Example (I don’t mean to pick on anybody, this is just one example I know of): the guys over at the F-Secure blog started using some service for creating polls. Now for their polls to work you have to enable javascript from two sources: from pollmonkey (because they give you a script to include in your page) and from the originating page (because you have to activate the script). To give you a better idea, here is a direct code snippet from their site:


<script src="http://www.pollmonkey.com/s.asp?c=53753826&u=2619733987"></script>
<script language=javascript>DisplayVote33987();</script>


Because this is embedded on the F-Secure page, you have to allow script execution from both the pollmonkey website (for the included script to work) and from the F-Secure domain for the initialization code to execute. While javascript is one of the easiest techniques to use in this case (using iframes for example would mean to play around with the size), there is no need for the embedding site to call the initialization script, it can be done directly in the included script file.

They aren’t the only culprits, other well known examples include Google (with their Google Analytics / Urchin tracking code) and Digg (with their code which displays the number of diggs for a given article)

An other bad example would be Zoomerang. They claim 70+ Fortune 100 clients and other similar things. Even with this much money, they created a system which not only is based entirely on javascript (even though you can style forms entirely with CSS), but it also doesn’t give any warnings about the fact that you don’t have it activated. Arguably you would know if you disabled javascript, but even so it would be nice to get a warning.

The conclusion, if any, is the fact that managers (who buy the services of these sites) mostly have no idea about the real quality of service they are getting. While in some cases it may be reasonable for them not be an expert in the respective domain, they should at least ask an independent party who can accurately evaluate the service for them. But this is the topic for an other rant…

PS. If you are interested in building better forms, go listen to episode 41 of the boagworld.com podcast.

Do I really need javascript to submit a simple form? Really? As for the server running the given website, its version number isn’t too reassuring either.