Matt said:
I think this is flawed thinking, and it's littering this newsgroup.
In the event of an OP choosing not to explain the context of their
question some assumption has to be made in order to answer at all. The
FAQ for this group states what the default assumption is, and in the
case of most of the questions asked it is the correct assumption to
make.
If people don't want to be subject to that assumption then they should
follow the detailed advice on the efficient asking of questions provided
in the FAQ.
The default assumption for a (well-worded) question should always be
that the OP has a justified reason to do what he or she is trying to
do, and is looking for an answer to the QUESTION, not general
discussion on the correctness of their design decision. (In some
cases, the posting style of the original post makes it obvious that
the OP has no clue about what they are really asking).
It is somewhat typical that the criteria you would apply would be the
wording of the question. I read the OP and immediately thought that some
incompetent jelly has created an application/back-end that is not suited
for use over HTTP with a web browser front end and is now looking for a
javascript Band-aid in an effort to fix the wrong problem (and I have
seen nothing that has changed my mind).
You would have the OP provided with that band-aid, even though the best
it could do is lessen the problem. I would want whoever wrote the
back-end to be directed toward design and implementation criteria
suitable for HTTP application programming, so at least the next time
they create one this problem wouldn't exist.
The wording has little to do with the response, the asking of this
question is itself an indicator that the OP does not understand what
they are asking for, or its implications.
If someone has an answer to the original question, or can point the
person in the right direction, and _then_ decides to also note that
there are potential problems with the idea, then that's great.
(Yet you want to have your say without positing a single line of code or
word of explanation that addresses the OP's situation.)
There is no right direction in which to point, except back to the
back-end and having it's inadequacies fixed. There is no cross-browser
solution, and any possible IE only solution would not reduce the
stupidity of potentially reducing the productivity of users of the
system by denying them the tools they are used to using in a web
browser.
But, having multiple followups all telling the OP that they are dumb
to even think about doing what they're doing, all making the
assumption that the OP is too stupid to know it's probably a bad idea
to do this in an internet environment, is elitist behavior that
reduces the effectiveness of the group. IMO.
I can see why you may feel that it elitist to recognise and point out
fundamentally flawed design, but your personal standards are not those
of the majority of the regulars on this group.
Incidentally, saying "reduces the effectiveness of the group" implies
that the group has a purpose, it does not, this group does no more than
exist and exhibit behaviour. Insofar as anything approaching a purpose
exists for the group it is no more than to discuss javascript, which is
adequately satisfied by stating that javascript is unsuitable for some
things, or that some things are an extremely bad idea to attempt with
javascript.
The existence of the group has side effects, one of which is much
javascript related problem solving, another is an ever improving
understanding of the use and application of javascript on the part of
its regular contributors (through exposing their explanations, ideas and
scripts to the strongly critical environment of the group), but nobody
has a right to expect (and certainly not demand) anything from the group
as a whole.
Richard.
