Letters from Readers
Reader Feedback: Flash of Uninitialized JavaScript UI
Visual Studio Magazine Tools Editor Peter Vogel wanted to avoid the raw, uninitialized HTML/HTML5 that users sometimes see in their browsers before JavaScript properly arranges things. He checked in with an industry expert and shared the solution in his .NET Tips and Tricks blog: "Guru Tip: Avoid the HTML5 FOUJUI Experience". Readers commented:
I'm excited about HTML5 but Flash can do all these things (html5socket.com) DOT can do in a better way. Creating a slideshow in HTML5 -- wow! Flash did that 10 years ago! It's very easy to create a Flash animation -- a ball bouncing, for example -- in Flash Professional in less than a minute. JavaScript is a mess when compared to AS3.
Henry Chennai
Posted Online
What happened to the idea of sites that would run without JavaScript? I see far too many sites that only work if you enable JavaScript, even though they're not doing anything special with it. Requiring JavaScript in an application is fine; requiring it in a site is not.
Richard
Posted Online
Peter Vogel responds:
As a programmer, I assume that everything is better with code, of course. But you can still do a lot "declaratively" with these new technologies. However, once you start doing complicated stuff, it's a question of how much control you want to give the developer. A "procedural" approach that uses JavaScript gives the developer absolute freedom to manipulate the objects any way he wants. A declarative approach (new tags with attributes that let you customize the tag's behavior) inherently restricts you to those options that are offered. It appears that, in many cases, HTML5 has gone for flexibility with a procedural approach. That favors application developers over site designers, of course.
Contributing Code to ASP.NET
John K. Waters reported on Microsoft's announcements at Visual Studio Live! 2012 in late March. In his online report, "Live from Visual Studio Live!: Microsoft Opens Development on ASP.NET Projects"), he covered the company's decision to open the development of ASP.NET MVC 4 to third-party contributions and add ASP.NET Web API and ASP.NET Web Pages version 2 (code-named "Razor"). Readers reacted to the news:
Good-bye ASP.NET! Welcome Silverlight on HTML5/JavaScript (plug-in-less Silverlight)!
HDolder
Posted Online
It's all crap whose time has passed; I wanted nothing to do with it anyway.
Name Withheld
Posted Online
About the Author
This story was written or compiled based on feedback from the readers of Visual Studio Magazine.