Doug Ross @ Journal

Unifying HTML and Javascript

Have been working on a bunch of new features for BadBlue that relate to Excel collaboration.

The gist of the new features are to allow multiple users -- at different locations -- to modify the same Excel spreadsheet using only their browsers. The users don't have to have copies of Excel (in fact, they don't even need to be running Windows). There are a whole bunch of features related to multi-user conflict resolution, audit logging, cell-by-cell control of who gets to see and edit what, and a bunch of other stuff.

But implementing a rich, browser-based user-interface is challenging. As more and more features were added (based upon explicit requests from users), the amount of Javascript kept going up. Need to pop up an editor window? Javascript. Want to change the colors of a table's cell or its value "on the fly"? Javascript.

The conclusion I've come to is that HTML, as a browser markup language, doesn't have much value without Javascript. Yes, you can put up a static page with HTML and omit Javascript altogether.

But if you're doing a real application, well, you need Javascript.

Why is this important? Think about the HTML and XHTML DTD's. They really have no connection or knowledge of Javascript. Nor does Javascript have a consistent view of the HTML DTD. Need an example?

Consider how you change the contents of a table cell (an instantiated TD tag) on-the-fly:

opener.document.all ? opener.document.all[sCell] // IE4+ : opener.document.getElementById ? opener.document.getElementById(sCell) // NN6 : null; if (cell != null) { cell.innerHTML = "something"; }

Of course, if Javascript and the HTML DOM were integrated just a little bit better,

opener.document.table[2].tr[1].td[0] = "something";

or, if the table had a name attribute (doh!):

opener.document.mytable.tr[1].td[0] = "something";

or, if the table and the column each had name attributes:

opener.document.mytable.row[1].labelcolumn = "something";

In other words, why can't the HTML DOM and Javascript be completely integrated?

More importantly, why do we care about this from a strategic sense? Javascript and HTML, each operating in their own vacuum-like silos, benefits only thick-client vendors like Microsoft. The spectrum of user-interfaces available to web application designers ranges from just-plain shitty to a cut above mediocre.

An example of a web app that is pushing the limit is Google's Gmail. It might consist of 80% Javascript and 20% HTML. It is probably the most sophisticated web interface I've seen yet. It is very well done but it still doesn't approach the seamless usability of a desktop app.

A standards-based effort towards integrated HTML and Javascript (i.e., the W3C and ECMA form the necessary committees or initiatives to state what we have... and where we should be going) will bring rich, desktop-like applications to the web.

And who (except, perhaps, Microsoft) would argue against that?

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