JavaScript considered harmful (was Re: New online index to Beazley's tutorials)

[Aahz Maruch]

In article <a1ekt4$jv1$1 at serv1.iunet.it>, Alex Martelli <aleax at aleax.it> wrote:
>"Aahz Maruch" <aahz at panix.com> wrote in message
>news:a1dh2o$3am$1 at panix3.panix.com...
>>
>> While you have a point in some senses, campaigning against JavaScript --
>> particularly poor usage of JavaScript -- is always a Good Thing.  See
>> http://www.rahul.net/aahz/javascript.html
>
>Yes *BUT* -- on that page, you also claim:
>
>"the big problem with using cookies is that many people use multiple
>browsers on multiple machines; if you're going to solve that problem,
>you might as well skip cookies in the first place."
>
>To which I answer, "oh yeah?".
>
>Typical case: a site on which you can 'log in' with a username and
>password (not a very original concept, is it?), in order e.g. to get
>a customized page already tailored to your 'favourites' whatevers.
>
>The obvious problem: visitors find it irksome to have to type the
>username and password on each site-visit in order to get at the
>nifty customization features.  We need some client-side state to
>ameliorate this.

Nope.  If security matters, then you don't want client-side state.  If
security doesn't matter, you can provide a bookmarkable URL with their
login information.  It's really that simple.  You're certainly not going
to store all that customizing information in cookies because of the
multi-machine problem I mentioned earlier.

I do make it very clear on that page that I'm not as against cookies as
I am against JavaScript, but I have to say that I'm a bit surprised you
aren't aware of these issues.
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2002 by aahz at pobox.com)

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