Re: gnome tour mockup

[Curtis Hovey <sinzui is verizon net>]

On Fri, 2007-02-16 at 23:56 +0200, Quim Gil wrote:
> Excuse if I don get into details, some of the technical aspects escape
> to my knowledge (i.e. why AJAXś javascript is "worse" than E5's JS)

This issue is not AJAX verses JavaScript. The issue ultimately is if
JavaScript is required for the user experience, and how robust must it
be.

EcmaScript is a standard, but no browser has been perfect at
implementing it. Every browser has proprietary additions. Successful
JavaScript implementations test for features before using them, provide
implementations for missing features, and offer some form of graceful
degradation when implementations are not available.

Just three years ago, it was very difficult to make a sophisticated and
reliable JavaScript app because every micro release of a browser broke
API compatibility with the previous release. The problem was compounded
by the CSS engine, which JavaScript uses to accomplish the in-page
effects.

The success of AJAX is ultimately derived from proven (almost paranoid)
cross browser and cross engine testing. Libraries like Prototype +
Scriptaculous  or JQuery, provide tested features and effect that do
work in IE, Moz, KHTML, Safari, and Opera. Other browsers are not
guaranteed, and if they must be supported, then additional labor is need
to update the browser and/or the AJAX library. As an aside, a lot of so
called AJAX is nothing more that dynamic HTML since there is no
asynchronous requests for data. 

Using JavaScript means we are committing additional time to develop,
test, and maintain. Authors must know what CSS ids and classes to apply
to their content to enable a feature. Developers must create scripts
that know when to wire their event handlers to those CSS ids and classes
(and when not to). Authors generally do not require anything more
interactive that hyperlinking. Applications like browsing and searching
through structured data will be more usable if the interface is more
responsive, and illustrative of how information  is organized.

All that said. JQuery or Scriptaculous can do some astounding sweet
effects and compelling functions that do not require plugins. You can
make amazing presentations that include cross-fading and moving that
look like GL-based composting. An adept developer can use these
libraries to do a selection and transition in a single line of code.

PS, remember that many people ask search engines before asking
gnome.org. We should not permit our data and functions to lock out bots
just because they are blind idiot savants without JavaScript or CSS.

> My points are:
> 
> - Whatever we do needs to be easily editable via the CMS.
> 
> - Whatever we do needs to fit in http://live.gnome.org/GnomeWeb/WebPolicies
> 
> - We can start doing something simple but effective that can be ready
> for the launch. Then with a website already launched we can work on
> improvemts without this time pressure. Working from scratch without
> further references and with a tight deadline it's too unpleasant.
> 
> - Anyway the most elaborated tour we could imagine will need some
> static pages to start discussing a build upon.  Perhaps by now we don
> need anything else than these static pages.
> 
-- 

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sinzui is verizon net
Guilty of stealing everything I am.