grauzone wrote:
> Alexander Pánek wrote:
>> grauzone wrote:
>>> Alexander Pánek wrote:
>>>> grauzone wrote:
>>>>>> browsers. What's the big deal everyone have with Javascript?
>>>>>
>>>>> It's unnecessary, annoying, slower, and adds security holes.
>>>>>
>>>>> When using Firefox, I usually use NoScript to block all scripts by default. Sometimes, some minor things don't work, and I have to enable JS. Now it's really rare to see functionality that couldn't be provided without JS. Rather, web designers seem to be really dumb and do stuff like replacing real links by script functions. As a prime example take YouTube. It's like YouTube doesn't believe in a life without AJAX! The simplest things don't work anymore. What for?
>>>>>
>>>>> About AJAX, you know it breaks the back button and all other sorts of practical things you are used from normal web browsing. And occasionally, they use it for animations. Animations what for? They only introduce artificial GUI latency. (You know, Win 3.11 feels faster.) A related example for annoying AJAX things are those "applet" like boxes, that contain a "loading" gif, and apparently loads a HTML subtree using AJAX.
>>>>>
>>>>> For completely over-engineered AJAX waste look at the Tango docs on dsource. I mean, it emulates frames, and the end result is worse than with good old frames! Ah yes, we all know frames are "outdated", but AJAX is hip and new! Let's emulate frames, because we feel it's too slow to reload the whole page again! (Now now, I wonder if the Tango docs even require a webserver. Maybe that's the reason why there's no downloadable documentation? But maybe I'm blaming the wrong thing here.)
>>>>>
>>>>> They told use not to use <blink> or <marquee>? OK, we'll just use JS!
>>>>>
>>>>> Among the best uses of JS I've seen are snow flakes moved by a script.
>>>>>
>>>>> /rant (I feel better now.)
>>>>
>>>> Look mah, JS and Flash combined in shiny modal windows:
>>>>
>>>> http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/05/27/modal-windows-in-modern-web-design/ 
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> No, I really don’t want to torture you. Well, maybe a little. :P
>>>
>>> Oh god... why...
>>
>> *snip*
>>
>> “The modal window has many advantages. For example, when a modal window contains a smaller element, the user doesn’t need to load an entirely new page just to access it (another way to achieve the same effect is e.g. by using AJAX-based tabs). By providing modal windows, you improve the usability of your website. Having to load pages over and over will annoy most users, so avoiding that is definitely a good thing. Modal windows also allow you to save space by getting rid of large elements that don’t need to be on the main page. For example, rather than putting a full video on a page, you can just provide a link, thumbnail or button of some sort.”
> 
> Yeah, I read that. I want to smash him to pieces.

Why? I don’t get it. Why is there so much hate and anger about it in the air? Srsly, this whole topic is just completely overrated. It’s just the internet. ffs man.

"Alexander Pánek" <alexander.panek@brainsware.org> wrote in message news:gvlrua$16pq$1@digitalmars.com...
> grauzone wrote:
>>> browsers. What's the big deal everyone have with Javascript?
>>
>
> Look mah, JS and Flash combined in shiny modal windows:
>
> http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/05/27/modal-windows-in-modern-web-design/
>
> No, I really don't want to torture you. Well, maybe a little. :P

Oh my god, whoever wrote that should be arrested by internet police and locked away for a veeeery long time...

"Alexander Pánek" <alexander.panek@brainsware.org> wrote in message news:gvm3qh$1ld9$1@digitalmars.com...
> grauzone wrote:
>> Alexander Pánek wrote:
>>> grauzone wrote:
>>>> Alexander Pánek wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> Look mah, JS and Flash combined in shiny modal windows:
>>>>>
>>>>> http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/05/27/modal-windows-in-modern-web-design/
>>>>>
>>>>> No, I really don't want to torture you. Well, maybe a little. :P
>>>>
>>>> Oh god... why...
>>>
>>> *snip*
>>>
>>> "The modal window has many advantages. For example, when a modal window contains a smaller element, the user doesn't need to load an entirely new page just to access it (another way to achieve the same effect is e.g. by using AJAX-based tabs). By providing modal windows, you improve the usability of your website. Having to load pages over and over will annoy most users, so avoiding that is definitely a good thing. Modal windows also allow you to save space by getting rid of large elements that don't need to be on the main page. For example, rather than putting a full video on a page, you can just provide a link, thumbnail or button of some sort."
>>
>> Yeah, I read that. I want to smash him to pieces.
>
> Why? I don't get it. Why is there so much hate and anger about it in the air? Srsly, this whole topic is just completely overrated. It's just the internet. ffs man.

Because they're like pop-up windows, except they actually manage to be
worse. Unlike traditional pop-ups, which are already bad enough:
- They're modal
- They aren't blocked by pop-up blocking software
- They sometimes include completely useless, interface-delaying animations.

Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> "Alexander P�nek" <alexander.panek@brainsware.org> wrote in message news:gvlrua$16pq$1@digitalmars.com...
>> grauzone wrote:
>>>> browsers. What's the big deal everyone have with Javascript?
>> Look mah, JS and Flash combined in shiny modal windows:
>>
>> http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/05/27/modal-windows-in-modern-web-design/
>>
>> No, I really don't want to torture you. Well, maybe a little. :P
> 
> Oh my god, whoever wrote that should be arrested by internet police and locked away for a veeeery long time... 

No.

You know, there are people having a different vision of “The Web” as you have, and just because of that you want them to be locked away? Seriously, why do some people have to be so stubborn? We have 2009. Not 1999, but 2009. It’s time for some advancement. The web isn’t only text & some floating images inbetween anymore.

There are quite a few crafts involved when building a website, including interface designers and programmers. As much as you’d give a rats ass about what the designer talks about programming you shouldn’t judge about the interface designer’s work. Since it’s his craft and not yours. And, please don’t take this personally, but programmers are usually really really bad [interface] designers. “Cobbler, stick to your last.”

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a programmer, too. I’m not really that good at interface design either, but I at least try to accept new ways of doing things. That’s what I usually expect from other fellow programmers, but people never cease to amaze me (in the negative sense).

Oh and btw: if you don’t use vim, you should be arrested by flamewar police and locked away for a veeeery long time...
(See what I did there?)

I am sincerely pissed. Not at you personally, but rather the cloud of ignorance gladly sharing its existense with me all the time.

Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> "Alexander P�nek" <alexander.panek@brainsware.org> wrote in message news:gvm3qh$1ld9$1@digitalmars.com...
>> grauzone wrote:
>>> Alexander P�nek wrote:
>>>> grauzone wrote:
>>>>> Alexander P�nek wrote:
>>>>>> Look mah, JS and Flash combined in shiny modal windows:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/05/27/modal-windows-in-modern-web-design/
>>>>>>
>>>>>> No, I really don't want to torture you. Well, maybe a little. :P
>>>>> Oh god... why...
>>>> *snip*
>>>>
>>>> "The modal window has many advantages. For example, when a modal window contains a smaller element, the user doesn't need to load an entirely new page just to access it (another way to achieve the same effect is e.g. by using AJAX-based tabs). By providing modal windows, you improve the usability of your website. Having to load pages over and over will annoy most users, so avoiding that is definitely a good thing. Modal windows also allow you to save space by getting rid of large elements that don't need to be on the main page. For example, rather than putting a full video on a page, you can just provide a link, thumbnail or button of some sort."
>>> Yeah, I read that. I want to smash him to pieces.
>> Why? I don't get it. Why is there so much hate and anger about it in the air? Srsly, this whole topic is just completely overrated. It's just the internet. ffs man.
> 
> Because they're like pop-up windows, except they actually manage to be worse. Unlike traditional pop-ups, which are already bad enough:
> - They're modal

Modal windows are modal, yes. That is certainly true.

> - They aren't blocked by pop-up blocking software

Because they are not pop-ups. They don’t open a seperate native window on your desktop or tab in your browser. They’re contained. No need to block that.

> - They sometimes include completely useless, interface-delaying animations.

Your point being? Sometimes technologies are used for completely useless crap. True. Does that make every technology bad?

I understand that all the modal windows used for displaying advertisement are annoying as hell, yes. But that doesn’t make modal windows as described in this article in any way bad. Have you actually read anything there? Have you looked at some of the examples?

Reply to Alexander,

> Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> 
>> "Alexander P?nek" <alexander.panek@brainsware.org> wrote in message
>> news:gvlrua$16pq$1@digitalmars.com...
>> 
>>> grauzone wrote:
>>> 
>>>>> browsers. What's the big deal everyone have with Javascript?
>>>>> 
>>> Look mah, JS and Flash combined in shiny modal windows:
>>> 
>>> http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/05/27/modal-windows-in-modern-w
>>> eb-design/
>>> 
>>> No, I really don't want to torture you. Well, maybe a little. :P
>>> 
>> Oh my god, whoever wrote that should be arrested by internet police
>> and locked away for a veeeery long time...
>> 
> No.
> 
> You know, there are people having a different vision of "The Web" as
> you have, and just because of that you want them to be locked away?

Might his reaction been to "/modal/ windows"? They are a design idea that many people think are bad in /any/ context. It might have nothing in particular to do with the web.

"Alexander Pánek" <alexander.panek@brainsware.org> wrote in message news:gvob5q$pgo$1@digitalmars.com...
> Nick Sabalausky wrote:
>> "Alexander P?nek" <alexander.panek@brainsware.org> wrote in message news:gvm3qh$1ld9$1@digitalmars.com...
>>> grauzone wrote:
>>>> Alexander P?nek wrote:
>>>>> grauzone wrote:
>>>>>> Alexander P?nek wrote:
>>>>>>> Look mah, JS and Flash combined in shiny modal windows:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/05/27/modal-windows-in-modern-web-design/
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> No, I really don't want to torture you. Well, maybe a little. :P
>>>>>> Oh god... why...
>>>>> *snip*
>>>>>
>>>>> "The modal window has many advantages. For example, when a modal window contains a smaller element, the user doesn't need to load an entirely new page just to access it (another way to achieve the same effect is e.g. by using AJAX-based tabs). By providing modal windows, you improve the usability of your website. Having to load pages over and over will annoy most users, so avoiding that is definitely a good thing. Modal windows also allow you to save space by getting rid of large elements that don't need to be on the main page. For example, rather than putting a full video on a page, you can just provide a link, thumbnail or button of some sort."
>>>> Yeah, I read that. I want to smash him to pieces.
>>> Why? I don't get it. Why is there so much hate and anger about it in the air? Srsly, this whole topic is just completely overrated. It's just the internet. ffs man.
>>
>> Because they're like pop-up windows, except they actually manage to be
>> worse. Unlike traditional pop-ups, which are already bad enough:
>> - They're modal
>
> Modal windows are modal, yes. That is certainly true.
>

You're completely missing my point. Modality is a bad thing and should only be used when absolutely necessary. Look at the uses on that page. None of them are anything that have any reason for rendering the underlying page inaccessible and partially obscured. If it had been done in a real pop-up (which obviously would still be bad), it would at least have the benefit of not blocking the underlying page.

>> - They aren't blocked by pop-up blocking software
>
> Because they are not pop-ups. They don't open a seperate native window on your desktop or tab in your browser. They're contained. No need to block that.
>

That's a flawed argument. Flash ads, animating gifs, embedded sounds, and blink/marquee tags are all contained in a page. You're not saying that none of those should be blockable just because they're contained, are you? Obnoxious bullshit needs to be blockable, period. These things are incredibly obnoxious. And besides that, yes, of course they are pop-ups. They are in-page pop-ups.

>> - They sometimes include completely useless, interface-delaying animations.
>
> Your point being? Sometimes technologies are used for completely useless crap. True. Does that make every technology bad?
>

As I *just* said in that very same post, my point is that that's one of the things that makes them worse than regular popups. Regular popups never do that. But these in-page popups do it frequently, and not only that, it's even encouraged! Yes, that's most certainly a bad thing. In fact, any technology that naturally leads itself to bad design *is* a bad technology regardless of whether or not it *can* be kludged into doing something properly. See C++.

Oh, also, it breaks the back button. Which is always stupid.

> I understand that all the modal windows used for displaying advertisement are annoying as hell, yes. But that doesn't make modal windows as described in this article in any way bad. Have you actually read anything there? Have you looked at some of the examples?

Yes, of course I've looked at those examples. And they make my skin crawl. Every single one of them is something useless that could have been done far better without suddenly pretending that modality was somehow a good thing. And I have come across them on real websites. And every time I have, I get pissed off, turn off JS (see, another example of a bad DHTML ruining it for all DHTML) and reload to accomplish whatever it is I was trying to do, and then never return to the site.

"Alexander Pánek" <alexander.panek@brainsware.org> wrote in message news:gvoa8d$o50$1@digitalmars.com...
> Nick Sabalausky wrote:
>> "Alexander P?nek" <alexander.panek@brainsware.org> wrote in message news:gvlrua$16pq$1@digitalmars.com...
>>> grauzone wrote:
>>>>> browsers. What's the big deal everyone have with Javascript?
>>> Look mah, JS and Flash combined in shiny modal windows:
>>>
>>> http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/05/27/modal-windows-in-modern-web-design/
>>>
>>> No, I really don't want to torture you. Well, maybe a little. :P
>>
>> Oh my god, whoever wrote that should be arrested by internet police and locked away for a veeeery long time...
>
> No.
>
> You know, there are people having a different vision of "The Web" as you have, and just because of that you want them to be locked away?

Don't take things so literally.

> Seriously, why do some people have to be so stubborn? We have 2009. Not 1999, but 2009. It's time for some advancement. The web isn't only text & some floating images inbetween anymore.
>

How is it you continue to miss this point: I am asserting that these things are *NOT* advancements. These are newer, yes. But "new" does *not* imply "better". So...ways in which modern web technology takes us *backwards* (in no order):

- Severely reduced responsiveness on the same hardware. (And no, I'm obviously not saying no new technology should ever be used that's even a little bit slower. I'm just saying that in these cases it's downright excessive.)

- Increased usage, and even encouragement, of unnecessary modality. As I said in another post, modality is something that should only be used when absolutely necessary, and minimized otherwise. Embracing it is an enormous interface design flaw and is one of the more common mistakes indicative of an amateur interface designer.

- Enormous decrease in usage of proven (and formerly-common) methods of static code analysis.

- Lingering after-effects of people who embraced the "(Anti-)Robustness Principle".

 - Decreased accessibility (ie, Flash and AJAX. And yes, these *can* be made
accessible, but nobody bothers, and out-of-the-box the non-Flash/non-AJAX
stuff is automatically far more accessible).

- Severely decreased ability for the programmer to utilize the same code on different servers (Because every server is set up to use a completely different subset of CGI/ASP/JVM/PHP/Perl/Ruby/etc, and unlike on the desktop, the programmers typically have little-to-no control over which one(s) the server is set up to use, and the people who do have control, IT, typically don't know anything about programming.) Java promoted itself as being "write-once-run-anywhere", but even plain old natively-compiled desktop apps are far more "write-once-run-anywhere" than web-server apps.

- Applications are just plain turning to shit. When people (like me) say that "the web should not be considered or used as an application platform", what they're saying (and you seem to be completely missing) is *not* that it "it should never happen", but rather that (X)HTML/CSS/JS/AJAX/PHP/HTTP/Flash/etc, as they currently are, are terrible foundations on which to build an application, and the results are accordingly inferior:  Compare any desktop application to an equivalent web-based version (and note I said "equivalent", so no fair comparing a notably bad desktop email client to Gmail). All else being equal, the web version is naturally going to be far worse. Sure, web apps have the benefit of no-install, auto-update (although that's an extremely questionable benefit), shared-state, etc. But none of those things are anything that can't be done just as well with a desktop app. And we need to be building the infrastructures for *that* instead of wasting our time on "clever" tricks that shoehorn technologies that are inherently terrible for apps into being...fancier.

These are *regressions*, not advancements.

> There are quite a few crafts involved when building a website, including interface designers and programmers. As much as you'd give a rats ass about what the designer talks about programming you shouldn't judge about the interface designer's work. Since it's his craft and not yours. And, please don't take this personally, but programmers are usually really really bad [interface] designers. "Cobbler, stick to your last."
>

I am a software developer, first and foremost. Interface design (though not to be confused with graphic design) is every bit as much a part of that as programming (as well as a few other things). If you consider yourself first and foremost a programmer, then by all means, go ahead and "stick to your last".

> Don't get me wrong, I'm a programmer, too. I'm not really that good at interface design either, but I at least try to accept new ways of doing things. That's what I usually expect from other fellow programmers, but people never cease to amaze me (in the negative sense).
>

Once again, while I happily embrace the new when it's good (D, ranges), unlike most people I'm not so blinded by the "new and shiny" to not see when there are clear drawbacks.

> Oh and btw: if you don't use vim, you should be arrested by flamewar
> police and locked away for a veeeery long time...
> (See what I did there?)
>

Yes, I see the apples-to-oranges comparison you did there. A developer choosing to use vim affects no one but themself. A developer choosing AJAX/Modality/etc affects everyone who visits their site.

> I am sincerely pissed. Not at you personally, but rather the cloud of ignorance gladly sharing its existense with me all the time.

Heh, this is the one opinion we very much share, though for obviously very different reasons ;)

Reply to Nick,

[sniped rant about why the web sucks]

I'll grant you most of that and I don't care about the rest.

It's ironic that this should come up in the D community because it sounds a lot like C++ template are to the web like D template are to what the web should be. That is; the Web has taken what it has and abused it (because nothing better was available) to get something it wants with no pity for the sucker who has to use it.

Ary Borenszweig escribió:
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtYCFVPfx4M

Bah... I just realized debugging that kind of things might be really hart to do. Imagine this:

---
char[] something() {
	return "x *= 3; x += 4;";
}

mixin("int bla(int x) { x *= 2; " ~ something ~ " return 4; }");

void main() {
	const something = bla(2);
}
---

Now I want to debug the invocation of bla: how the variable x is being modified. But there's no such place in the source code for that definition (well, there is, but it's split in pieces, and obviously you'll get lost when debugging).

So I'm starting to think that the compile-time debugger should work on the (formatted) compile-time view of the modules. So you'll end up debugging code like this:

---
char[] something() {
	return "x *= 3; x += 4;";
}

int bla(int x) {
	x *= 2;
	x *= 3;
	x += 4;
	return x;
}

void main() {
	const something = bla(2);
}
---

But that's way more hard to do than what I'm doing right now.

Finally, you might want to have both worlds together, like:

---
char[] someOtherFunc() {
  return "char[] x = \"whatever\";";
}

char[] someFunc() {
  mixin(someOtherFunc());
  return x;
}


mixin(someFunc());
---

Now I want to debug someFunc(). But I also want to see that someOtherFunc() is expanded well, so I can't just show the compile-time view of the module, because doing this might have an error already (the error I want to debug, for example!). (and also the compile-time view dependens on the function I'm trying to debug)

Aaah... I give up.

(I came to this conclusion when trying to debug the scrappes:units project).