--- "Brett W. McCoy" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Tue, 31 Jul 2001, Chris Johnstone wrote:
>
> > I am a beginning PERL programmer working primarily
> > with the CGI interface, and have just encountered my
> > first problem which I couldn't solve with PERL. After
> > about a solid week of trying different things, I gave
> > up and used a little JavaScript code. My question is,
> > do "professional" programmers working on large
> > applications using the CGI interface oftern turn to
> > JavaScript, or do they try to solve everything
> > internally with PERL?
>
> In the various web development places I have worked, JavaScript stuff was
> usually handled by the 'front end' people (the designers who did the page
> development) and not by the engineering department (the programmers who
> did the server-side stuff), so it was a rare case that something was taken
> out of engineering and moved to the web developers. In a freelance job I
> am doing right now, we are doing the opposite: I am taking a bunch of
> JavaScripted prototyped pages that comprise a web application and am
> re-engineering in Perl.
>
> What was the problem you couldn't solve with Perl?
We do the same thing here. Our front-end people handle the javascript work and I
occassionally
tweak it to serve my needs. The advantage of javascript is that it is client-side and
offers much
faster response than Perl. I will sometimes use javascript to validate form data
*prior* to it
being sent to the server, simply because this ensures a quicker response. However, I
must *still*
validate the form data on the server side because the client may have javascript
disabled either
out of personal preference or desire to submit bad data (crackers, for example).
A good rule of thumb with javascript: if you cannot control who will have access to
the site, use
it to enhance functionality, but not provide it. If your site is requires javascript,
you may be
turning away potential users.
We do build sites that require javascript, but usually they are things like
administrative
consoles where we can restrict access to a set of users who have agreed upon the
requirements.
Cheers,
Curtis Poe
=====
Senior Programmer
Onsite! Technology (http://www.onsitetech.com/)
"Ovid" on http://www.perlmonks.org/
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