False Positives: Is 2005 the "Year of JavaScript"?

Tuesday, July 26, 2005

Is 2005 the "Year of JavaScript"?

I asked this below , but it's really a big enough point to ask on it's own.

First AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) made it possible to build much more dynamic web application. , then GreaseMonkey made it possible to do custom re-writing on web sites (and prototyping concepts / extensions), now Konfabulator / Yahoo! Widgets brings widgets to the desktop/TvTop/PhoneTop.

Now - in the spirit of CPAN - there is JSAN: JavaScript Archive Network is a comprehensive resource for Open Source JavaScript libraries and software, via O'Reilly Radar (with some other interesting stuff).

JavaScript has grown in it's visibility this year, and is more respectable than ever before. (Discuss).

Another step has been taken by The DOM Scripting Task Force (read the press release for background), as detailed in it's JavaScript Manifesto.

What else needs to be done? What the road block? What's happening with IE 7 and JavaScript? Are we there yet?

Update : AjaxDeveloper.org kindly notices, and says "maybe".

In the comments Derek DeVrie makes 2 good points a) good modern samples are hard too find - although JSAN should help in the near future b) that the backend guys/girls and the front end "designers" (who may or my not know css/xhtml but never the templating langauge) get all the respect (and cash), but there is little glory who those who bolt the pretty designs on to the back ends (and MUST know it all xhtml/css/javascript/dom and the templating langauge in use - asp/jsp/php/whatever plus at least some of the back end langauge plus sql... )

Please Note that this Blog (False Positives) has moved to http://www.falsepositives.com/

2 Comments:

yes

By Anonymous, at 2:16 PM
Writing useful javascript requires good programming skills. Good javascript developers are hard to find these days. Why is this? Because back-end programmers don't want to deal with the front-end and CSS/XHTML designers don't want to program.

To make matters worse a lot of the javascript articles you'll find via search engine are horrible. They're poorly executed crap code from 5 years ago. They still come up first on search results because of how much the engines favors websites that have been around a while.

Developers/Designers need to diversify. Designers need to program, and programmers need to design. Until the crossover happens, people will just continue to talk about how "Javascript is the next big thing" and "Ajax, Ajax, Ajax". Most of the Ajax websites and articles popping up are just people riding the traffic wave because they know it's a popular buzzword.

By derek, at 5:27 PM