Help with choice of suitable Architecture

[Paul Rubin]

"Rob Cowie" <cowie.rob at gmail.com> writes:
> Paul..... I agree that client-side scripting increases the level of
> compexity, but did it really go out of fashion with pop-ups? It seems
> to be just getting started.

Pop-ups and scripting-related security holes are why the cool kids all
surf with Javascript turned off.  Who cares about what Joe Sixpack is
doing?  ;-)

Anyway, don't increase complexity without a good reason.

> Google use it to great effect.... maps, suggest etc. I wasn't
> thinking of using it to deal with any 'business logic',

There is some case to be made that the Google maps interface presents
concrete good reasons to use scripting, falling into the "concrete
good reason" exception.  I dunno about "suggest".  I do see that
Google Groups uses scripting in an unnecessary and obnoxious way, just
like most other uses of scripting.  You're doing a text-only service
so you shouldn't even depend on graphics being available in the
browser (your system is IMO defective it doesn't work properly with
Lynx).

> just to add some dynamism to the interface - use XMLhttprequests, a
> bit of DOM scripting etc.

That's sort of vague.  A concrete good reason means a specific set of
benefits you can provide to the user with scripting that you can't
provide without scripting.

See also: http://www.anybrowser.org