious geek I use Firefox with NoScript. I have become increasingly frustrated by web sites, damn near every one of them anymore, that think they need to use JavaScript for everything from drop down menus to layout. Yes layout. Some web sites will not even have proper layout (www.northgateminerals.com) if scripting is disabled for that site. Does anyone not know how to use css or even, FSM forbid, tables? Using JS for everything is lazy and in my opinion incompetent. I’m not talking about a single popup window, although there is no reason to require JS, but rather the idea that html must be down within the JavaScript container. I hate to use a car analogy, but if JavaScript were power steering the way it’s being used is like removing the steering wheel if you don’t have it enabled.

Here’s a few hints:

• JavaScript should not be the only site navigation tool.
• JavaScript should not be used as a layout tool.
• If you are going to use JavaScript, make sure that it adds functionality to a well designed page not turn your site into something that looks like my six year old cut up a magazine and glued the results wherever she felt like when I turn off JavaScript. More and more pages look like a collage without JS.
• Stop, Stop, STOP assuming what I have on my computer. If you want to run scripts beef up your server and run a server side language (PHP, PERL, whatever)
• Last, although maybe this should have been first, code to web standards – then, and only then extend your page by adding JS