JavaScript nonsense

> You can find simple scripts and tutorials at http://hotscripts.com  If
> your server supports server side scripting, I'd recommend that as many
> people turn off JavaScript for security reasons. Look under scripts then

Don't mean to jump on you Michael, I have just heard this once too many
times this week. Yours is just the one I replied to.

<.SOAPBOX MODE>

I have been hearing this about "for security reasons" stuff for a number of
years now and I have yet to have heard of any real breaches of security
caused by JS.  Certainly nothing like all the attacks on Micro$oft
products.  I asked about this when I was taking JS and the Professsor told
me that the only thing he could think of was related to missuse of cookies,
but he had never seen a rogue JS program or even heard of one.

This idea was something passed around by Sun and Netscape as a possibility
when JS first came out and it is mostly a pernicious rumor.  I personally
feel
they did this more to show a difference between JS and Java than for any
real reason. You know "Java is a REAL language."  This is attitude and it
does not necessarily reflect reality.

JS is no more apt to do naughty things to your PC than any other computer
language.  Java, Perl, PHP, ASP, and JScript could all be used by
unscrupulous
scum to create computing nightmares.

                   It's the programmer, not the language!

JS is a great tool if you know how to use it. Doing things on the Client
side saves web traffic, cuts down on Server overhead and makes it all run
faster.  It is also free!!!

This is a tool that independant developers need. Why throw away a great
capability?  It's the only logical choice out there for  many small things.

Many web-shops use it and real JS programmers get paid almost double
what a generic webmaster is worth.

Lets STOP telling people to turn JS off.  In many Netscape versions turning
JS off kills CSS. On many websites, turning JS off makes the menus useless.
It is used on many websites for some nice DHTML features that could only
otherwise be added by expensive server side programming.  Grumble mumble....

</SOAPBOXMODE>

Paul Wilson
webguroo(at)tampabay.rr.com

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