[thelist] Top 10 JavaScripts

[Randy Pearson]

>> I would say for most things that a textbook will have Javascript 
>> examples for, there is an equivalent server-side solution that needs to 
>> be deployed *first*, because that's the only one that will always work. 

Excellent point! I can no longer tolerate JS approaches that are
exclusionary, or that require painful duplicate efforts to accommodate
non-JS users. 

A great example of duality is regular expressions for form validation. If
your server-side technology supports RegEx, you can arrange to have a single
pattern be deployed on both client and server.

>> Funny how the textbooks usually leave that part out.

To be fair to authors and publishers, there are a dozen major server-side
platforms, and only a single JavaScript. JS books have broad appeal because
developers using any of these products can all read the same book. It would
be a tough balancing act to figure out which technology to show in a book,
without bloating page count, adding cost, and/or alienating large blocks of
potential readers.

-- Randy