So I’ve spend the past few days coding a lot of JavaScript. Most of it does XMLHttpRequest’s back to a Java Servlet to fetch data, and update our database. I’ve run up against one major problem, and amazingly, it’s not getting the HTML and DOM side of things right. It’s got to do with debugging the JavaScript. I have been using a very good JavaScript debugger, but it’s really not enough. The main reason: different browsers treat their JavaScript differently, that and, the amount of performance variation between JavaScript interpreters.
Effects that look really cool of Firefox look terrible on IE. Maybe it’s the performance of the HTML rendering. Anyway, my solution:
Async Java And Dom
Basically, allow me to write:
<script language=”Java” src=”code.jar”></script>
and use a stripped down Java VM. Java already includes the W3C DOM API’s, and we can then (wow) make a real connection back to the server. This would allow for a more constant performance, and generally easier development. I just wonder how much of a mission it would be to embed a VM that deeply into the three major browsers.
