Is client-side UI rendering via Javascript a good idea?

Question

The \"classic\" approach to web development has been for some time a thin client and a thick server: the server generates HTML and spits it out for the browser to render only. B

Answer 1

For internally consumed line of business apps where you can control the desktop, javascript makes sense.

For external / public facing apps where you have no idea what browser your consumers are using, keep it dead simple and use as little as possible.

When you say that Javascript just works now due to the frameworks, that's not exactly true. IE 6 is still in widespread use, as is older Safari. Even FF 2.x, and 1.x to some extent, has decent share of the consumer market.

Along with that, not everyone has high speed internet, which is pretty much a requirement for a lot of these frameworks. Further, although most libraries work with IE 7, it's a dog for most operations.

On the subject of library size, we have a number of .net controls which like to inject up to 1MB of javascript to the client. Trying sending that to Grandma.

Lastly, phones are picking up users as a primary internet access device. Unfortunately, their cache size is small and, for the most part, those cool javascript things don't work too well.