On Thu, 24 Jan 2002, Sam Ewalt wrote: > On Wed, 23 Jan 2002 10:10:28 -0500 (EST), Steve <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > Anyway, most webpages are using JS 1.2 these days. > > (I keep JS ON all the time in NS 4.79, and only use > > that browser when absolutely necessary.) > > I'm going to ask a naive question for the sake of discussion. > Why not just use it all the time? > > Speed?
Yes, the number one reason is speed. NS 4.79 is noticeably slower than 3.04. The second reason is pure principal. IMO, any programming, number-crunching, form-checking, or any kind of "logic" should be performed on the server, not on the client. JS is a programming language that runs unknown programs on my machine. I just don't like it. Practically speaking, most people don't create web pages to intentionally crash visitors' machines, but it does occasionally happen. More common are those who will write JS code to harvest your e-mail address, or others who embed malevolent JS in newsgroup articles. Back in my more naive days, I was browsing a newsgroup with NS 3.04 - JS enabled. All of a sudden, my keyboard started becoming sluggish, and more sluggish, and finally it was taking 10 seconds from keypress to result. It took full minutes to drop to a console, type 'top' and then 'k' and then the offending pid number. Alternatively, I could have "assumed" it was netscape and just done 'killall netscape'. After disabling JS, I went back to the same article to see the JS code was just spawning new browser windows as fast as it could. In Windows, the only solution would have been to reboot. Plus I just like the looks of 3.04 better. No "shopping" icon along the top... You can see the differences at http://twovoyagers.com/devel/screenshots.html Note when 4.x browser is narrowed to 640 wide, the Netscape icon moves over to cover the stop sign. In order to get the stop sign back, you have to find the obscure code to get rid of the shopping bag. - Steve
